Riverina Water County Council to switch to Civica’s Managed Services solution.
Riverina Water County Council in New South Wales has opted to switch its management and internet communications software to Civica’s Managed Services solution, to eliminate concerns about lack of in-house IT expertise and disaster recovery.
The Utility is responsible for the construction, operation and maintenance of works for water supply in the Shires of Greater Hume, Lockhart and Urana and the City of Wagga Wagga.
Riverina Water is already running Civica’s Authority local government enterprise software suite, including water billing. The cutover will take place in early August, when Authority will begin running on Civica’s servers in Sydney.
“We chose a managed service solution because Riverina Water is a relatively small organisation and we have no full time IT staff. Our systems are looked after by an engineer and we spent too much time trying to keep up with backups and updates. It was all too difficult,” said Graeme Geaghan, Finance Administration Manager.
“Also, managing disaster recovery was a real concern since we had no plan for emergencies. Handing over these problems to Civica will take a huge amount of pressure off us.”
Graeme says the new arrangement will make it easier for Riverina Water to start running new Authority applications within the next 12 months, including Assets and Infrastructure Management (AIM) and Work Orders.
He adds that Civica’s long record of responsive service and support gave Riverina Water the confidence to switch to the company’s managed services solution. Civica partnered with the organisation to develop the Authority Water Billing module, and fine-tuned this to suit Riverina’s needs.
“Civica’s people are always very good. If ever we make a mistake, they are always quick to fix things up for us,” said Graeme.
Riverina Water County District covers an area of about 15,400 sq km with a population of 67,000 people. More than 60,000 people are provided with water through 28,000 service connections.
Water is supplied from Wagga Wagga. Most comes from the Murrumbidgee River, with supplementary sources from a large borefield under Wagga and two independent bore sources in rural areas.