[LINK] IT can lead to big savings: Tanner

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

<brd>
You'd think they would have learned by now.

I still have my copy of the Clients First report, commissioned by the 
Minister for Finance (Kim Beazely), dated 1 March 1995. One of the terms 
of reference was:

    "to identify and assess recent State government and overseas initiatives
    in the provision of computing services by government agencies with
    particular reference to any initiatives to secure economies of scale by
    adopting a "whole of government" approach;"

The whole of government approach was tried by the Liberals and it failed 
miserable. So they moved to a more (not ultra-) decentralised model. Now 
the Labor party want to go back to a failed model of procurement in the 
hope of saving money.

Now Tanner "believes" that too much money is being "wasted" on IT.

He is making the mistake of confusing failed systems with the model of  
procurement. Silly boy. He really should be looking at the processes of 
system definition and acquisition, and not trying to add in the 
complexity of centralised and ultra-standardised IT systems.

IMHO, economists should keep their hands off IT systems, they've done 
enough damage already and they have been trying to save money since well 
before 1995. They would be better off letting departments make their own 
decisions within a framework of technology and data standards, rather 
than diverting management attention away from real problems and towards 
fighting off unnecessary interference.

I haven't had a good rant for ages, I feel so much better now.
</brd>

IT can lead to big savings: Tanner
April 07, 2008
Australian IT
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23497013-15306,00.html

FEDERAL Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner believes hundreds of millions of 
dollars can be saved by improving systems guiding government procurement 
of services, particularly in information technology.

FEDERAL Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner believes hundreds of millions of 
dollars can be saved by improving government IT systems.

But the changes needed and savings to be made will only come from a 
great deal of work, he said.

"The former Liberal government ran an ultra-decentralised model of 
organisation in the commonwealth government so individual agencies were 
pretty much left to their own devices to do whatever they liked," Mr 
Tanner told ABC Radio.

"What that meant, in information technology in particular, $6 billion a 
year was spent in a very haphazard and fragmented way, a lot of 
inefficiency, the government not mobilising its buying power as a buyer 
and, in many cases, agencies not really handling things very well." Mr 
Tanner said the system led to a "litany of disasters".

"People will remember the Customs fiasco of a couple of years ago.

"We're dealing with major problems with the immigration department's IT 
arrangements at the moment.

"We had projects in defence and family and community services four or 
five years ago that had to be abandoned with $60-65 million out the door 
in both cases."

It was impossible to estimate how much the previous Howard government's 
decentralised model cost taxpayers, Mr Tanner said.

"I would certainly hope that in net terms we can get very substantial 
savings and that over time they'll end up being in the hundreds of 
millions a year, not the tens of millions a year.

"Change in this area can only happen slowly.

"We're not going to go away and scrap a whole heap of IT systems and put 
in a whole lot of others. That clearly would be ridiculous and 
incredibly expensive.

"It's only from time to time that you get these things emerging in 
individual departments."

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au