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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 1864 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the Government reassured us on the point at the time; nevertheless, I do want to place on the record the Labor Party's concerns at what this may mean for the provision of information technology services by InTACT in future years. The InTACT Group is a group that has been shifted from pillar to post for a period under this Government. This latest move to CanDeliver was certainly something that did appear to us to have come from quite out of the blue.

The ACT Government has assured us that the outsourcing, if you like, of information technology services will not occur, with InTACT continuing to provide that role, even though it is within the CanDeliver structure. Mr Speaker, we would certainly view very dimly any moves by the Government in future budgets - and I place that on the record now - to require InTACT to compete with outside providers for the provision of such services. We believe that InTACT is an effective and professional organisation and we would not want to see any move by the Government to force InTACT effectively to compete on its own ground. We believe that the services it currently provides are effective and are very much sufficient.

Mr Speaker, I turn to the upgrade of services being provided in this budget for the InTACT Group. A wide range of services and information technology equipment was going to be upgraded through this budget allocation. It seems to me that the timelines on assessing those upgrades and allocations are going to be fairly tight for the Government. I understand that it will be the end of this financial year, which is the middle of next year, before all of those assessments are done in relation to the upgrade and implementation.

That leaves a very tight timeframe if we are to make sure that the ACT is year 2000 compliant. Year 2000 compliance would then have only six months left to run before the dreaded date - 1 January 2000 - came around. For that reason, I hope the Government will meet the commitments it gave to the Estimates Committee to make sure that the assessment of upgrades occurs as quickly as possible.

Mr Speaker, the other thing that I think should be noted is the Government's commitment to establish an office of multimedia - I think it is called - which is a welcome step. We welcome that because there is no doubt that the area of information technology, the processing of information, is the area of the economy of the future. Those societies and those communities that are able to manage information effectively, that are able to digest, interpret, process and distribute information, are going to be those economies that are able to survive and prosper into the next century. In that regard, the Labor Party does welcome the Government's proposition to establish that office.

Mr Speaker, the InTACT Group has a considerable amount of money allocated - $80m. The Labor Party, as I say, will be keeping a close eye on implementation of the year 2000 compliance and the overall upgrade. We will also be keeping a close eye on this to make sure that the Government maintains its commitments to keep InTACT as the pre-eminent service provider for the ACT government service.

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