The Department of Human Services has signed its long awaited Managed Telecommunications Services contract, selecting Telstra as its key provider under a deal reported by IT News to be worth $407 million over five years*. Telstra is the incumbent managed services provider at Centrelink, and will take on the services previously provided by Optus at Medicare and NEC at the former Department of Human Services.
*Update: a subsequent release from Minister for Human Services Minister Kim Carr has confirmed the value of the contract to be $474 million.
Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich Phillips has announced that an ICT Strategy for the whole of the State Government is currently under development.
“The strategy will focus on delivering better services, reducing waste, encouraging innovation and improving ICT procurement across government,” he said in a statement.
Keep an eye on the Knowledge Base for Intermedium’s predictions on what a Victorian ICT plan will contain.
One of the NSW Government’s most troubled ICT projects, the $17 million redesign of the Key Information Directory System (KiDS) at the Department of Families and Community Services, has been formally terminated, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. With $13.5 million already spent on the project, according to 2012-13 Budget Papers, this means approximately $3.7 million of the original funding will be put towards an alternative system.
The Department of Defence has provided a window of insight into its annual Microsoft licence costs by publishing the value of its 2012-13 enrolment under the whole-of-government volume sourcing agreement. The $24.3 million contract covers the Department’s core desktop licences for the period. The Australian Federal Police’s annual procurement cost has been reported as $1.4 million.
Western Australian venues authority VenuesWest is advertising for a new Chief Information Officer. Applications close 1 July 2012.
The NSW Police Force is looking to recruit a new ICT Contracts Manager. In February this year the NSW Auditor General, Peter Achterstraat, found that monitoring of ICT contracts at the agency was inadequate and threatened its achievement of value for money.
ICT contractors are already beginning to feel the impact of a Queensland savings drive, Fairfax reports. Candle’s Linda Trevor told the website that some of its workers had been offered a choice between a 10 per cent pay cut and the termination of their contract with the Government. The CIO of the Department of Education, Training and Employment has reportedly called upon the AIIA to help its former contract staff find new roles.
Fujitsu has been awarded a $10.4 million contract to provide communications and audio visual support to the Department of Defence’s Joint Operations Command headquarters out to June 2015.
NSW Finance Minister Greg Pearce has told Parliament that a Social Media Reference Group has been formed to guide the development of a social media policy for the State Government.
IT News has reported that water distributor Queensland Urban Utilities is in the final stages of transitioning its ICT environment from a shared services arrangement with the Brisbane City Council, to a wholly outsourced alternative.
The Australian Taxation Office is expected to make an announcement regarding the compatibility of the e-Tax application with Mac operating systems in the coming week.
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