WA's Dept of Emergency Services tenders for digital asset management system

The Western Australian Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) has released a tender, hunting for a secure, scalable, and fully managed Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) to manage, distribute and protect its digital assets across a complex, multiuser environment.

The successful provider shall supply, implement and support a fully managed, cloud hosted DAMS for DFES. The system shall be capable of supporting more than 2,000 DFES staff (many of which will be lite users), with the ability to scale to include volunteers, contractors and additional authorised users as required.

The system must provide robust searchability, structured categorisation, user access controls, asset usage tracking, and support for approval, consent and compliance processes. It must also enable external collaboration where appropriate, while upholding strict standards for data sovereignty, information security and accessibility.

DFES has previously piloted a DAMS to test functionality and inform business requirements and insights from this pilot have shaped the specifications for this procurement.

DFES currently maintains multiple online and offline libraries of digital and print assets, including still imagery, video footage, design files, audio recordings, campaign collateral, media releases and a wide range of training and corporate materials.

The large and continually expanding volume of digital media assets includes more than 100,000 images and approximately 70 terabytes of video content, assets that have been accumulated over many years to support public information, operational documentation, training, media engagement and community outreach.

While internal usage of such assets is largely managed by the Strategic and Emergency Communications (SEC) function, assets shared externally with partners and stakeholders require improved security, efficiency and governance.

This procurement does not seek to ingest or migrate the entire 70 terabytes volume; instead, the proposed solution will focus on current and future digital assets, with the potential for selected migration of high-value or frequently used legacy content.

Currently, digital assets are stored across a range of platforms and storage locations, including internal networks and cloud-based systems. These environments lack consistent metadata, version control, approval workflows and structured lifecycle management.

As a result, staff experience inefficiencies locating and verifying assets, which presents operational delays, increases reputational risk, and impacts compliance with recordkeeping, copyright and consent obligations.

At present, DFES’ existing DAMS is centrally managed by the SEC team, which oversees uploading, consent management, campaign asset curation and media management for the entire organisation. Assets are uploaded following review and approval, with staff able to submit material for ingestion but not publish directly.

The current DAMS therefore functions as a curated library of polished, approved assets rather than a repository for all digital files or operational intelligence. Access is not yet broadly available across the organisation and sharing is often managed informally rather than through a fully implemented enterprise solution. This is subject to change pending the appointment of a provider.

The new DAMS shall therefore provide a secure, centralised, and scalable platform capable of supporting DFES’s operational and communication requirements and accommodating growth as access expands across staff, volunteers and partners.

The tender closes on 2 March 2026 at 2:30PM WA time.