Kamco

Kamco

Kamco logo
Type	Private (part of NTT Data Group)
Industry	Electronic ticketing
Founded	2003
Headquarters	Melbourne, Australia
Key people	CEO Greg Purdy
Products	myki
Number of employees	120+ in Victoria, India and the US
Parent	Keane
Website	www.kamco.com.au

Kamco (Keane Australia Micropayment Consortium Pty Ltd) is the company formed in 2003 to tender for a new public transport ticketing system in Victoria, Australia. It was contracted to provide the myki ticketing system in 2005. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the American company Keane Inc., and when the myki contract was awarded it described itself as "an alliance" of Keane Australia, Ascom, ERG, and Giesecke & Devrient Australasia (G&D), with Keane Australia providing "a single point of accountability" for Victoria's Transport Ticketing Authority. ERG was the creator of Metcard. Keane Australia changed its name in October 2013 to NTT Data Victorian Ticketing System Pty Ltd.

In April 2008, Vivian Miners, chief executive of the Transport Ticketing Authority, quit his $545,000-a-year job. After a report into the tendering process by Des Pearson, Victoria's Attorney General Rob Hulls found the tendering for the ticket system had been conducted improperly. Mr Miners owned about $150,000 of shares in Headstrong, which was part of the Kamco consortium at the time it won the tender. Mr Miners' partner and former wife both worked for Headstrong and ERG, the Perth-based transport ticket company part of Keane. An early alleged draft of the report, leaked to the media in 2008, detailed a series of alleged conflicts of interest, probity issues, backdating of reports and favouring of the eventual winning bidder Kamco, a subsidiary of the American IT firm Keane.

The final report observed that "Keane had no corporate experience in developing, implementing and operating a ticketing system" and "barely demonstrated adequate capacity." The project has since gone over both time and budget limits.

The Australian reported on 24 December 2007 that Kamco had requested a cash injection and wanted to change the contract to receive an accelerated payments schedule. To date Kamco has received $150m of the approx $750m spent.