UPDATED: ​Wellington councils unite to give shared ICT services green light

Councils in the Wellington region have joined-up to share ICT infrastructure services, in a move designed to “improve resilience and save money.”

The chief executives of Wellington City Council, Porirua City Council, Upper Hutt City Council and Wellington Water have approved a final implementation business case to share information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure services.

According to all parties, this is a “significant milestone” that consolidates the work undertaken following the completion of a feasibility study in December 2013.

“The business case shows there are significant benefits for each organisation participating in the shared services model,” says Kevin Lavery, CEO, Wellington City Council.

“Along with financial benefits there will be the additional benefits of a more stable, reliable and resilient ICT system.

“While each organisation will realise different levels of benefits there will be an overall improvement in services. Now that an agreed service model has been established, other councils and CCOs in the region can also consider developing their own business case to assess whether participation will meet their needs and generate cost savings.”

Following the appointment of Dimension Data as preferred supplier in late June, contract negotiations have now been completed and the contract has been signed.

Lavery says a number of New Zealand companies will work alongside Dimension Data to support the delivery of the shared services solution, including CityLink, Datacom, Spark Wholesale and Xtreme Data Centre with Dimension Data's cloud platform to be hosted in Datacom's Kapua data centre.

Implementation of the new services will be phased and is expected to take about 14 months.

This story was updated on Wednesday November 4, at 1:47pm.