In a sign Canberra's skills shortage may be far from over, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) will establish a fresh panel of approved service providers to meet its ICT service requirements and augment its in-house staff.
The service providers appointed to the panel, limited to 50 companies, will have an opportunity to put forward "suitably qualified" personnel to perform the services.
The AFP has divided its ICT service requirements into 14 groups covering everything from strategic planning, architecture, and security to software development, project management, and computer infrastructure support.
AFP's information services division consists of some 300 people comprising both personnel and contractors at Weston in the ACT. Specifically, the AFP requires a range of services within its ICT groups.
These are:
Group 1 - strategic planning, policy and advice: principal advisers who can provide advice and services in relation to ICT governance, ICT strategy and planning, ICT best practice frameworks, ICT project management, and enterprise architecture.
Group 2 - architecture services: architects to review, analyze and develop ICT architectures to support business operations. Architects are required to provide design services to the AFP comprising artefact development and support relative to the AFP's enterprise, business, information, application services and infrastructure architectures. The development of SOAs is a requirement here.
Group 3 - analysis and design services: business analysts are needed to work with AFP business areas to determine, analyze, and document requirements and support the successful delivery of AFP business applications.
Group 4 - software development and maintenance services: software developers to design, build and maintain AFP business applications across a variety of environments like SAP, .NET, Hyperion S9, MapInfo, Oracle, SQL Server 2005, SAS v9, and SharePoint 2007.
Group 5 - testing and assurance services: software testers to support the in-house development of applications, and the implementation of commercial products.
Group 6 - project management and technical writing: project managers to managing a number of ICT projects in accordance with the AFP project management methodology (PRINCE2). Projects range from small to large and complex ICT projects covering applications and infrastructure activities. Senior project managers must be capable of managing complex and large projects.
Group 7 - release management: installation specialists to manage product installations primarily centered around SAP, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, and Cisco.
Group 8 - ICT security services: security specialists to support security activities including designing and developing security architecture and security risk assessments.
Group 9 - reporting services: report development specialists to assist in the development and maintenance of reporting and business intelligence services using Hyperion S9 and SAS v9.
Group 10 - geospatial services: geospatial development specialists to assist in the development and maintenance of geospatial services using Mapinfo, ER Mapper, Feature Manipulation Engine (FME), ESRI Arc View, Oracle Spatial, and Google Earth Pro.
Group 11 - technical and infrastructure services: network, database and systems specialists are required to develop and support the AFP's data and IP voice infrastructure, Oracle and SQL Server 2005 database environments, and Linux, Unix and Windows operating platforms. Data warehousing and configuration management services are also required.
Group 12 - technical desktop-server support: desktop and server support officers must have skills and experience to assist in managing a complex multi-site IT environment consisting of Windows 2003 servers, Windows XP, Exchange, and Microsoft Office applications.
Group 13 - help desk analyst: help desk analysts are required to work in the AFP's IT support center.
Group 14 - administrative support: administrative support officers are required to support its IT operations activities.
The tender closes on August 7, 2007.