Computerworld

Unisys helps NZTA become Agile

NZTA signs five and a half year contract with Unisys

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has awarded Unisys a five and a half year contract to support its suite of registry functions and to provide a cloud-based Agile software development environment designed to speed application development to better respond to legislative change.

Lysandra Schmutter, vice president public sector at Unisys Asia Pacific, said a combination of innovative technology, agile methodology and a collaborative approach were enabling Unisys and the NZTA to work hand-in-hand to quickly implement legislative changes that impact New Zealand’s drivers and change the way citizens consume NZTA’s services.

Unisys said it had already used an Agile approach to help NZTA reduce the time to implement legislative changes in the registry system - such as a new rule or fee - by half, from six months to three. NZTA’s registry suite includes systems for driver licensing, motor vehicle registration and road user charges.

According to Unisys, “The key factors in achieving this improvement were the use of innovative technology, including the Unisys AB Suite application development software; adopting an Agile development methodology; and physically co-locating the NZTA and Unisys development teams to promote cross-functional collaboration and fast response to changes.”

Robyn Elston, national manager delivery at NZTA, said NZTA wanted to make it quick, easy and desirable for customers to transact with it online. “This also means becoming more responsive to ongoing legislative changes,” she said.

“This new way of working is really making a difference. We are co-located as one team, so we can design and deliver better services to improve customers’ experience of the transport system much more quickly.”

According to Unisys, NZTA is using the Unisys Virtual Private Cloud, a virtualised software-defined data centre, to allocate a secure virtualised pool of shared computing resources within a public cloud environment for greater flexibility and cost savings. Unisys says it also enables automated application deployment, which is faster and less prone to human error.

Mark Forman, vice president of the global public sector business at Unisys, said that even though the two organisations had a long relationship accelerating the way they jointly bring solutions to market had challenged both organisations.

Unisys has worked with NZTA for more than 20 years. Back in 2013 Unisys migrated more than 1.7 billion driver and vehicle records to a Windows-based Unisys ES7000 and ES3000 platform running Unisys Agile Business Suite, a move claimed to have saved $80 million

In 2014 Unisys was awarded a six-year contract to lead the design and implementation of a new version of NZTA’s crash analysis system based on an open platform.