The state government-owned SEWL services about 1.3 million people in Victoria and has some 700 desktops across two sites.

SEWL identified two "pain points" in its information management processes -- the capital approvals process and a corporate key performance indicator -- to participate in the proof of concept.

The capital approvals process is largely manual whereby printed documents are sent around the organization, exposing the information to loss and there is no mechanism for tracking the status of an approval.

SEWL's CIO, Marcus Darbyshire, told Computerworld the previous paper-based process had time issues and the use of Office SharePoint Server 2007 streamlined the whole process of capital investment.

"Water is on the tip of everyone's tongues so we need to make decisions quickly," Darbyshire said, adding the use of a collaboration server allows real-time editing of a single document.