Public sector technology Built for how government actually buys.
Councils, Commonwealth agencies and cultural institutions buy differently. There is a specification, a response schedule, a pricing schedule and weighted criteria — and somebody scoring all of it. We answer what was asked, in the order it was asked.
Division 03 of five · 100% compliance against 194 published requirements · Major Victorian council finance platform · 2026
Seven ways civic
software goes wrong.
None of these are exotic. They are what we find in the systems councils ask us to look at, and not one of them shows up in a vendor demonstration.
The platform fits the vendor, not the Act
Service-Based Budgeting, the four-year labour budget, the Long-Term Financial Plan and the AAS27 and VGC reporting overlays get bolted onto a product that was never shaped for them, and every budget cycle pays the difference.
Multi-tenant by default
Off-the-shelf civic software shares identity stores and databases with hundreds of other councils. It is efficient for the vendor. It is a question your risk register has to answer every year.
Rent that rises every year
Finance SaaS list prices move 9 to 14 per cent a year. Renew twice without modelling the ten-year exposure and the line item quietly becomes one of the largest in the technology budget.
Engagement that stops at Consult
Most platforms cover three of the five IAP2 levels confidently. Involve, Collaborate and Empower — the ones where residents actually decide something — are left to email, spreadsheets and a room booking.
Nine systems, one integration tax
A separate contract, identity store, dataset and vendor roadmap for property, rates, planning, payroll, records, procurement and time. The integration cost is not a project. It compounds annually.
Accessibility signed off by whoever built it
A supplier self-declaration against WCAG is not an audit. Residents who use a screen reader, or who read the site in a language other than English, find out first — and they find out in public.
No exit written anywhere
Ask what happens on the last day of the contract. If the answer is not a notice period, a format and a named escrow agent, the answer is that leaving will cost more than staying.
The constraints are the brief.
Compliance is not a document written at the end. It is the shape of the thing: where the data lives, who holds the keys, who signs a change off, and what happens on the day the contract ends.
194
requirements assessed
On the finance platform, compliance was assessed against every published requirement and came back at 100 per cent.
5 of 5
IAP2 levels covered
Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate and Empower — including binding-ballot participatory budgeting.
2.2 AA
WCAG conformance level
The accessibility baseline on everything public-facing, audited independently rather than self-declared.
7 yr
immutable audit log
Officer actions on the engagement platform are written once and cannot be edited afterwards.
30 days
notice to take your data
Full export in readable formats. Written into the contract as a term rather than granted later as a goodwill gesture.
2h 41m
recovery drill · 4h RTO
Measured on the reference architecture, rather than promised in a service schedule and never tested.
So the response reads like an answer, not a brochure.
A weighted evaluation is a reading exercise under time pressure. Our responses follow the Response Schedule's own numbering, attach the evidence to the question it answers, and put the ten-year whole-of-life cost next to the year-one figure without being asked.
Where we cannot meet a mandatory requirement we say so on the first call. A response that hides a gap wastes a panel's week and ends the relationship anyway — usually at the worst possible moment.
Major Victorian council · finance
100%
Compliance against 194 requirements
Fourteen weeks from build to user acceptance testing
Metropolitan Victorian council
5 of 5
IAP2 levels covered
$33K five-year saving against the SaaS comparator
Regional Victorian shire · ERP
8 of 9
Incumbent vendors retired
A$5.18M ten-year whole-of-life envelope
Figures are taken from the engagement records for those programmes and are dated 2026. They are what those programmes were scoped and assessed to do, in those councils, at those scopes — not a forecast for yours.
Here is what we can build for you.
Twelve things a council or an agency can commission from this division. Each one has been built or designed already, and the line under it says where — by sector and jurisdiction, which is the condition our public-sector and cultural clients set and one we keep.
Platforms and systems
A unified ERP that retires the systems you pay for twice
Property, rates and revenue, financial management, planning and building, HR and payroll, service requests, asset management, records, procurement and reporting — ten modules on one data model, one identity store and one roadmap.
Designed for a regional Victorian shire council: eight of nine incumbent vendors retired, inside an A$5.18M ten-year whole-of-life envelope against A$8.4M–15.8M alternatives.
