Northern Territory contract win for PKBA

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 21 June 2009 10:19

Business IT - Technology

IT and telecommunications services vendor, PKBA, has won a contract to deliver  integrated voice and data conferencing  solutions to 30 remote locations throughout the Northern Territory for CouncilBiz, a subsidiary company of  eight of the Territory’s local government councils.

The first phase roll-out of the system will involve locations in Darwin, Katherine, Alice Springs, Jabiru, Tennant Creek, Nhulunbury and the Tiwi Islands for CouncilBiz, which was formed in mid 2008 and is a fully owned subsidiary of the eight major Northern Territory Councils, with the primary focus of providing ICT, administrative, financial and support services to members.

PKBA CEO, Mark Stead, said the solution would lead to significant reductions in travel and associated costs for CouncilBiz, “given that Council staff and elected members are often required to travel long distances by chartered plane and over unsealed roads to attend meetings and other events.”

Stead said that “innovation will play a valuable role in achieving the business objectives of regional Australian communities.”

Vicki Wright, general manager of CouncilBiz said the objective was to deliver advanced video conferencing and data sharing facilities to the regional centres, and that “the difficulty is always in the reliability and level of communications available throughout the Northern Territory.

“We required a one-vendor solution that would overcome this hurdle. The simplicity of deployment and integration with existing infrastructure were the key factors which influenced the decision to utilise PKBA.”