The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has been undertaking what it has called a comprehensive rebuild of its IT systems and related business processes and applications, which are focused on addressing security and resilience risks.
Known as ROBUST, the program is aimed at securing and strengthening all elements of the Bureau's operating environment to provide "continuous availability of critical services that mitigate the risks arising from the fragility of the existing ICT environment".
BoM has been tight-lipped on its project, but tender documents[1] released in August showed that within ROBUST, there are five delivery streams that will deliver core technology platforms to the Bureau, including infrastructure, data and integration, observation network, channels, and applications.
The Bureau is aiming to improve its asset information collection and use, turning to IBM for help with supporting the entire gamut of asset management under ROBUST, forming part of the observations network delivery stream.
See also: Australian government is currently juggling 62 high-cost IT projects[2]
A new AU$4.7 million deal has been inked with IBM to implement an enterprise asset management platform, hosted on the IBM Cloud. The IBM Maximo system is expected to support the delivery of services and efficiently manage the Bureau's assets.
According to IBM AI applications executive David Small, asset management in the BoM context covers everything the Bureau needs to record to support providing weather information to businesses and consumers.
"All the things that they need to record -- people go out in the field, routine inspections -- how they did that previously was a combination of systems and the idea behind the ROBUST program and having a centralised asset management system was to move into a system that can support the lifecycle of managing all those physical assets that are needed to support the business," Small