A finance and budgeting platform shaped to the Act
Budget workspace, workforce and the four-year labour budget, forecasting, capital works, cash flow and scenario modelling, reporting, workflow and admin — with Service-Based Budgeting, the Long-Term Financial Plan and the AAS27 and VGC overlays built in rather than reported around.
Built for a major Victorian council: 100 per cent compliance against 194 published requirements, fourteen weeks from build to user acceptance testing, and a 34 per cent lower ten-year cost than the SaaS comparator.
An engagement platform that reaches Empower, not just Consult
Newsfeed, surveys and polls, forums, ideas wall, interactive maps, workshops and events, citizen panels and participatory budgeting with binding ballots — plus a fourteen-question-type survey builder with map drop-pin, an officer console and an analytics workspace.
Built for a metropolitan Victorian council: all five IAP2 levels covered, more than 12,000 year-one participants, and a $33K saving over five years against the SaaS incumbent.
Integrations into the systems you are keeping
Two-way sync with Oracle Fusion, TechnologyOne, Civica Authority, Aurion, Workday and Microsoft 365, with the direction of every field and the rule for every conflict written down before anything is built. Retiring a system stays a decision you make.
Two-way Oracle Fusion ERP and Aurion or Workday payroll sync were part of the delivered scope on the council finance platform.
Service requests, works and a field app that works offline
Intake, triage, assignment and dispatch boards for the office, and an offline-capable mobile app with photo capture for the crew. One record, whether the request arrived at the counter, through the website or in the field.
The shire ERP programme sets a year-three target of moving service-request resolution from 9.4 to 3.5 business days. That is a programme target, not a delivered result.
Reporting and BI for the officer, the executive and the chamber
Dashboards built separately for each audience, questions asked in plain language directly of your own data, and variance commentary drafted ahead of a review for an officer to check, edit and sign.
A variance-commentary and natural-language co-pilot was in scope on the council finance platform; embedded copilots for service requests, planning, accounts payable and rates were in scope on the shire ERP.
Records, audit and statutory reporting, built in
PROV-aligned records management, a seven-year immutable audit log with council-controlled key management, and AASB, VGC and AAS27 reporting overlays that follow the annual budget exhibition cycle instead of sitting beside it.
Officer actions on the engagement platform are written once to a seven-year immutable log that cannot be edited afterwards.
Accessibility, identity and language written into scope
WCAG 2.2 AA from the first component and audited independently on the finished deliverable, Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on, multi-language launches, and Auslan translation through accredited providers where the audience needs it.
A six-language launch, Entra ID single sign-on and WCAG 2.2 AA were scope items on the council engagement platform, not additions to it.
Sovereign hosting, continuity and an exit you could actually use
Sole-tenant AWS Sydney with Melbourne disaster recovery, an IRAP-aligned posture with an on-premises companion for the most sensitive datasets, customer-controlled encryption keys, a 99.9 per cent uptime commitment, source-code escrow with an Australian agent and a 30-day data exit.
The four-hour recovery objective was drill-tested at two hours forty-one minutes on the reference architecture.
Civic creative, media and publishing
Civic publishing, wayfinding and place branding
Visitor guides, town-entry signage, wayfinding systems, fleet livery, event and social kits — with print-ready artwork and the editable source files handed over at the end, so the next print run does not need us.
For a regional Victorian shire: a 32-page A5 visitor guide, a four-town entry signage system and a full wayfinding suite, delivered three weeks ahead of deadline on a $24,800 fixed fee.
Public art and civic placemaking
Concepts developed to read at 200 metres, 20 metres and 2 metres, day-curve light modelling, Traditional Owner and Cultural Heritage Plan protocols, a paint specification, and a conservation handover for the decade the work has to survive.
For a capital city public art commission: 36 developed concepts across eight thematic families for a 71m × 9m wall, with a ten-year conservation handover in the price.
Always-on media buying and campaign delivery
Channel planning across search, social, video, programmatic, out-of-home, transit, audio and creator partnerships, with compliant briefs, a five-gate creative review and a First Nations content pathway.
For a national cultural institution: $634K of a $750K annual media budget held in working media, at a 15.5 per cent fee against an 18–22 per cent market range.
