HP to help douse Victorian bushfires

HP has scored a three year deal with Victoria's Country Fire Authority to provide IT solutions for the CFA’s warning systems following recommendations by the Royal Commission into the 2009 'Black Saturday' Victorian bushfires.

The CFA will build a system monitoring dashboard based on HP’s business services management (BSM) solution to be implemented by June 20 2012, as part of the association’s two-part strategy to meet increased public expectation for emergency response.

The tech giant beat out two unnamed global rivals during a competitive tender process. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The February 2009 "Black Saturday" bushfires left 173 people dead and hundreds more injured, leading eventually to the resignation of then Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon after her handling of the event was called into question at the time, and subsequently by the Royal Commission.

The Commission’s 18-month inquiry ceased in July last year with 67 recommendations focused on providing reliable information to the public. The CFA based the first of its two-part strategy on the recommendation Victoria revise its bushfire safety policy and adopt the national Prepare. Act. Survive. framework, which saw its enhanced advanced warning systems set live in recent weeks.

CFA's head of technology services, Michael Foreshew, told CRN phase two involved the implementation of a solution that could monitor the applications and IT infrastructure of these services, updating previously un-automated systems.

“We wanted the highest level possible,” he said. “What we’re working towards is a military specification, and that’s effectively what we’ve demanded from HP in terms of service, support and capability. The roadmap of the product was also important, so not just what it could do now, but what it could do going forward. Expectations will continue to increase and we wanted to make sure the product could continue to grow with that.”

The CFA also adopted the Royal Commission recommendation it increase the number of incident control centres around the state. The organisation now has 216 facilities throughout Victoria which have benefited from a 200 per cent increase in IT equipment.

“The plan is to roll out the HP solution across all of the network and devices that are connected, and also to monitor data exchange between agencies,” Foreshew said. “We receive information from the Bureau of Meteorology and Triple 0 in Victoria. We will also be rolling this out to our radio network, a lot of it has radio over IP (RoiP) to it, and we intend to use HP’s solution to monitor the status of radio.”

The second phase is due to be commissioned around April next year ahead of the June deadline and the 2012 fire season.

HP will bypass its channel to provide the BSM solution direct.