Please wait while the page is being loaded Skip this advertisement >
Sunday | 23 November, 2008
CIO
Federal Police to outsource software development
In-house and approved suppliers to work on $84 million worth of software projects
Rodney Gedda (Computerworld) 04 December, 2007 11:06:54

Following its decision to establish a panel of general IT service providers earlier this year, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) is now seeking the services of specialist providers to undertake and assist its application development activities.

A panel of service providers will be used to provide project-based IT application development and associated services for specific jobs.

With application development traditionally performed in-house, the AFP will continue to undertake application development using existing resources, and will use service providers to undertake existing or new projects as required.

"Given the recent significant expansion of the AFP and the associated impact on IT services, it has been decided to outsource certain development activities to external service providers on an as required basis," according to an AFP document.

The number of panel members will be limited to no more than eight.

The AFP's preferred development environment is C# .Net, ASP .net, and WIN Forms, with Java and VB 6 its "legacy" languages.

The AFP's IT environment consists of Dell desktops and notebooks with either Windows XP, Red Hat Linux or Debian Linux operating systems.

IT supports about 6500 staff throughout Australia and internationally.

Both IBM pSeries Unix servers and Dell PowerEdge Intel servers running Windows are used in the data centre.

Standard software applications include Microsoft Office 2003, SQL Server 2005, Oracle 9i and 10g, Windows Terminal Services, BizTalk Server, SharePoint 2003, and Citrix MetaFrame. Microsoft Exchange is used for messaging.

Other software in use is SAS for data mining and business intelligence, and ISYS for desktop searching. Document management is "under investigation".

The AFP has a number of IT initiatives which are being considered for delivery by members of the panel, however, given the operational nature of the AFP, the IT project pipeline is "subject to change at relatively short notice".

AFP IS expects to spend approximately $84 million over the next four years on "operational application development", which includes expenditure on both internal and external projects.

One initiative to be conducted under the panel arrangement is the replacement of the Police Realtime Online Management Information System (PROMIS) by Project Spectrum. PROMIS is designed to record and manage all AFP operations and operations support activity.

Project Spectrum will include a number of modules using the AFP standard interfacing tools and methodology for future growth, some of which will be bespoke development and others may be commercial products.

During the transition from PROMIS to Spectrum the legacy data will be migrated to the newer environment. Some development and integration activities will be conducted by in-house resources, and other work by members of the panel.

Related Features
  • +

    Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04 February, 2008 13:01:15

    Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?
    Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?
  • +

    Strategies for Dealing With IT Complexity 24 December, 2007 10:30:47

    Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.
    Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.
  • +

    Hiring Manager: Emphasize Integrity, Attitude 14 December, 2007 11:18:07

    William Howell shares his hiring mistakes and his secrets for selecting the best job candidates, finding objective references and using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool.
    William Howell shares his hiring mistakes and his secrets for selecting the best job candidates, finding objective references and using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool.
  • +

    Process Trip 04 February, 2008 13:07:03

    Why Maritz Travel revamped key business processes — and how business and IT came together to make it work
    When Rich Phillips became COO OF Maritz Travel about two and-a-half years ago, he sat down and took a hard look at the big industry picture
Related Stories
  • +

    Everything you need to know about Microsoft certs 31 December, 2007 07:16:29

    Certification guru Patrick Regan explains the new Microsoft certs and reveals which Cisco, project management and security certs are worthwhile.
    Moderator-Julie: Welcome and thank you for coming. Our guest today is certification guru Patrick Regan. Patrick has penned over a dozen books, written the study guides for the A+ certification exams for Cisco Press and is currently writing an Exam Cram on Windows Server 2008. When not writing books, Patrick is a senior network engineer at Pacific Coast Companies supporting a large enterprise network and a celebrity blogger for Microsoft Subnet. We are giving away 15 free copies of Patrick's latest book, too. Go to the contest page for details. Now onto the chat.
  • +

    Can Macs conquer the enterprise? 11 January, 2008 10:55:53

    The field is wide open for a Macintosh insurrection on the business desktop. It could happen, but probably won't. Here's why.
    If Apple were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year.
  • +

    Open-source software in the data center 28 January, 2008 07:51:29

    There is a place for it, but it won't do everything.
    Rakesh Kumar, an analyst at Gartner. "There is an argument that users [of open source] gain access to a larger skill set than with other platforms," he says, referring to the notion that many eyes debug and look at open-source code.
  • +

    Hard cash, cold logic: Linux 14 January, 2008 09:11:04

    30,000 computers and 1,880 servers migrate to Suse Linux
    On May 26, 2006, Elcot (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) let in its first penguin. Things would never be the same again.
  • +

    Mob wisdom means business 04 January, 2008 07:14:47

    So-called 'crowdsourcing' lets companies create massive focus groups, garner fresh ideas, and even predict the future
    Crowdsourcing, mob wisdom, interactive ideation, artificial AI -- call it what you will, but the idea of tapping external collaborators to develop or enhance products and services is far from revolutionary.
Additional Resources
Executive Guides
Whitepapers
Newsletter Subscription
Sign up for our CIO newsletters!
RSS Feeds
Featured Whitepaper Sponsors
Market Place
 
Featured Whitepapers

Smart SOA World Tour

Discover how SOA can create smarter outcomes for your business.

Attend and learn:

  • How SOA is helping leading companies to become more agile
  • Where you should be applying SOA processes in your company
  • The top SOA implementation mistakes to avoid

Click here for more information.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05

    Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    Chris Hoff on Virtualization and Cloud Computing 20 November, 2008 10:55:00

    Chris Hoff, chief security architect for the systems and technology division at Unisys and an advisor on the Skybox Security customer advisory board, is one of the biggest critics of virtualization security out there. Not because it isn't important - but rather because it is vital and needs to mature rapidly.
  • +

    Cybersecurity is focus of new start-up incubator 20 November, 2008 07:19:00

    Texas uni announces the Institute for Cyber Security.
    The University of Texas at San Antonio Tuesday announced a technology incubator aimed at fostering IT security-based start-ups within the state.
  • +

    Dilip Sarangan on Physical Security M&A 20 November, 2008 11:18:00

    Dilip Sarangan tracks physical security companies for Frost & Sullivan. He expects the industry's "need to have" products to weather the economic storm well, with the big players (now including IBM and Cisco) looking for value-priced acquisitions.
  • +

    International Challenges in PCI Security 20 November, 2008 09:15:00

    In a country that's seen many regulatory compliance challenges this decade, the headaches of PCI security tend to be analyzed from a largely American perspective.
  • +

    PCI council sharpens oversight of security auditors 19 November, 2008 10:53:00

    Quality assurance plan targets security assessors and scanning vendors
    The PCI Security Standards Council Monday unveiled a plan to sharpen oversight of the hundreds of security-service providers now authorized to evaluate merchant networks under the organization's Payment Card Industry data standards.
CIO Webcast Innovation #8 - What are the biggest roadblocks to IT's involvement in innovation at your company?
Watch the latest latest edition of CIO Innovation which is now available for download.
Watch the webcast
Sign up to the CIO Innovation update email


CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II
Listen to the latest edition of CIO Live which is now available for download.
Listen to the podcast
Sign up to the CIO Live email
Whitepaper

The Secrets of C-Suite Success

With help from the CIO Executive Council, we tap into research about successful executives. Read on to learn more about the competencies CIOs need to develop to take the corner office, where CIOs fall short and what CEOs expect from CIOs.