WA Education strikes $500m IT outsourcing deal

Western Australia’s Department of Education has entered a landmark $500 million IT services outsourcing contract with Kinetic IT, as it moves to adopt a new IT operating model.

The contract, announced on Thursday, will see Kinetic IT provide “end-to-end” IT services to WA Education for up to the next 11 years as part of a consortium with ASG Group, called the LIFT Alliance.

The strategic alliance will also see the pair – which are both Perth-based – create a local innovation centre, and use their capabilities to partner on future government tenders across Australia.

WA Education went looking for a single provider to take charge of its nine IT service bundles in July 2020 in a bid to remove conflicting and overlapping responsibilities in its existing outsourcing arrangement.

Bundles were to include operations, ICT customer service centre, security and threat protection, network design and management, technical design and management and project services.

Three of the nine bundles were to focus specifically on Oracle, Java and Microsoft – the department’s key IT platforms – and other application development, support and maintenance.

Under the new deal, which the WA government's procurement website values at $504 million, Kinetic IT will serve as prime contractor, though it is not clear how the service bundles have been divided up.

A spokesperson told iTnews that Kinetic IT will provide managed infrastructure services, while ASG Group will provide application managed services.

Other IT services will include user experience, technical advice and solutions development.

WA Education chief information officer David Dans said the new arrangement – which is critical to the implementation of the department’s new IT operating model – was more than ‘just a contract’.

“With the LIFT Alliance, we have set the foundations for a modern and flexible partnership focused on our fundamental purpose – supporting the education of our kids,” he said in a statement.

Kinetic IT CEO Michael North said the arrangement would deliver a seamless technology experience to the department through a “single point of accountability for technology services”.

“Education is a cornerstone of Kinetic IT’s origin story and I am incredibly proud to continue our role supporting the next generation of students in WA,” he said.

ASG Group CEO Dean Langenbach said that securing the WA Education contract set the stage for the LIFT Alliance to tender for other government work in the future.

“I am excited about the future of our collaboration with Kinetic IT and look forward to working closely as we continue to tender on a number of upcoming deals,” he said.

He added that the alliance was in an excellent position to offer traineeship opportunities, including 10 indigenous traineeships through aligned Indigenous participation strategies