Vic government’s ICT strategy claims up to $400 million in savings

The Victorian Coalition government has unveiled its whole of government ICT strategy, which it claims will result in savings of up to $400 million by the end of 2014.

Technology minister Gordon Rich-Phillips said at the release of the strategy yesterday that the Coalition aims to salvage the previous Labor government’s ICT blowouts.

“The previous Labor government adopted a piecemeal approach to ICT that saw at least $1.44 billion of taxpayers’ money wasted in cost blowouts on projects like HealthSMART, myki and the LEAP database,” Rich-Phillips said.

“We also recognise government expenditure on ICT needs to be managed better by establishing a balance of innovation and risk and a focus on higher productivity and better services.”

According to the strategy document, the Victorian Coalition plans to save money by having Victorian government departments reuse and share existing ICT systems instead of investing in new ones, and to free up resources for innovation.

The Victorian Coalition said this will allow for a 15 per cent cost reduction in the state’s annual $1.5 billion technology spend by the end of next year.

To enable more sharing across systems, an interoperability framework for the Victorian government’s ICT architecture will be developed for departments with common service needs. The Victorian Coalition said it will seek informed consent from the departments that may need to share personal data.

With an interoperability framework, the government said it will avoid having single supplier lock-ins for technology procurements, which would open the door to more competition and shorter-term contracts.

The eServices Panel will also be changed to include more local small to medium businesses and public private partnerships for major projects.

The Victorian Labor Party was contacted by Computerworld Australia and has not provided a response.

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