Fix the foundations. Then the technology works.
Arrochar Consulting is a senior team for IT strategy, enterprise architecture, data, sourcing and AI. The people who advise you have done the work inside government and regulated industry, and have built and run the systems they recommend.
Independent of every vendor. Plain advice, fixed scope, and a plan your own staff can carry on with after we leave. Contracted as Arrochar Consulting Pty Ltd, directly or through government panels.
What Arrochar Consulting does
General IT consulting through to specialist AI and IoT work. Every service below is work we have delivered, and where there is a published case study it is linked.
IT strategy and architecture
General IT consulting for organisations that need a clear plan, a sound architecture and the right products chosen for the right reasons.
ICT strategy and digital roadmaps
Prioritised roadmaps executives can fund and delivery teams can execute.
Not a strategy deck. We interview and survey the business, align to corporate strategy, and document the current operating model, capabilities, information and applications. The output is a sequenced, costed set of work packages, from a divisional roadmap to a five-year digital strategy.
- ICT and digital strategy
- Current-state and target-state views
- Costed, phased work packages
- An investment roadmap the executive can fund
Enterprise architecture
General enterprise architecture work, from a single review to a whole-of-organisation model.
Business capability models, application and information models, target-state architecture and architecture reviews for a function such as finance, procurement or HR. We also set up the architecture practice itself: principles, governance and the repository your own architects keep current.
- Business capability and operating models
- Application, information and technology models
- Architecture reviews and gap analysis
- Architecture principles and governance
Legacy systems and application portfolio strategy
Decide what to keep, fix, replace or retire, on evidence.
We assess an application portfolio against business fit, technical health, cost and risk, classify each system using recognised models such as Gartner TIME and PACE, and set out the transition options. For the NSW Government we turned this into a standard framework any agency can apply.
- Application portfolio assessment
- Tolerate, invest, migrate, eliminate classification
- Transition options and sequencing
- A repeatable assessment method
Sourcing products and solutions
Independent help to specify, find and choose the right product or supplier.
We are vendor and technology agnostic. We gather the requirements, write the specification, scan the market, and build the evaluation and due diligence framework, so you go to market with a clear brief and choose with confidence. We can stay on through the tender and vendor selection.
- Business and technical requirements
- Vendor-agnostic solution specifications
- Market scans and vendor roadmaps
- Tender, evaluation and due diligence support
Data
Most technology programmes succeed or fail on the data underneath them. This is where we have done the most work.
Data strategy, governance and analytics
A data strategy people can run, and the dashboards, reporting and APIs that prove it.
We simplify fragmented systems into a governed data foundation, aligned to DAMA standards, and deliver the working outputs: automated dashboards, reporting and APIs. That includes multi-agency work, where data from every level of government has to be mapped, assessed and brought together, as in emergency management and disaster recovery.
- Data strategy and governance model
- Data platform architecture
- Dashboards, automated reporting and APIs
- Multi-agency data source mapping
Data cleansing and data readiness
Clean, consistent, catalogued data that systems and AI can rely on.
We profile, cleanse, de-duplicate and standardise data, then integrate and catalogue it to DAMA-aligned standards with clear ownership. Typical triggers are a system migration, a new reporting obligation or an AI programme. For AI we also tag each dataset for bias risk, sensitivity and the explainability a decision will need.
- Data profiling and quality assessment
- Cleansing, de-duplication and standardisation
- Glossary, catalogue and ownership model
- Migration and integration readiness
AI
Practical AI strategy, governance and architecture from people who have designed and governed AI systems in production, plus four fixed-scope services for what councils, agencies and boards are being asked for now: a policy, a register, an assessment and the conditions to buy AI on.
AI strategy, governance and model risk
Find where AI adds value, then design the operating model and governance to run it.
We map AI opportunities across a business, design AI-enabled operating models and set up the first pilots. Alongside that we design the governance: roles, decision accountability, model risk management, monitoring for drift and the controls that let your own people run AI day to day, mapped to ISO/IEC 42001, the NIST AI RMF, the EU AI Act and the government frameworks that apply to you. The four services that follow take the pieces governments are being asked for now, the policy, the register, the assessment and the procurement conditions, as fixed-scope work.
- AI opportunities map and operating model
- AI governance framework and model risk controls
- Roles, decision accountability and monitoring
- Pilot design and set-up
AI policy and leadership briefing
An AI policy your organisation can adopt, and the briefing that gets councillors, boards and executives behind it.
Councils and agencies are being asked for a written position on AI: which tools staff may use, what may not go into them, where a person must review the output, how the public is told, and who is accountable. We draft the policy in your own governance vocabulary, align it to the NSW AI Assessment Framework, Australia's Voluntary AI Safety Standard and ISO/IEC 42001, and prepare it for exhibition and adoption. Before it goes to the chamber or the board we run the briefing: what AI is already in the building, what the risks are in plain terms, and what the policy will change.
- Councillor, board or executive briefing
- AI use policy and staff guidance
- Exhibition pack and community questions answered
- Adoption, review and reporting cycle
AI inventory and use-case register
Find the AI already in use, classify each use by risk, and publish the register your policy promises.
Most organisations use more AI than they have recorded: the assistant in the office suite, the features switched on inside line-of-business systems, the tools staff found for themselves and the models inside a supplier's service. We run the discovery across licences, systems, suppliers and staff, record each use with its purpose, data, owner and oversight, and classify it by risk against the framework that applies to you. The result is one register the executive, the audit committee and the public can read, and that a NSW agency can carry straight onto the AI Assessment Framework platform.
