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Effective Executive Summaries |
Issue No: 130 (7 April 2008)
The Medium - Your Channel To Government ICT Information
This week we look at the suspension of Medicare's IT outsourcing procurement, and consider what it might mean for the future of IT systems within the Human Services portfolio.
A measure of how seriously the Rudd Government is taking ICT procurement reform, is that Lindsay Tanner devoted five minutes on prime-time current affairs radio this morning to outline his plans for post-budget ICT spending cuts and procurement rationalisation.
Top 5 Contracts
The ATO posted the two largest contracts this week; a $19m deal with NEC and a $5m with Booz Allen Hamilton. Medicare posted two software contracts with Compuware and IBM, valued at $1.7m and $1.6m respectively. A 2004 contract between the DPP and HP financial services for lease of computer equipment valued at $1.5m was also posted this week.
Regards
Fleur Bayley
Editor, The Medium
www.intermedium.com.au
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Suspension of Medicare Outsourcing Fuels Speculation on Portfolio IT Consolidation
Medicare announced recently that it was suspending its planned procurement of IT outsourcing services, and will re-evaluate its ICT procurement strategy. This has led to speculation that the agencies within the Human Services portfolio may move to consolidate at least some of their IT functions. Read more |
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Tanner Singles out ICT for Cuts
It’s unusual, possibly unprecedented for the Finance Minister to take five minutes on a high profile current affairs program to talk about IT. Speaking on the ABC’s AM program this morning, Lindsay Tanner took the opportunity to reiterate that the Government's 'razor gang' is targeting IT spending with proposed cuts worth hundreds of millions of dollar a year.
He said that in the second wave of cuts (after the May budget) he wants to make changes to the way the Government purchases goods and services. He blamed the previous government for allowing procurement to get out of hand, describing it as haphazard and inefficient, pointing out that the government had not mobilized its significant buying power.
During the interview, Tanner focused almost exclusively on the IT sector, where he says he’s expecting to achieve savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
But he does not expect changes to happen overnight. The Minister indicated that change would happen slowly. He said, “We're not going to suddenly go away and scrap a whole lot of existing IT systems and put in a whole lot of others”.
Tanner identified several areas that would be addressed by the razor gang. Highlighting the need to reduce duplication, he mentioned that in Federal agencies there were 164 systems for processing grant applications, 800 individual websites, and 8 different secure networks. Other issues on the Tanner “hit list” are poor ICT project management, and leveraging the Government’s buying power to achieve savings.
During the interview, the Minister reiterated the Government’s plan to adopt a more centralised approach to procurement.
He also mentioned the need to strengthen the core of highly specialized skills within the public sector that could be made available to individual agencies.
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What a Difference a Year Makes!
The headline in The Medium after the 2007 Federal Budget was Budget Bonanza for Hot Federal ICT Market. What a difference a year makes! Read more |
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| New Supercomputer for Climate Monitoring | |
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Bill for School PCs Likely to Blowout to $2billion
Following pressure from the states, it appears that the Federal Government has conceded that it will need to spend additional funds to implement its election promise to provide PCs to all year 9-12 students. Julia Gillard told Network Ten yesterday that the $1 billion allocated to the program could turn into a $2 billion plan. Read more |
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Tender Spot is a list of significant Federal and State ICT tenders currently open. Tender Spot should not be regarded as a substitute for your usual tender notification service/s eg TenderLink because it is only a weekly update.
Highlighted NEW tenders this week
Finance FedLink Secure Communications Service - service provider 14-04-08
CBOM Supply, Installation and Maintenance of a Supercomputer System for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian National University 29-05-08
QLD Emergency Services Supply of Voice Logging Recording Equipment 01-05-08
WA Health IBM pSeries Server Infrastructure (to support the HR Upgrade Project and Clinical Applications) 18-04-08
Click the following 'read more' icon for the complete listing and full description of all tenders, including those due to close in the coming week.
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Movers and Shakers
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FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS PUBLISHED THIS WEEK Each week, Intermedium analyses all ICT contracts as reported by all federal government reporting agencies and as published in AusTender. This contracts data is built into a comprehensive series of reports. Each month, Intermedium updates the ICT procurement plans released by the federal government agencies in its scout IT spreadsheet analysis. More information. For a sample of scout IT click here.
Each week, the Medium Newsletter gives you access to all government reported contracts valued at more than $250,000 as published in AusTender for the previous week. Click to download file.
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