Page 2341 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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This government time and time again talks about transparency and the assurance that they present an open and frank government, yet they have failed to deliver on the most basic of questions. According to this government we should trust them to deliver on budget and we should trust them to deliver on time. However, the reality is that we cannot trust them based on their record to date. We have seen time and time again their failure to deliver—budgets blown out and Canberrans left wondering where it all went wrong because the glossy brochure looked so good and promised them the world.
With the ACT government investing so much of taxpayer dollars into ICT initiatives, it is our responsibility to demand the detail. It is our responsibility to keep the government accountable for getting value for the money invested and to deliver quality service to all Canberrans. It is the government’s responsibility to stop their obfuscation. It is high time for this government to start delivering more than just glossy brochures to this community.
Moving on to Shared Services ICT, the main thing for this organisation this year is a drive to focus on cost reduction whilst increasing productivity across the government. Mr Barr made comment that a lot of work will be coming out of these initiatives and this will, therefore, generate jobs. But upon closer inspection, the drive for increased productivity will inevitably bring with it a reduction in jobs to an IT sector with a significant number of contractors already affected by this Labor government’s ill-informed new payroll tax changes.
The government’s investment of $16.5 million in workplace systems to improve efficiency and boost productivity provides a significant number of projects to increase the automation of services within government. However, yet again, the detail is light on. Shared Services ICT is yet another area where it is inherently difficult to drill down into the key, crucial information. We have a government that spruiks the ideology of transparency, yet this is another aspect of where they fail to deliver.
ITUS produced a report in June on the state of IT, ranking the best and the worst of IT in Australia’s states and territories. The only jurisdiction that was not listed was the ACT. Why was the ACT not listed? Because, according to ITUS, there was not enough information on this government’s options to enable comparisons with other states and territories. It should be noted that even Tasmania was listed. If ITUS is unable to source enough information, what hope does the general public have? Again, where is the transparent, open government that Ms Gallagher and her ministers promise?
Let us move on to the government ICT sustainability project of desktop, computer and printer management. Let me make this very clear: this project is budgeted at a cost of $249,000 with predicted savings of only $378,000 over the three years from 2015 to 2016. Here we have a project created solely to appease the Greens amongst us, or should I say the self-proclaimed third-party insurance for the government as opposed to the way the Greens party was selling itself originally as the third-party insurance for the community. I think we can all safely assume that, like most stories this budget tells, the cost will come in above $249,000 and the savings will come in below $378,000 for an initiative that does not target the physical refresh of efficient assets
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