Gerry Brownlee (Speaker of the House)
New Zealand's Parliament is pursuing a thorough refresh of its technology asone critical front remains in need of urgent funding.
Many of Parliament's ICT systems and platforms were custom-made and designed specifically to meet the needs of members and staff, the Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives jointly reported to incoming speaker Gerry Brownlee in December.
"Although this makes them more effective, it also leads to greater system complexity and increases the cost and difficulty of upgrading them," the offices reported.
Brownlee's role as Speaker includes political responsibility for the good management of parliamentary services and facilities provided to MPs.
Cloud adoption was progressing well, the report said, with migrations complete for TechnologyOne, finance, ServiceNow and Microsoft M365.
"Over the coming years we will transition the majority of our systems to the cloud in New Zealand to enable greater security and increased resilience," the report said. "Partnering with suppliers for the provision of cloud services has allowed us to increase our focus on customer experience initiatives."
However, a plan to replace a 30 year old payroll system, which services around 700 staff, appears to have hit financial headwinds.
A procurement process was undertaken with Fusion5's Jemini software selected as the preferred replacement in late 2022. The contract was valued at $2 million over the first five years.
As discovery and design for the project began, however, the level of resource needed to meet Parliament's requirements became apparent.
"The service undertakes payroll services for five agencies, and the system needs to comply with 19 pieces of
legislation and multiple employment agreements with varying hours, terms, and conditions," the report said.
"On top of this, integrations with multiple systems and investment in a people data system are required to meet the needs of the service and users."
The project was formally put on hold last July until additional funding could be secured.
"The service does not have sufficient funding to implement the solution and there is a critical risk of service failure should additional funding not be secured imminently," the report said.
Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, chief executive of the Parliamentary Service, confrimed to Reseller News funding for the projectr had not been secured since the report's publication last month.
"We are currently engaged in the process of determining future funding and next steps," he said. "We are unable to provide details on this or the required funding at this stage."
The offices of Parliament were also making a continued and sustained investment in cyber-security to manage the evolving threat landscape.
"We have a small cyber team within IST that works closely with the wider security team, the private sector and government agencies such as the National Cyber Security Centre to ensure our systems are protected and that members who are at heightened risk of cyber-threats have sufficient protection and support," the report said.
