Victorian Water Register Cloud Hosting Services

⁠⁠⁠Advance Tender Notice – Victorian Water Register Cloud Hosting Services

Advanced Tender Notice Number: 344609

Purpose of this Notice:

The Water and Catchments group (WCG) within the State of Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, is responsible for the operation and management of the Victorian Water Register (VWR). WCG is planning to procure the migration of the existing VWR system into the public cloud hosted by Amazon Web Services and engage a Managed Services Provider.

The opportunity to tender for this work will be provided via an open Request for Tender (RFT). The RFT is expected to be issued on 13 March 2020.

It will be managed via the eServices Register. It is a mandatory requirement that all intending tenderers are registered in the eServices Register and have access to VendorPanel. https://www.buyingfor.vic.gov.au/eservices-suppliers

It is planned that the tender will be open for 4 weeks with a supplier briefing occurring within the first week of the open period. Questions and Answer period will be completed one week prior to the close of the RFT.

Background

The VWR is a public register of all water-related entitlements in Victoria. It has been designed and built to record water entitlements with integrity and provide crucial information for managing Victoria’s water resources.

The VWR:

holds water shares recorded by the Victorian Water Registrar, together with mortgages and limited term transfers (leases) relevant to these water shares
holds records of licences to take and use surface water and groundwater
holds records of works-related licences
records water allocations that are available in the current season
tracks and reconciles volumes of water entitlements by water system and trading zone
holds water-use licences and delivery shares that are managed by water corporations
includes workflows to process water dealings, and keeps audit trails
generates statistics and reports on levels of use, directions of trade, and prices paid

Context
The VWR system has been operational since the July 1, 2007. The department has determined that the existing system environment is due for renewal. This will be done in two phases.

Phase 1, which is the subject of the proposed Request for Tender, will involve the migration of the existing system to the public cloud hosted by Amazon Web Services. It is anticipated the process will be completed by the November 2020.

Phase 2, which is not part of this ‘Request for Tender’ will involve the rebuilding of the entire system and software environment; removing dependence on legacy platforms and enabling adoption of contemporary tools to deliver modern front-line services to the community. It will be built entirely independently of the current VWR, although some interfaces to the current VWR will be required in transition. Phase 2 will commence late in 2020 under its own contract and will involve a multi-year delivery program.

The Opportunity
In summary, the solution will deliver:

• Migration of the existing VWR to an AWS environment
• Operating the VWR environment to meet availability, confidentiality and integrity requirements of the department
• Partnering with DELWP’s Water and Catchments group in the management, maintenance and support of the infrastructure for the VWR

WCG is aiming to award the contract to a vendor by May 2020 and anticipate having the migrated service in place from 15 August 2020. The new service will operate in production verification mode against the current environment for up to 12 weeks. The new service contract will run for a duration of three years (plus 2x one-year options to extend).