Unisys provides cloud-based ERS for Ministry of Education

The New Zealand Ministry of Education has selected Unisys to develop its cloud-based education resourcing management system (ERS).

The ERS will deliver funds more efficiently for early childhood, primary and secondary school education providers.

One of the Ministry’s key responsibilities is to ensure education providers have the resources and support they need, including administering the determination and delivery of funding and other resources.

The Unisys solution will replace the current manual, paper-based system with a modern cloud-based solution that provides an online digital services channel and streamlined automated workflow to enable the efficient delivery of funding for schools and early learning providers. The new system will offer the Ministry greater flexibility to enact policy changes more rapidly, model the effects of proposed changes and provide greater policy insights.

The 10-year digital transformation engagement covers the design, development and support of the system, which will be delivered via an application-platform-as-a-service (APaaS) model. The solution has been developed and will be deployed using the Microsoft Azure App Service and the Oracle Policy Automation Cloud Service, each of which will be delivered from Australia.

Unisys and the Ministry are using Agile and DevOps methodologies to develop the new system. They are working as a joint team that is physically co-located at the Ministry’s offices to drive collaboration and respond quickly to changes.

“We’ve engaged Unisys to develop this new system to modernise and improve resourcing processes within the Ministry and throughout the wider education sector. It’ll also enable future policy changes to be delivered in a more cost-effective and timely manner. We’ll be working with the sector over the coming years as we’re committed to ensuring the system works for all users,” said Katrina Casey, Deputy Secretary for Sector Enablement and Support at the Ministry of Education.

The Ministry’s move to APaaS is in line with the New Zealand Government’s measures to accelerate the adoption of public cloud services by government agencies.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/T. L. Furrer

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