Waka Kotahi renews with Unisys

Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced that New Zealand’s Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (Waka Kotahi) has awarded the company a 10-year extension of its engagement to manage IT infrastructure that supports systems processing approximately 25 million driver’s licences and 60 million motor vehicle transactions per year.

Waka Kotahi is the national agency responsible for delivering a safe, sustainable and resilient land transport system that New Zealanders and businesses can rely on.

Unisys has worked with the agency for nearly 30 years, providing enterprise computing solutions. Those include support for the Registry Suite, a group of systems for vehicle and driver safety programmes through which agents, commercial customers and the public interact with the agency.

Under the extension contract, awarded in the third quarter of 2021, Unisys will provide application services to support the Registry Suite, and transition the supporting infrastructure from Unisys facilities to two All of Government (AoG) co-located facilities providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which Unisys will manage. That move is in line with the New Zealand government’s ICT Common Capabilities approach, which promotes cross-agency use of technology to drive beneficial business outcomes.

Unisys will migrate the Registry Suite, which is based on the Unisys AB Suite® cross-platform development application, from the Unisys facilities to the two co-located AOG IaaS facilities by the middle of 2022. Unisys will also provide ongoing application development, including a Chief Architect and Client Security Officer to support the registry services in a secure way; a service desk; disaster recovery services; and refreshed compute and storage systems via the IaaS model.

Andrew Whelan, vice president client management, Unisys Asia Pacific, said: “The Waka Kotahi registry system supports three of the most frequent interactions of New Zealand citizens to transact with the government – drivers licences, vehicle registrations and road user charges — so it is critical that it meet customer expectations for reliable, easy-to-use services. For many young Kiwis, getting a learner drivers licence is the first touchpoint with a government agency – and the better their initial user experience, the more likely they are to continue using digital channels to obtain other important services throughout their lives.”

Unisys has extensive experience supporting government departments and agencies in New Zealand and around the world. More than 200 government agencies worldwide use Unisys solutions.