Defence Force sounds market for part two of its enterprise productivity revamp

Goal is to transfer, where appropriate, many supporting services to suppliers.

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The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is planning for a transformational project dubbed enterprise productivity phase 2, or EPP2.

EPP2 is to deliver modern productivity solutions and services to allow personnel to “work anywhere anytime”.

The the project will modernise NZDF's productivity devices, meeting room technology and to implement Microsoft 365 user adoption services.

Approved before the COVID-19 pandemic, NZDF is launching a pre-acquisition market soundings exercise to seek certainty about costs and requirements.

An earlier project, enterprise productivity phase 1, is underway delivering the NZDF’s modern desktop. Inde Technology won an award for its role in that effort earlier this year.

"As well as the provision of new productivity solutions, one of the other key outcomes from the EPP2 project is a change in our operating model around these productivity solutions," a notice posted last week says.

"The goal is to transfer, where appropriate, many of the supporting services that we currently manage ourselves to our selected suppliers."

The EPP2 project is part of the Defence information platform (DIP) programme, a suite of new common digital capabilities that will deliver a "modern, resilient and coherent" information platform to underpin the Defence information environment and support initiatives such as Strategy25.

Across both phases, it will enable a mobile workforce in a secure information environment and deliver enterprise cloud, connectivity; and productivity.

An initial briefing is planned for November 3.

At the end of the market sounding, NZDF said it could choose to go to open market using any of the government's procurement processes, use a secondary procurement processes through the all-of-government Marketplace or panels, or decide to “do nothing”, retain the status quo or explore other options.

NZDF, which is also looking to implement a new ERP system, has around 16,000 full time military, civilian, reservist and contracted employees, working in camps and bases across New Zealand.

Currently a wide range of older productivity devices, mostly thin clients, as well as meeting room technology are in use.