The ICT section provides a wide range of services to Catholic schools and the Catholic Education Offices of Adelaide and Port Pirie. In addition, ICT manages large technology based strategic initiatives to support transformational change.
Significant initiatives ICT are involved in include:
ICT collaborates with schools on all ICT initiatives through the ICT Advisory Committee; a sub-committee of the Finance and Infrastructure Standing Committee (FISC).
The purpose of the ICT Advisory Committee is to:
CEO ICT provides services across the following key areas:
The ICT Policy Framework is used to articulate the ICT vision, strategy and principles for the management and use of information and information technology resources to support the SACCS commitments.
Further, the ICT Policy Framework helps ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, promotes operational efficiency and management of risks by specifying requirements and standards for the consistent management of information technology resources across CESA.
ICT continues to negotiate and manage sector wide contracts to ensure schools and the CEO receive scale benefits and efficiencies.
Where possible, ICT works to provide subscription-based offerings so schools may participate based on their need.
Working in conjunction with Catholic Network Australia (CNA), the national master service agreement for the provision of internet services has completed the first year of operation. The CNA also evaluated vendor options used to procurement of Microsoft licenses resulting in further savings for CESA.
ICT established the inaugural CNA Cyber forum, to share experiences, knowledge, and lessons with all Catholic Education schools across Australia.
The School Technology Services team provides an extensive range of professional services to over 86 schools. The team operates as a not-for-profit service to reduce the total cost of ownership and support for schools. With reach back into the broader ICT team, and major suppliers throughout Australia and internationally, schools can leverage specialist skills not otherwise available. The team also provides support and advice on school ICT strategies and annual plans.
During 2022, the team continued to provide
ICT is responsible for the delivery and support of internet services, content filtering and security for 102 school sites and the Catholic Education offices.
During 2022, all internet services, content filtering and school edge security services were replaced with a new Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD WAN). The transition to the SD WAN has enabled schools to have direct filtered access to the internet while maintaining secure access to centralised services.
All Catholic Schools using the SD WAN now have a minimum capacity 200Mb and up to 1500 Mb. The service has capacity to increase speeds for schools as required at no extra cost.
The applications development team are responsible for maintaining the bespoke solutions required by CESA.
Key activities through 2022 included:
The ICT Service Centre provides front line support for schools and the CEO. Key services provided by the Service Centre team include:
ICT Production Management is responsible for the administration of all centralised ICT services. The team ensures technical standards and production criteria are met so that all ICT services meet usability and reliability requirements.
Day-to-day operations include the management and monitoring of our two data centres, planning and coordinating support and maintenance activities to ensure legislative and vendor compliance, improve supportability and improve security.
The ICT Production Management team are responsible for completing the annual Disaster Recovery (DR) testing. The DR testing is scheduled to be undertaken in the first full week of January to minimise disruption and involves a simulated disaster in one Data Centre, transitioning all production services to the second data centre, undertaking verification testing, re-establishing the connectivity of the two data centres and then returning services to normal operation.
78 schools have been migrated from Bookmark to AccessIT.
The Made in the Image of God (MITIOG) Human Sexuality Curriculum for South Australian Catholic schools was made available through a dedicated website. This website was designed for teachers and leaders in schools and provides access to the full MITIOG curriculum content.
The new CESA Intranet was made available to all employees who work in Catholic Schools and Catholic Education SA. It is a central place for users to access information, documents, resources, and news needed for their work. It is accessible on any web enabled device.
The CESA Intranet features include:
This project continues to organise and automate data gathering and reporting for schools providing significant efficiency improvements
Successfully migration of Thomas More College off of Synergetic to Civica suite of products.
Commenced the migration of ceSIS schools to Civica Student Administration. The automated approach will allow migrating up to 10 schools per term.
This project continues to evaluate a suitable Human Capital Management system for all staff employed within CESA.
The project is in the process of building the replacement IDM using OKTA as the technical platform.
The project completed the refresh to schools' wireless (Wi-Fi) infrastructure by implementing Aruba Wireless solution for all diocesan schools. Over 3,300 access points were installed through the process.
The project completed the modernisation of the CESA network which has reduced the cost of access, increased per student bandwidth and improved school resilience.
