The NSW Department of Finance and Services has made Malcolm Freame its permanent Chief Information Officer, following a recruitment process which closed on 12 June 2012. Freame has been acting in the position since August 2011. He will continue to oversee an annual ICT Budget of $158 million, including $85 million in operational expenditure; $50 million in capital expenditure; and $23 million in staff costs.
Given the new permanency of his role, Freame may well look to leverage bolder IT solutions for the Department from now into the future.
The NSW Department of Trade and Investment, Regional Infrastructure and Services (DTIRIS) has become one of the first Australian agencies to embrace a cloud solution for its key corporate systems. IT News reports that DTIRIS has signed a $14.5 million contract with SAP to host finance, human resources and payroll systems for the Department and its cluster agencies. Less sensitive data will be hosted on servers in Germany, whilst protected payroll information will remain in Australia.
Other recent cloud procurement activity includes a $3 million contract between QA Software and Transport for NSW covering the provision of a software-as-a-service solution for electronic communication and document sharing between the Department and its service providers.
In June the Department of Immigration and Citizenship signed a $605,168 contract with Salesforce for ‘RightNow’ Cloud Computing software licences.
The Department of Health and Ageing has approached the market to outsource the operation of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) system for up to four years. Tender documents reveal the Department has been allocated $161.6 million for the system’s management over the next two years.
Queensland Minister for Science, IT, Innovation and the Arts Ros Bates has attracted controversy over the Government’s appointment of her son to a $100k per annum contract role within the Department of Transport and Main Roads.
Also in Queensland, Translink is trialling an online real-time bus arrival tracking tool, based on GPS data. At present the service is only available in Logan but the agency is looking to roll it out right across south east Queensland.
The Department of Finance and Deregulation has injected another $6.4 million into the redevelopment of the Federal Government’s Central Budget Management System (CBMS). It has published a new $2.3 million contract with systems integrator CSC, and a new $4.2 million contract with software provider SAP. This brings expenditure on the CBMS redevelopment to roughly $66 million to date.
Outgoing Department of Defence CIO Greg Farr has told IT News that he will not take another job in 2012 after promising his wife he would take some time off after his contract with Defence expires in November. He said he would begin looking for new opportunities in both the public and private sectors in 2013.
The NSW Mounted Police Unit is trialling the use of iPads and other mobile devices by its officers, to allow them to access the same operational databases that their colleagues view from computers installed inside patrol cars. NSW Police Force CIO Chris Robson has previously said that he believes mobile devices have a lot to offer frontline Police and that he was trialling their use on a small scale within the agency.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has launched a two-member panel for the provision of ICT recruitment services. Hays Specialist Recruitment and Mosaic Recruitment have been appointed preferred suppliers under standing offer arrangement that will continue through to 30 June 2013.
The Federal Government has decided to take health care to the patient, launching ‘myCompass’, and online mental health assessment and support tool that will form part of the e-Mental Health strategy.
Related Articles:
ICT Strategy: Transport’s cloud champion to join NSW Strategy team
NSW Department of Finance and Services on the look-out for a CIO