Police Minister Michelle Roberts has announced a AU$ 39 million deal with a company, which connects people via reliable communication infrastructure, to upgrade the digital infrastructure at Western Australia Police stations around the State.
According to a recent press release, the improved infrastructure will form the backbone for the digital transformation of the WA Police Force.
The Minister explained that in order to combat 21st century crime, a 21st century Police Force is needed.
Digital Infrastructure Upgrade
- This serves as one of a suite of initiatives that the Government of Western Australia is funding in order to guarantee that the police can do their jobs better and keep the Western Australians ssafe.
- The work will result in a doubling of the bandwidth to Police stations and other WA Police Force sites around the State.
- Over the next 12 months 200 police sites across 2.5 million square kilometres of WA will be enabled with high bandwidth.
- The high bandwidth network connectivity will allow for greater data exchange. It will also directly support frontline operations with the introduction of body worn cameras.
- Importantly, the network will be enabled with end to end encryption to ensure absolute protection for sensitive police communications and greater resilience against cyber security attacks.
- This will therefore provide a more reliable and secure communications network for every WA Police officer.
- As part of the works, a state of the art ‘GovNext-ICT’ hosted Cisco IP Telephony Service will be deployed State-wide to all WA Police Force locations.
Australia GovNext-ICT
GovNext-ICT is a whole-of-government approach to ICT infrastructure that will support government agencies transform from individual ownership of ICT infrastructure to consumers of on-demand, consolidated services.
It aims to simplify and connect government systems by re-locating 60 physical data centres into pay-as-you-go, secure cloud services, creating a single, unified network, and modernising telecommunications.
Traditional procurement models of ICT infrastructure support services have resulted in locking government into numerous, long-term contracts which are expensive, onerous to manage and do not service evolving public service needs.
Physical removal and consolidation of hardware, reduction of contracts and simplification of the buying mechanism will create government savings, increase cyber security and provide agility for government to drive innovation by removing the limitations inherent with ownership.
This initiative is sponsored by the Directors General ICT Council and championed by the nine largest government agencies, the Department of Health, Education, Justice, Police, Communities, Transport, Main Roads, Public Transport Authority and the Department of Finance.
As reported, the WA Police CIO explained that these new GovNext-ICT services are the foundation of their digital policing capabilities in direct alignment with their vision to continue as an exceptional Police Force for the community.