If the thing you need is not on this list, it is still worth the first call. Most programmes we run are two or three of these rows joined together, phased so the hardest module gets proved before the rest is committed.
Eleven things happen on a government engagement. Here they are, in order.
This is the part most agency pages keep vague, and it is the part a probity officer has to be able to follow. So it is written down.
Read the specification before we read anything else
Not the covering email, not the briefing session. The published Specification, Response Schedule, Pricing Schedule and weighted criteria. If we cannot meet a mandatory requirement we say so on the first call rather than in the response.
Answer the Response Schedule in its own order
Question by question, in the numbering the panel is scoring against, with the evidence attached to the question it answers. An evaluator should never have to go looking for our answer to a criterion.
Price against the Pricing Schedule
In the format asked for, with the ten-year whole-of-life view alongside the year-one figure. Councils are comparing decades, not quarters, and a year-one number on its own is not comparable to anything.
Design the data path first
Where data lives, who holds the encryption keys, who can read it, what is logged, how long it is kept and what leaves the country. That drawing comes before any screen design, because it is the part that cannot be changed later.
Write the compliance evidence as we build
Each requirement gets its evidence recorded at the moment it is satisfied. Compliance assembled at the end is a document about the build; compliance recorded during it is the build.
Put a second name on every change
Configuration changes, migration steps and published responses are all checked by a second person before they go anywhere. In a council system one careless change can reach a rates run, which is exactly why it gets two names.
Build accessibility in, then have somebody else check it
WCAG 2.2 AA from the first component, then an independent audit on the finished deliverable. Auslan translation through accredited providers where the audience needs it, and a six-language launch where the community is multilingual.
Bring cultural protocols in at concept stage
Traditional Owner, RAP and Cultural Heritage Plan protocols apply from the first sketch on any project that draws on Country, with an Indigenous reference pathway for content review. Not a sign-off gate at the end.
Integrate with what you already run
Two-way integrations to Oracle Fusion, TechnologyOne, Civica Authority, Aurion, Workday, Microsoft 365 and the line-of-business systems already in the building. Retiring a system is a decision you make, not one we force.
Hand over the source, the keys and the runbook
Source-code escrow with an Australian agent, customer-controlled encryption keys, and an operations runbook written for somebody who has never met us. The asset is the council's.
Plan the exit on day one
Thirty days' notice, full export in readable formats, and a documented migration path. We would rather keep the work because it is doing its job than because leaving is expensive.
From the specification to the runbook.
- Week 0
The read
We read the published documents end to end and come back with the mandatory requirements we can meet, the ones we cannot, and the questions we would put through the official clarification channel.
- Weeks 1–2
The response
Response Schedule answered in its own order, pricing in the format asked for, referees confirmed, insurances and policies attached. A second person reads the whole submission before it is lodged.
- Phase 0
A working prototype
On the larger programmes we build a free working prototype of the hardest module before either side commits to the full scope. You get to use the thing rather than read about it.
- Months 1–6
The first modules
Delivered in a phased order agreed with your project control group, each module with its own user acceptance testing window and its own compliance evidence pack.
- Go-live
Escrow, keys and the runbook
Source-code escrow lodged, encryption keys handed to your administrators, audit log forwarded to your security team, and the runbook walked through with the officers who will hold it.
- From there
Operations
Australian-staffed support against the uptime commitment, a fixed reporting rhythm whether the news is good or bad, and a proper conversation each quarter about what the next phase should be.
Nothing goes live without a second name on it, and nothing is handed over without the source, the keys and a runbook written for somebody who has never met us.
The terms, before you ask for them.
These are the same on every public-sector engagement we run, and none of them are priced as an extra. Ask for any of them in writing before you shortlist us.
- Source-code escrow
- Lodged with ECI Australia — from sprint one on platform builds, and at go-live on the phased programmes. The council can bring operations in-house or move providers without a re-implementation.
- Sole-tenant hosting
- AWS Sydney primary with Melbourne disaster recovery. Your data sits in your own tenancy with its own identity store, not pooled with other councils. An on-premises companion is available for the most sensitive datasets.
- Encryption keys
- Customer-controlled KMS. The keys are held by your administrators, and the audit log is forwarded to your security information system rather than kept in ours.
