The Northern Territory government today signed a whole-of-government contract for enterprise content management and document management services across the entire state.

The government has signed a contract for TRIM Context by Tower software. Currently the government has between 3000 and 4000 concurrent users of TRIM. This contract extends use of the software across the entire public service.

The new contract involves a perpetual licence for TRIM over five years paid over three. The Northern Territory government will pay continual annual maintenance on the licences that may eventually see 10,000 desktops using the software.

Under this agreement, existing TRIM software will be upgraded to TRIM Context 6.

Greg Coleman, director of the Northern Territory archives services within the Department of Corporate and Information Services, said potentially everyone within the government (10,000 desktops) could have access to the software.

Coleman said they already have a number of TRIM licences on desktops (3-4000) and they are working with government agencies to gain more momentum in rolling out the software.

"We need to know what information is accessed and by whom, and also to better manage community requests," Coleman said.

"We have had TRIM in the government for years and when the Information Act came in the necessary standards for appropriate record keeping gave the impetus to roll out the software as there is a real drive for electronic document management and the full license we now purchased gives us the capability to move on that.

"Expanding our deployment gives us a consistent content management platform supporting good government with an emphasis on offering services electronically."

Coleman said the driver for deploying the document management solution initially was the Northern Territory's Information Act of 2002 and the development of the Northern Territory archive services record management standards, July 2003.

The Act states how public sector organizations collect, use and store personal information and how privacy, records and archives management interoperate.