Page 2822 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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This could be the reason why we did not buy an integrated document management system in the past. (Second speaking period taken.) As I said, these pressures could be possibly why we have the embarrassment of the W drive security issues, which I will not rehash at length because they already have been significantly rehashed.
But on a more positive note, it is good to see that InTACT is reducing storage costs and introducing different layers of storage and different tiers of storage. This should lead to significant agency savings, and I note that ACTPLA seemed to think that it was going to save it several hundred thousand dollars a year.
I know that mobile phone cost is an area that is of concern to some members and it is not clear how InTACT is actually managing its pricing.
I will now move on to Procurement Solutions. This is an area where it seems, much to my surprise, the government is not in fact pushing its positive innovations. To my knowledge, there have been two. On 10 June, Ms Bresnan and I attended the launch of Woden’s Cafe Ink. Cafe Ink is a wonderful new initiative of Woden Community Services. It is a great cafe in the Woden Valley which provides employment for people who are struggling to enter the workforce. Cafe Ink is an example of how social inclusion can be achieved in the workplace. I think it is going to be a great success. I have eaten its food twice and it has been very nice each time. At that launch the Chief Minister announced:
The ACT government is changing its tender process to favour organisations that employ people with disabilities and the long-term unemployed.
He said:
This ACT Government initiative aims to break down some of the barriers faced by people with disabilities wanting to enter the workforce by making it easier for organisations that employ people with disabilities to win Government contracts. These changes will mean that ACT Government departments and agencies must consider the social benefits of awarding contracts to such organisations alongside some of the more competitive requirements.
This is an outcome that the Greens have been pushing for for years. The Greens see the government’s announcement as only the first step. The Greens would now like to see the government commit to a set percentage of contracts being awarded to social ventures. We would like to see Housing ACT and Spotless start a venture to employ public housing tenants in undertaking cleaning and maintenance of Housing ACT properties. This has been done successfully in New South Wales and Victoria, so we believe it could be done in the ACT.
We can no longer accept the argument the ACT is too small, so it could not really take on a social barrier. The Greens see the ACT’s comparative small size as a plus. It is a way that we can innovate more easily. It is not a barrier. We are pleased that procurement is looking at social tendering but we are also concerned that procurement does not appear to be taking environmental issues into account.
Another small area of improvement in procurement is in employing smaller local architectural firms. Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the ACT architecture
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