In light of the multiple severe weather events across New South Wales over the past few years, there has been a growing need for councils to provide timely alerts and SMS messages to their communities during natural disasters and wet weather. This may include notifications for the closure of roads, sporting grounds, evacuation alerts, and damage to other critical infrastructure. On request of multiple NSW councils, LGP issued a Request for Information to LGP Approved Contractors under LGP115-2 IT&C Products, Services & Consulting for the provision of a telecommunications SMS service meeting the following specifications:
- Data cleansing and data transfer of council’s existing contact data
- Ongoing ability for council staff to update and add contacts to the program, including but not limited to csv file upload
- Ability to include hyperlinks in SMS messages
- Ability to prevent reply messages
- Auto unsubscribe functionality for subscribers
- Access to ad-hoc troubleshooting and technical support
- Ability for council staff to export reports to review including usage, subscriber numbers, and other basic metrics
- Adherence to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and Privacy and Personal Protection Act 1998 (NSW).
Responses to the Request for Information were received from:
- Telstra Limited – Whispir (est 2001) is a market defining, Australian owned CPaaS (communications platform as a service) organisation, providing a platform that automates interactions with people across all digital communication channels.
- TPG Network Pty Ltd – TPG Messaging Hub is an intuitive and easy to use platform. The Messaging Hub technical infrastructure is cloud native on highly secure Amazon Web Services (AWS) system and deployed across three nationally based availability zones, ensuring scalability when you need it most and ensuring that critical messages are processed at speed.
In addition to use of the platforms in times of emergency response, council can also operate the system to notify their communities of other important information that may impact residents such as power or telecommunication outages.
If your council is seeking a product for these purposes, please reach out to Telstra and TPG Network for more information on how they can service your local government area.
For more information about running Requests for Information under LGP Panels, please contact your Business Development Manager.