- Data exit
- Full export in fully-readable formats on 30 days' notice, with a documented migration path. It is a clause in the contract, not a favour negotiated at the end of one.
- Records management
- PROV-aligned. Officer actions on the engagement platform are written once to a seven-year immutable audit log that cannot be edited afterwards, which is what makes a decision defensible later.
- Security posture
- IRAP-aligned and ISO 27001 aligned engineering practice, Essential Eight Maturity Level 2, and OAIC notification protocols with named contacts on both sides before anything goes live.
- Continuity
- A 99.9 per cent uptime commitment with service credits, and RTO 4 hours with RPO 15 minutes on finance-class workloads. The recovery drill on the reference architecture completed in 2 hours 41 minutes.
- Accessibility
- WCAG 2.2 AA as the baseline, with an independent audit on every deliverable rather than a supplier self-declaration, and Auslan translation through accredited providers where the audience needs it.
- Statutory alignment
- Local Government Act 2020 Service-Based Budgeting, four-year labour budget, Long-Term Financial Plan and Annual Budget exhibition cycles, with AASB, VGC and AAS27 reporting overlays built in rather than reported around.
- Probity and supply chain
- Modern Slavery Statement, Commonwealth Supplier Code of Conduct, Australian-staffed support, and no offshore sub-processing of client data. Conflicts are declared in writing at response stage.
- Cultural protocols
- Traditional Owner, RAP and Cultural Heritage Plan protocols on any project that draws on Country, with an Indigenous reference pathway for content review built into the creative process.
- Insurance
- A$20 million public liability and A$10 million professional indemnity, with certificates of currency supplied at response stage rather than requested at contract stage.
If a procurement officer needs any of this as a signed statement against your own response schedule, ask. It is the same answer in writing that it is here.
Government work leans hardest on two of the six stages.
Compound is how our team works on any engagement — six stages every change passes through. A public-sector programme puts most of its weight on these two.
Countersign
Nothing reaches a live system with one name on it.
Configuration changes, migration steps and lodged responses are all checked by a second person first. In a council system one careless change can reach a rates run, which is exactly why it gets two names.
Ledger
Every change we make becomes a record you can open.
The audit trail is a deliverable, not a by-product. Officer actions are written once to a seven-year immutable log, so “we made an improvement” is a dated list your auditor can open rather than a sentence in a status report.
Every capability above has already been built.
Four delivered programmes, named by sector and jurisdiction only — that is their preference and ours. The scope, the constraints and the numbers are exactly as delivered.
Local government · Victoria
100%
compliance · 194 published requirements
Custom finance and budgeting platform · fourteen weeks build to UAT · 34 per cent lower ten-year cost than the SaaS comparator
Local government · Victoria
5 of 5
IAP2 participation levels
Sovereign engagement platform · 12,000+ year-one participants · $33K saved over five years · sole-tenant Australian hosting
Local government · Victoria
8 of 9
incumbent vendors retired
Ten-module unified ERP · A$5.18M ten-year whole-of-life · 17,800 hours a year targeted for automation by year three
Federal cultural institution · ACT
$634K
of a $750K budget kept working
Always-on media operation across ten paid channels · 15.5 per cent fee against an 18–22 per cent market range
Before you shortlist anybody
Here is what procurement asks us first.
Procurement, answered.
Cost, timeline, contract, who owns the platform, where the data lives, what happens when a phase is not working, and why our government clients are not named.
The first conversation is free and there is no deck.
Talk to this divisionIt depends entirely on scope, and the honest answer is that we price against your Pricing Schedule rather than a rate card. For context from real programmes: a unified ERP replacing eight of nine incumbent systems was designed inside an A$5.18 million ten-year whole-of-life envelope, and a sovereign engagement platform came in at $470,106 built against $503,262 for the SaaS comparator over five years. We always show the ten-year view next to the year-one figure, because that is what a council is actually comparing.
A single custom platform runs roughly fourteen weeks from build to user acceptance testing. A multi-module ERP consolidation is an eighteen-month phased programme, starting with a Phase 0 working prototype before either side commits to the full scope. Media and creative engagements are shorter — a 32-page visitor guide and a four-town signage system was delivered three weeks ahead of its deadline. We give you the phase dates in the response, not after the award.
