THE CLIENT
Kangaroo Island Council
Kangaroo Island has a resident population of approximately 4,500, and sees up to 200,000 visitors each year. The island encompasses an area of 4,400 square kilometers and is 13.5 kilometers off the mainland at its nearest point.
The council provides leadership, direction and responsible stewardship of resources to the Kangaroo Island community.
THE CHALLENGE
The Kangaroo Island Council operates in a challenging environment for technology services, with only a small pool of technical talent available on the island and limited local network infrastructure. The Council has a small number of employees and very limited in-house IT experience.
The Council had been experiencing ongoing performance and reliability issues with the delivery of its IT services and its network connection to the mainland, and approached Adept to undertake a review of those existing outsourced arrangements. Adept was tasked with documenting the Council’s future IT and communication needs and re-tendering those services through a request for proposal (RFP) process.
THE ACTION
Adept began by visiting Council sites on the island, meeting with employees, understanding issues with the current service provision, and documenting future requirements. Those requirements were documented in the form of a RFP which was issued through Council in late 2018.
Adept managed queries from prospective suppliers during the RFP process and worked with Council to evaluate the RFP responses, identifying preferred suppliers based on Council’s criteria for price, compliance with the requirements and demonstrated experience. Adept also added value in finalising contracts with suppliers through advice and negotiation on technical content and terms and conditions.
Adept established a longer term relationship with the Council, creating and maintaining a three year IT systems plan that identifies the major IT systems, networks and capabilities required to support longer term operation. This included preparing a management framework for the regular measurement and management of the service level agreement between the Council and its suppliers, and delivering ongoing strategic advice and services.
We engaged Adept to oversee the selection of, and transition to, new infrastructure providers to secure council’s operations for the coming years. They successfully managed the successful transition to the new vendors, which are providing significant ongoing cost savings to the Kangaroo Island Council. The new services were implemented with minimum of disruption to day-to-day activities, delivering a more robust IT capability, with faster, more reliable and cost effective network connectivity to the mainland
