'Hello Kete'

...delivering time savings of over $37,000 per annum.

Whangarei District Council’s new ‘Kete’ hub delivers a single enterprise search capable of finding both data and documents from multiple applications. Faster searches are delivering time savings of over $37,000 per annum. Information Leadership won the Microsoft Partner of the Year Award in the Government and Public Sector category for its work with the council on this, its Trilogy project.

Screen shot of Whangarei District Council’s new ‘Kete’ hub that delivers single enterprise search capable of finding both data and documents from multiple applications

What problem were you trying to resolve?

There were many issues with Whangarei District Council’s existing IT system. These included an ageing infrastructure with poor connectivity to remote sites and a reliance on Citrix that was restricting digitally-integrated applications.

Telephony was VOIP-enabled but it couldn’t bundle voice and video, and graphic content was being poorly handled.

There was limited ability to share content between applications without developing and maintaining costly integrations.

On top of this, council was using numerous specialised ‘best of breed’ legacy systems that could only run on old Windows platforms. This was preventing upgrades to Whangarei’s Office and EDRMs system (TRIM). Searchability across council systems was poor and as the server room was located in a flood plain it was vulnerable in times of high rainfall.

How did you go about it?

Over two million records were migrated to the new SharePoint enterprise content management system provided as a Software as a Service (SAAS) solution.

All email mailboxes were migrated to the cloud and integrated with SharePoint.

The entire infrastructure was moved onto the cloud.

More than 100 digital workplaces were delivered to users in one week.

Five hundred training sessions were delivered including around 100 training sessions that specifically focused on the enterprise content management system.

What technology did you use?

Microsoft SharePoint

Office 365

iWorkplace (for records management compliance)

Nintex (for forms and workflows)

Harmonie (for drag and drop email integration)

Which external suppliers did you work with?

Information Leadership provided the Enterprise Content Management System and Northcloud provided the Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) platform.

What were the end results?

Productivity gains and enhancements Easier property searches now provide better customer service. As-built drawings are now more easily retrieved using simple search parameters. Information for resource consents can be sourced faster. Retrieval of discovery material for a legal issue has uncovered previously unknown historical records.

Lower total cost of ownership As Whangarei District Council has reduced the operating cost to maintain systems IT staff can now focus on business improvement and digital projects that deliver continuous value to ratepayers.

Better search systems Council can now use a single enterprise search capable of finding both data and documents from multiple applications in an easy Google-like search. Decisionmaking is backed by accurate and complete data and is now faster and more reliable. On average, searching across Kete has gained Whangarei District Council at least 16 seconds per transaction.

Web enabled Information can be accessed via any internetconnected device through a single sign-on.

Scalable Computing needs match real-time demand so Whangarei District Council pays only for what it uses, not future capacity that may never be needed.

Solutions are standardised With zero customisation across the corporate applications, upgrades, updates, fixes and management can be handled more efficiently.

Article first published in Local Government Magazine, Aug 2017