The term is whatever the contract says, and the exit is written into it: 30 days' notice, full data export in readable formats, and source-code escrow lodged with an Australian agent so you can bring operations in-house or move to another provider without a re-implementation. We would rather keep the work because it is doing its job than because leaving is expensive.
The council does. That is the point of the model. Source code is held in escrow with ECI Australia from sprint one on platform builds and at go-live on phased programmes, encryption keys are customer-controlled, and the audit log is forwarded to your security team rather than retained in ours. You are not renting strategic infrastructure for the next decade.
You hear it from us first, in the reporting rhythm, in plain English, with what we are changing. Phased delivery exists precisely so that a phase can be re-scoped, re-sequenced or stopped without the whole programme going with it. If the honest answer is that a module is not worth building, we would rather say so than keep invoicing for it.
A fixed cadence to your project control group, good news or bad. Each report covers what was delivered, what moved, what is at risk, and what needs a decision from you — written in the language your councillors use rather than in delivery jargon. Compliance evidence is recorded as each requirement is satisfied, so the evidence pack is never a scramble at the end.
AWS Sydney as primary with Melbourne disaster recovery, in a sole-tenant configuration — your own tenancy, your own identity store, not pooled with other councils. Encryption keys are held by your administrators under customer-controlled KMS. There is no offshore sub-processing of client data, and support is Australian-staffed. An on-premises companion is available for the most sensitive datasets.
Both. Send us the published Specification, Response Schedule and Pricing Schedule and we will tell you within a day whether we are a credible respondent — including when the answer is no. We answer the Response Schedule in its own numbering, attach evidence to the question it answers, and have a second person read the whole submission before it is lodged.
WCAG 2.2 AA is the baseline on everything public-facing, built in from the first component rather than retrofitted, and then audited independently on the finished deliverable. A supplier self-declaration is not an audit. Where the community is multilingual we launch in multiple languages — one engagement platform launched in six — and Auslan translation is available through accredited providers.
IRAP-aligned and ISO 27001 aligned engineering practice, Essential Eight Maturity Level 2, PROV-aligned records management with a seven-year immutable audit log, and OAIC notification protocols with named contacts agreed before go-live. Continuity is covered by a 99.9 per cent uptime commitment with service credits; the recovery drill against a four-hour RTO completed in 2 hours 41 minutes on the reference architecture.
Because that is their preference and ours. Public-sector and cultural clients appear here by sector and jurisdiction only — a major Victorian council, a national cultural institution — and the platform screenshots whose filenames named a client were deleted rather than cropped. The scope, the constraints and the numbers are exactly as delivered. Referees are supplied through the proper channel at response stage.
Yes, and that is often the right answer. We build two-way integrations to Oracle Fusion, TechnologyOne, Civica Authority, Aurion, Workday, Microsoft 365 and the line-of-business systems already in the building. Retiring a system is a decision your council makes on its own timeline — the ERP programme that retired eight of nine incumbents did it in phases over eighteen months, not overnight.
A council engagement usually starts in one division and finishes in three.
Most programmes start in one division and pull in a second. All five divisions sit side by side on one page, if you would rather start there.
- MarketingPerformance media, brand, growth.
- TechnologyCustom enterprise software, sovereign-hosted.
- ResearchTrauma-informed surveys, sovereign data.
- CreativePlace branding, public art, civic publishing.
- Custom platformsHow a platform build actually runs — discovery, data model, sprints with weekly demos, migration and handover.
The research desk publishes on the gaps this division works inside: who owns an AI-drafted message once it goes out, why accessibility belongs in the brief rather than the sign-off, what panel pricing is doing to public-value campaigns, and what happens to procurement when a crisis moves faster than the panel. Two more sit further upstream — who carries the risk when AI drafts government communications and why data that crosses agencies ends up with no owner. The division that produces them sits behind every one.
Send us the specification
Send the published Specification, Response Schedule and Pricing Schedule. We will tell you honestly whether we are a credible respondent before either of us spends a week on it.
We answer every public-sector enquiry within one business day, with a person.