Page 2819 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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Mr Corbell: Mr Assistant Speaker, you have made a ruling. If the opposition are dissatisfied with your ruling, they can move dissent from your ruling and follow the appropriate norms of this place. But it is not open to the opposition to question you further in relation to the matter. You have made it quite clear what your position is, and members of the opposition either need to accept that or they need to move a substantive motion because they disagree with your ruling.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Thank you very much, Mr Corbell. My final response is this: I have taken advice from the Clerk as to the content of the document that the Chief Minister has tabled, and I have made the ruling. Unless somebody wants to jump to their feet and dissent from the ruling, we will now move on to the next speaker on part 1.5, the Department of Territory and Municipal Services, $306,193,000 as the net cost of outputs, $261,101,000 as capital injection, and $685,000 as payments on behalf of the territory, totalling $567,979,000. The question is that the proposed expenditure be agreed to.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.6–Shared Services Centre—$6,182,000 (net cost of outputs) and $7,674,000 (capital injection), totalling $13,856,000.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (9.55): Shared Services is the corporate housekeeping section for the ACT government and, as such, they are absolutely essential. But sometimes people do not really think of them as that exciting. The Shared Services Centre provides information and communication technology, procurement, publishing and records services, as well as transactional human resource and financial services to ACT government departments and agencies.
I will first start with output 1.1, InTACT. In March this year I asked whether InTACT had an IT strategic plan and I was shocked, truly shocked, when the response came back to my QON that it did not in fact have an IT strategy. IT is essential to the ACT government; so it is essential that we have an IT strategic plan. With a good IT strategic plan and current technology directions, as well as being a more efficient government, we could also be a more cost-effective government.
It was also revealed in the estimates hearings that InTACT in fact does not even measure the power use of its computers. Based on other jurisdictions, we would assume that energy usage financially is probably around 10 per cent of the ACT government’s IT costs. An IT strategy, including a program for virtualisation, would almost certainly provide significant power reduction and cost savings.
I also note in this context, talking about IT strategies or otherwise, that the government in estimates and the question on notice earlier revealed that it is not even committed to finalising the IT strategy by the end of the 2010-11 financial year. If the government does not measure its energy use, it is hard to imagine that it is actually managing it effectively. And even if you were not a Green and concerned about
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