- AI discovery across systems, suppliers and staff
- Register with owner, purpose, data and oversight for each use
- Risk classification for each use case
- A public transparency version of the register
AI risk assessment, attestation and audit readiness
Assess each AI use against the framework that applies, keep the evidence, and be ready when the auditor or the attestation asks.
An AI use with effect on a resident, a customer or a decision has to be assessed, not just listed: purpose, data, accuracy, human oversight, privacy, fairness, contestability and what happens when it is wrong. We run those assessments against the NSW AI Assessment Framework, Australia's Voluntary AI Safety Standard, ISO/IEC 42001 or the NIST AI RMF, write the evidence file an auditor expects, and set up the monitoring and reporting that keep it current. For NSW agencies we set up the Accountable Official's role, the annual attestation and the referral path for high-risk uses. For councils we work to the Auditor-General's expectations of inventory, policy, strategy and monitoring. Where a pilot is about to scale, we prepare the gate the finance, technology and legal leads sign together before it does: the full running cost, the value it is expected to return, where its data came from and the controls that hold it, on one page, so no pilot goes to production on its demonstration alone.
- Risk assessment for each AI use case
- Pilot-to-production gate: cost, value, data provenance and controls, signed off together
- Evidence file and remediation plan
- Accountable Official role, attestation calendar and reporting
- Audit-readiness review against the applicable framework
Buying AI: specification, evaluation and contract conditions
Go to market for AI, or for a system with AI inside it, with the requirements, tests and clauses that keep it accountable.
Whether you are buying an AI tool for development assessment, a customer service assistant or a corporate system whose next release switches AI on, the questions are the same: what the AI does, on whose data, who reviews its output, how its accuracy is tested, which models and sub-processors sit behind the product, what the supplier must tell you when any of them change, what it will indemnify about the provenance of its training data and its outputs, and what records you keep. Many suppliers do not volunteer the sub-processors behind an AI feature, and a contract that does not ask will not find out. We write those requirements and evaluation criteria, run the supplier due diligence, and set the contract conditions, drawing on the AI special conditions now available through local government procurement bodies and the state ICT contracting frameworks. We stay vendor neutral throughout.
- AI requirements and evaluation framework
- Supplier AI due diligence questionnaire
- Contract conditions for AI and AI-assisted deliverables, including sub-processor and model disclosure, change notice and provenance indemnity
- Assessment of AI features in systems you already own
AI platform architecture
Reference architectures and guardrails to deploy AI safely and repeatedly.
Rather than one large AI application that is hard to change, we design a platform of governed AI microservices. Standard patterns and automated guardrails for security, data entitlements, cost control and performance monitoring let your teams ship AI again and again without reopening the governance question each time.
- AI platform reference architecture
- Guardrails for security, access, cost and performance
- Model selection and routing patterns
- Deployment patterns your teams can reuse
Smart places and IoT
Strategy through to working sensor networks, for councils, airports and national parks.
Smart city and smart place strategy
Strategies and digital enablement roadmaps for councils, airports and regions.
We have written smart city strategies for councils across NSW and South Australia and a smart airport blueprint for Newcastle Airport. Each sets out the strategic framework, the data foundations and a technology investment roadmap covering IoT, AI, customer experience, operations and regional data sharing.
- Smart city or smart place strategy
- Data foundations and regional data platform design
- Technology investment roadmap
- Community and stakeholder engagement
IoT, sensor networks and visitor analytics
Sensor networks designed, deployed and turned into decisions.
We design and deploy IoT sensor networks, including LoRaWAN and satellite backhaul for remote sites, and build the analytics on top. Our visitor analytics work for the Snowy Monaro region was spun out as AVARI, which won the IoT Global Award. We also run honest pilots: when a technology is not yet ready, we say so before you invest in it.
- IoT network design and deployment
- LoRaWAN and satellite connectivity
- People and vehicle counting, dashboards
- Technology pilots and evaluations
Delivery and leadership
Senior people in your teams, and the executive alignment that keeps a programme funded.
Delivery enablement and ExpertBench
Senior people embedded in your teams to get the work into production.
We do not advise and leave. We place enterprise and solution architects, data and AI business analysts, technical programme managers and testing and assurance specialists inside your delivery teams. Arrochar ExpertBench extends that reach: a vetted bench of senior technology professionals, each with at least ten years of experience in the Australian market.
- Enterprise and solution architecture
- Business and data analysis
- Technical programme and delivery management
- Testing, validation and assurance
Executive and business engagement
Briefings, workshops and business cases that get leadership aligned.
The hardest part of a technology programme is often the room, not the technology. We run executive briefings and cross-organisation staff workshops, build the business case, and write the narrative that lets a board, an executive team and an audit and risk committee agree on what to fund and why.
- Executive and board briefings
- Staff engagement and prioritisation workshops
- Business cases and funding submissions
- AI and data literacy for leaders and staff
How we work
Practitioners, not theorists
The people advising you have built and run these systems. Recommendations come with working patterns, not only principles.
Independent of vendors
We are vendor and technology agnostic. We recommend what fits the problem and the budget, and you remain free to choose something else.
We leave capability behind
Every framework is sized to the team that has to operate it, and each piece of work is designed so your own people can carry it on.
Where we work
Complex, data-rich and regulated environments, with government at every tier as the deepest part of our experience.
Pre-approved for government
Arrochar Consulting Pty Ltd is the approved supplier on BuyICT, the NSW SCM0020 and SCM0005 schemes, the Queensland ICT Services Panel, Local Government Procurement and Local Buy, so Australian government buyers can procure consulting without going to open tender.
See every panel and who can use it →Start with a conversation
Tell us what you are trying to get done. We will map the situation and recommend a clear starting point.
Talk to Arrochar Consulting