News article written by Corbett Communications. The statements made or opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Engineers Australia
Could mismanagement of nearly $100 million in one of WA Department of Health’s (DoH) biggest IT contracts be an indicator of deeper, systemic problems for contracting and procurement across all levels of government that allows funds to be wasted or misdirected, thus stymying innovation? No matter how innovative an SME may be, the system would need to operate effectively, but does it?
WA’s Education and Health Standing Committee has demanded to know if any public servants or agency bosses will face sanctions over a data centre deal with Fujitsu that blew out by $81.4 million over a period of years.
“The committee was astonished and extremely concerned to learn that DoH employees signed off contract variations well in excess of their authority, at times exceeding their delegation limit by 20,000%,” the committee said in September.
Across the continent, the NSW government has released a new plan for keeping tabs on IT projects so that funding can be stopped before projects go pear-shaped. It includes a new unit in the state’s Department of Finance, Services and Innovation whose four-tier review framework will force agencies to undergo check-ups at intervals for projects valued over $10 million.
The new government chief information and digital officer Damon Rees will give the final nod on project progression in NSW. The framework is said to be tighter than the Commonwealth ICT process that the Australian Department of Finance uses to check on technology projects worth more than $30 million.
A report by the Productivity Commission sent to the federal government in May 2014 said there was an “urgent need” to “comprehensively overhaul processes for assessing and developing public infrastructure projects,” with data problems limiting analysis and benchmarking. “A co-ordinated and coherent data collection process will address this and improve future project selection decisions,” the report said. The government’s 2015 infrastructure statement response focused on roads, bridges and rail and made no mention of ICT infrastructure or data problems.
Author: Desi Corbett