Dr Peter Lawrence will start his new role as Chief Information Officer at the Department of Defence in the week starting 26 November 2012, a spokesperson has confirmed. Dr Lawrence will replace outgoing CIO Greg Farr, who has filled the role for the past five years.
Following a survey of 49 Government bodies and 218 suppliers, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has decided to close down the ICT Management Consultants Multi Use List and the ICT Multi Use List as of 5 November 2012.
Responses to the survey showed that usage of the procurement arrangements is low and that the establishment of mandatory whole-of-government ICT panels has made them increasingly redundant.
“Only 37% of industry respondents indicated that they had been invited to quote while being a supplier to the MULs and, of those, less than half indicated that they had actually received business as a result,” wrote Mundi Tomlinson on the AGIMO Blog.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has used the launch of National Telework Week to commit the Australian Public Service to a target of 12 per cent of employees regularly teleworking by 2020.
The NSW Department of Finance and Services is looking for a new Executive Director ICT Strategic Delivery to work in its Government Services division. The successful candidate will answer to Deputy Director-General Ann Skewes and will oversee some of the State’s major ICT projects such as the Data Centre Reform Project, the Government Licensing Service, ICT Services Catalogue and the Government Private Cloud.
The NSW State Library will soon embark upon a $22.4 million major digitisation program which will include upgrades to its ICT infrastructure. “A substantial amount of the work undertaken on the projects will be outsourced to local companies in the digital products and services sectors,” said the Library on its website.
Queensland Health Minister Lawrence Springborg has raised the possibility of pulling the plug on the Health Department’s $1.2 billion payroll system, reports the Courier Mail. On the possibility of starting a new system from scratch, Springboard said "we won't rush it and we won't make the same mistakes".
ZD Net reports that the Department of Defence has received second pass approval for its Next Generation Desktop project, following the success of a pilot project conducted earlier this year with the assistance of Thales, Microsoft, and Citrix.
The UK’s biggest departments will be required to overhaul their online services under a three year program aiming to make the Government ‘digital by default’, reports The Guardian. The program aims to save £1.2 billion by taking the emphasis away from more expensive channels for service delivery such as mail and shop-fronts.
A large scale deployment of Google’s Chromebox cloud-based desktop platform is currently underway at NSW Fire and Rescue, reports Delimiter, with 400 of the PC-like devices already in use at the agency.
NSW Minister for Finance and Services, Greg Pearce, has announced plans to outsource many of the functions of the Land and Property Information agency to the private sector, including its ICT functions.
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