NEC Australia has secured a $23 million deal with WA Health to deploy new regional connectivity network.
Part of WA Health’s $409 million HealthNext ICT infrastructure overhaul, this latest deal will see NEC deliver a Wide Area Networks (WAN) service spanning 500 regional health sites across the state.
HealthNext, led by the WA’s Health’s shared services centre Health Support Services (HSS), is part of the WA Government’s wider GovNext-ICT whole-of-government program tasked with accelerating the adoption of ‘as-a-service’ platforms and cloud infrastructure across state agencies.
HSS Chief information officer Holger Kaufmann said the NEC-led upgrade will deliver “fast and reliable access to critical health systems while enabling us to better utilise digital innovation to support a more patient-centric and sustainable health system.”
The HealthNext contract is the latest in a series of deals between the WA Government and NEC as part of the GovNext program.
“NEC is very pleased to partner with WA Health on their transformation journey and we look forward to delivering innovative solutions that underpin their digital services strategy,” NEC Australia’s WA State Manager Marcus Ashby said in a statement.
“NEC Australia has now signed in the vicinity of 180 orders with 35 West Australian government agencies connected to the state’s GovNext strategy,” he said.
The ICT services company has also secured several big-name contracts with state governments across Australia, including a deal with the NSW Government to deliver microwave backhaul and radio network support under the state government’s Critical Communication Enhancement Program (CCEP).
Following criticism over a series of bungled public sector deployments across Australia, NEC has undergone sweeping changes to its management, with nearly half of the tech company’s leadership team departing over the last year and a half, according to an InnovationAus report.
The leadership changes came after “a series of high-profile and trouble-plagued government accounts, including the doomed biometrics project with the ACIC and a $20 million education IT platform that was canned in 2018,” InnovationAus revealed.
