[LINK] Canberra mulls IT strike force

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

<brd>
This strike force could well be a good idea...

...if they can find "experienced IT campaigners" to work in the strike 
force.

My experience is that the experienced staff of the type they are after 
are buried deep in projects solving interesting and challenging 
technical problems. I doubt that they would be in a policy unit like 
AGIMO or working as a manager in an agency or creating business cases.

Good luck to them anyway if they try it.
</brd>

Canberra mulls IT strike force
Mahesh Sharma
May 27, 2008
The Australian
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23762858-15306,00.html

The federal Government is considering using a strike force to drive 
greater efficiencies in its technology operations.

The group could operate as part of the Australian Government Information 
Management Office.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has asked that Peter Gershon look at 
beefing up AGIMO's responsibilities as part of his review of the 
government's $6 billion annual IT spending.

So far, the office has largely focused on developing web-based 
initiatives for the government, such as its Wiki-based platform, GovDex 
and the $42 million central online portal, australia. gov.au. "The 
difficulty we've got at the moment is that AGIMO's role is very limited 
because you've got all the decision-making responsibility in individual 
agencies," Mr Tanner said.

"I wouldn't pre-empt the outcomes of the Gershon Review, but a specific 
thing we've asked him to report on is options for a more centrally 
co-ordinated set of arrangements, and that by definition would involve 
AGIMO or an equivalent playing a bigger role in technology projects."

This includes the idea of assembling an IT strike force of experienced 
IT campaigners to direct projects across the government's 800-plus agencies.

"One of the key reasons you end up with costs blowouts is because the 
project has been inadequately scoped or the implementation is not as 
efficient as it could be," Mr Tanner said.

"There are all kinds of things that can occur, such as policy decisions 
halfway through projects, which ultimately trigger big cost blowouts and 
are not the fault of the suppliers. To what extent does the government 
need some kind of central pool of expertise to assist with that process?"

The consultancy group would be positioned to advise the government on 
how it could approach the issue of overhauling the hundreds of disparate 
legacy system that drive its operations.

Mr Tanner repeatedly pointed to cost blowouts and delays in the 
Department of Immigration and Citizenship's Systems for People 
technology transformation project as an example of what the government 
was looking to avoid in future projects.

It was necessary to assess the needs of individual agencies to see where 
a legacy systems overhaul was needed most, and to avoid failures such as 
those that occurred in Immigration, he said.

"The Department of Defence's ICT needs are very different from those of 
Centrelink, which in turn will be very different from those of the 
quarantine service. There'll be things like back-office, human resources 
and in-house finance - things that will be relatively similar across 
most of government.

"The former government made the mistake of being too decentralised and 
literally telling several hundred agencies to just go do what you like, 
in effect. I don't want to make the opposite mistake of imposing a 
straitjacket on everybody, saying here's the single system, and you've 
got to use it whether you like it or not."

AGIMO is showing renewed vigour under the guidance of Mr Tanner and is 
facilitating talks with a number of agencies about creating a standard, 
cross-agency repository to hold clients' identity details.

The talks, first flagged earlier this month, have not yet entered the 
formal stages but are aimed at developing an opt-in process so citizens' 
information can be shared across agencies if it has been verified once.

-- 

 
Regards
brd

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