Queensland, the second-largest state in Australia, will partner with Microsoft to deliver Office 365 and Yammer to 149,000 government employees as part of its IT strategy that aims to transform digital services, standardise and simplify IT across government and enable new forms of knowledge sharing, collaboration and interconnectivity.

With a population of 4.7 million, approximately half of Queensland’s residents live in the capital city of Brisbane, with the remainder living in other areas of the state. Home to the Great Barrier Reef, tourism is a major economic driver in Queensland, as is the export of coal, natural gas and iron ore. Queensland’s ‘ICT Strategy 2013-2017’ is subsequently designed to improve services for Queenslanders through better use and analysis of government data, and by using modern, cost efficient technology . The government’s implementation of Office 365 for messaging and e-mail, and the enterprise social network Yammer, aims to achieve that by making communication and collaboration seamless.

“It is a significant step forward in our plan to modernise the government ICT environment and move toward the vision of ICT as s service,” said Ian Walker, Minister for Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts at Queensland government. “It sees us move from a government-owned and operated model to one that leverages world-class solutions to deliver flexibility and economies of scale that drive innovation and transformation.”

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