Transforming the ICT Experience for Experience Gold Coast

In 2023, the City of Gold Coast took a bold and visionary step by merging five key organisations (Destination Gold Coast, HOTA, Home of the Arts, Major Events Gold Coast, Study Gold Coast, and Placemakers) to create a single, unified entity: Experience Gold Coast (EGC). 

As a newly formed, membership-based Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO), Experience Gold Coast was established to drive growth across tourism, major events, education, arts and culture, and business. This consolidation created a powerhouse organisation with a clear purpose: to strengthen the Gold Coast’s position as a world-class destination, while providing industry representation and coordinated strategy. 

By merging the five distinct entities, Experience Gold Coast brought its unique capabilities, experience and expertise together under one umbrella. However, this consolidation also introduced technical and operational complexity, as each organisation came with its own systems and legacy ICT platforms.

To fully realise the potential of its new structure, Experience Gold Coast recognised the importance of unifying its disparate ICT systems into a single, cohesive platform. This forward-thinking approach from EGC’s leadership demonstrated a clear understanding of the foundational role technology would play in enabling collaboration, efficiency, and long-term scalability. 

With five distinct ICT environments in play, the project required careful planning, strategic assessment, and expert implementation to ensure minimal disruption and maximum value. 

Experience Gold Coast engaged Veracity to assess the current state of their digital environment and to provide a roadmap for consolidation. The aim: a future-proof ICT Platform that could support EGC’s strategic goals and drive operational efficiency. 

We understood that this was not a simple migration. It was a technically complex, high-stakes transformation with a need for deep systems knowledge, structured planning and a clear understanding of the organisation’s evolving needs.

Veracity commenced with an ICT Health Check, applying our established methodology across the five legacy organisations to gain a comprehensive ‘as-is’ understanding of the ICT landscape for each business unit alongside a vision for the ‘to-be’ future state. The ICT Health Check included a full inventory of network assets, high-level assessment of cybersecurity posture, and a prioritised list of remediation tasks alongside medium and long-term consolidation initiatives. 

With a clear and common understanding of the ICT environment for the five business units, Veracity recommended a phased consolidation program to build a new EGC ICT Platform from the ground up, migrating all five entities into a single Microsoft 365 tenancy. 

This approach would streamline systems and reduce IT support costs by eliminating duplicated infrastructure and introducing a Standard Operating Environment. It would also boost collaboration and productivity, strengthen EGC’s security posture, and provide a scalable foundation for future development and innovation. 

By adopting a phased migration strategy, Veracity ensured business continuity and staff engagement, with potential disruption minimised through detailed planning, user training, and a staged rollout. 

Key activities included: 

• Migrating all user accounts, files, and emails to the new EGC environment. 
• Reconfiguring all 300 computers and applying consistent, best-practice security controls. 
• Deploying a unified Teams phone system across the organisation. 
• Implementing a Standard Operating Environment (SoE). 

The consolidation of five complex ICT platforms into a single, standardised Microsoft 365 environment marked a significant milestone in Experience Gold Coast’s digital transformation. Through Veracity’s structured methodology and collaborative approach, EGC now benefits from a future-ready, secure, and cost-efficient productivity suite, laying the foundation for further work to improve operational efficiency and the customer experience. 

EGC is now supported by a 24/7 Managed Services Agreement with Veracity, ensuring ongoing optimisation, responsive support, and continuous improvement as their strategic needs evolve.