Page 4264 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
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Ms Le Couteur, let me say that there are so many parts of the whole ICT industry, its implementation and its use that you could have a motion that might run to several volumes. The Chief Minister’s amendment deletes subparagraphs (2)(c) and (2)(d) and replaces them with new subparagraphs (2)(a), (2)(b) and (2)(c). The opposition is comfortable with that approach. We would certainly hope that all of this is delivered by 30 March 2011, which is the commitment.
Mr Stanhope: I am advised that it will be, Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH: The Chief Minister reiterates that he is advised that it will be, as he said previously. And that is not an unreasonable time frame in this case.
As to paragraph (3) of the motion, again the government has committed to address all of those issues. I am very pleased to hear the Chief Minister say that computers in the hospital will not go into sleeper mode, particularly out of standard work hours. I am sure all of the patients are very reassured by that. That goes to some of the complexity of delivering ICT inside a government. Government is not a business hours operation; it does run 24/7. I am sure that all the staff and, particularly, the patients at government medical facilities will be pleased that we are not going to implement that part of the quick wins action paper.
For those who are not aware of quick wins, let me say that the Australian Government Information Management Office inside the Department of Finance and Deregulation have put together a reasonable document about things that can be done quite quickly. If you read some of the examples on the web, you will simply find, as I did, that, for instance, they say at one point:
Defence has realised savings of over $5 million per annum in power usage.
This is just from putting in place the shutdown of desktop workstations overnight. There are substantial savings to be had here. We have now got another review of the public service and what it is doing, and we have got a budget that is still in deficit, but of course we should be looking at every occasion to make savings that we can. If it is a quick win for the ACT budget, that would be good; if it is a quick win for the environment at the same time, that is a good thing. But if it is good practice and a good example for all of us, that would be a quick win for the entire community. The opposition will be supporting the amendment as moved, and we will support the motion.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.12): I thank all members for their contribution to this debate. I am very pleased that it has given us the time to actually reflect on the importance of ICT. I am even more pleased to find that, as a result of this, we are now going to have a draft ICT plan by the end of March. As I said, when I asked questions at estimates they said that if we were really lucky we might get it done this financial year but it would almost certainly be next financial year. I am very pleased that we are going to get a little bit more emphasis on good housekeeping, good management and proper management of ICT.
I will speak a bit more about some of the things which I touched on before I ran out of time, unfortunately, in my earlier speech. The Chief Minister talked about
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