Business Plan - Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority

About ESTA
ESTA is the community gateway to Victoria’s emergency services; ESTA holds the legislative responsibility for
handling Triple Zero calls and providing and managing operational communications for the dispatch of police, fire,
ambulance and State Emergency Services in Victoria:
The Victorian government has provided ESTA with a clear mandate to operate as a single point of accountability
for Victoria’s emergency service telecommunications, partnering with Emergency Service organisations to achieve
positive public health and safety outcomes.
ESTA is Victoria’s pre-eminent provider of emergency services telecommunications, with a proven track record of
service delivery performance and extensive demand, supply and resource management capability.
ESTA is a mature service organisation with robust people, processes, stateof- the-art technology, infrastructure,
redundancy arrangements and facilities committed to ESTA’s core business of emergency calltaking and dispatch,
and provision of operational communication services to Emergency Service Organisations (ESOs).
ESTA has a proven capacity to understand and respond to the needs of its customers, the community,
government and other stakeholders through the high-performance delivery and continuous improvement of
emergency and public safety communications.
ESTA operates advanced recruitment, training and development functions that ensure a highly efficient and
effective emergency communications workforce.
ESTA manages complex and scalable managed service contracts for Victoria’s Mobile Data Network (MDN),
Metropolitan Mobile Radio (MMR) and Emergency Alerting System (EAS).
ESTA’s strategic objectives and program of works align to the sector wide strategies established by the
Department of Justice, in collaboration with the ESOs.
ESTA’s 2009/10 Budget
This document is underpinned by ESTA’s 2009/10 Budget.
ESTA is funded via set fees from the Emergency Services Organisations, which have not kept pace with ESTA’s
growing activity and call demand.
As a result, ESTA has realised operating losses in recent years, and this position is set to continue for the
foreseeable future.
ESTA is budgeting for a $4.8m loss for 2009/10. This is consistent with its forward estimate modelling from
previous years. The magnitude of this loss has been reduced by an injection of $3m from the state budget to
assist in meeting the growth in metropolitan demand. This one off revenue boost is an interim measure as ESTA
prepares to provide a business case in support of a changed funding model for the provision of ESTA’s services.
Analysis of the 2009/10 budget shows a significant increase in the size and scale of ESTA’s project work, driven
by State funded initiatives and ESTA service imperatives.
ESTA has identified funding for the 2009/10 Program of Works, however will be preparing a business case for
funding to support the relocation of the Tally Ho SECC.
The loss and the extensive program of work are able to be absorbed within ESTA’s current funding and cash
reserve. It is predicted that this will result in a reduction of $7.5m in ESTA’s cash reserves in 2009/10. This
position cannot be maintained into the future and will be addressed by the business case to review ESTA’s
funding model for future years.
A summarised breakdown of the ESTA 2009/10 Budget is provided in Appendix B.
Introduction
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