CHANNA JAYASINHA AND the ICT team at the Wellington City Council are working across business units in the mission to transform the capital into a ‘smart city’.

The Smart City Programme time frame is up to 2040, and the digital strategy, which includes free Wi-Fi in the CBD, is one of its important components.

Jayasinha says among the biggest contribution of the team in the past year was the completion of the business-aligned ICT strategy to support the Smart City programme.

Another major project this year is the deployment of regional shared ICT infrastructure services with the two other councils in the Wellington region – Porirua and Upper Hutt City Council – and Wellington Water.

The CEOs of these four organisations approved the final implementation of the business case to share their ICT infrastructure services. Implementation of the shared services will take place through 2016, and is expected to save money and provide a more stable, reliant and resilient ICT system.

A group of technology companies – which include Dimension Data, CityLink, Datacom, Spark Wholesale and Xtreme Data Centre – will support the delivery of the shared services.

Jayasinha says the ICT team is also working on several business improvement initiatives this year.

These include continuous implementation of the Digital by Default strategy of the council, together with data and application consolidation, implementation of EDRS and the City Archives Digitisation Programme.

Jayasinha says the council ICT team will also work on digital work management, customer channel modernisation, public and private clouds, and big data analytics.