The deal, covering more than 30 departments, with LogicaCMG and the Dicom Group involves implementing the Ascent Capture platform across government as the standard application for information capture. It is one of many shared services initiatives currently being rolled out to standardize processes and record management.

Dicom's Ascent Capture platform collects paper, electronic documents and forms transforming them into retrievable content that reside in the organization's business applications and databases.

LogicaCMG's ability to meet compliance directives was central to the deal, according to a government spokesman. The Ascent platform, which also supports centralized functions such as finance, HR, technology, property and facilities management, will be used to process millions of documents received across each department every month. It will reduce operating expenses with lower data entry costs and faster access to information. The platform will also interact with a number of Shared Service Providers (SSP) where the captured data is used for further processing such as purchase orders and invoice processing.

The shared services model is being employed by a number of state governments across Australia in a bid to achieve cost savings.

Western Australia is a prime example where the government will save A$50 million (US$37 million) a year by standardizing disparate finance and payroll systems on Oracle.