ANZ Bank’s new head of retail banking is the former head of Google Australia/New Zealand Maile Carnegie. Ms Carnegie replaces Mark Hands who is leaving the bnnk after more than 33 years. ANZ announced on last week that it would merge its digital and retail operations, which will be overseen by Mr Hands over the…
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Services Australia has handed Ernst & Young a $14.5 million contract to help deliver its GovERP project, making the Big Four consultancy a strategic delivery partner for the project touted as the “digital backbone” of the Australian Public Service. Overdue tender documents published Friday reveal the arrangement has been in place since November last year…
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American tech giant IBM will be paid more than $26 million over the next two years to provide hardware and software to improve Services Australia’s capacity to deal with increasing demand, including due to COVID-19. Services Australia awarded IBM a $26 million contract late last year to supply “additional IBM mainframe and midrange hardware and…
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US consulting giant Deloitte will be paid a further $4.5 million in the first half of this year by the federal government for continued work on the new myGov platform, which is still yet to emerge from beta testing. The federal government has now paid Deloitte more than $45 million since the start of 2020…
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The federal government has no plans to introduce a vulnerability disclosure program despite a number of security researchers calling for a better way of notifying about significant flaws such as those found in the digital vaccine certificate. In response to questions on notice from Senate Estimates hearings last year, Services Australia brushed aside concerns about…
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The national audit office has turned its attention to the prevalence of contractors at Services Australia, following concerns the agency has a “serious problem” with tech capability due to its over-reliance on outsourced work. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has launched an inquiry into the effectiveness of Services Australia’s management of contractors, to be…
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The federal government will pay US multinational Adobe more than $30 million to provide “core technology components” to underpin the new version of myGov, with total contracts for the project now worth nearly $80 million. Services Australia entered into a contract with Adobe last month to provide “core customer experience technology to enable a Digital…
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Deloitte has been handed another $3 million for its work on the redevelopment of myGov, with the federal government now having paid the multinational consulting giant more than $40 million as part of the program. The May budget revealed more than $200 million would be allocated over the next two years for the development of…
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The Victorian government has poached Services Australia’s chief information officer to run its new centralised IT services entity Digital Victoria, while consulting giant Deloitte has hoovered up more high ranking ex-public servants.
On Friday Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced that the inaugural Digital Victoria chief executive will be Michael McNamara.
Mr McNamara is currently Services Australia group chief information officer, having joined the federal agency in 2019 when it was known as the Department of Human Services.
The Irish-born Mr McNamara had an extensive private sector career prior to joining the Australian Public Service, including senior tech roles at Hewlett Packard, the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Colonial First State, and several energy companies.
From September he will lead Digital Victoria, a Department of Premier and Cabinet group established in last year’s state budget with $196 million to centralise and simplify the government’s IT services.
The state government has been on the hunt for someone to lead Digital Victoria since May, offering a salary up to $480,000.
“Digital Victoria will deliver the faster and simpler government services that Victorians deserve,” said Victoria’s Minister for Government Services Danny Pearson.
“Michael McNamara is an outstanding leader who brings a wealth of public, corporate and international experience to his new role leading Digital Victoria – I congratulate him on his appointment.”
The Department of Home Affairs has named Nicole Spencer as first assistant secretary and appointed Sara Vrh as assistant secretary and Susan Drennan as commander.
Last week was Ed Santow’s final one as Australian Human Rights Commissioner. Mr Santow, who took the role in 2016, had campaigned for more caution in the rollout of emerging technology like artificial intelligence, particularly in areas like compliance and law enforcement, while also promoting the importance of digital accessibility, among other rights issues.
“Over the course of his five-year tenure, Ed has challenged and changed the course of human right and technology in Australia,” Commission President Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher said.
“He leaves a significant and enduring legacy.”
Mr Santow will lead a new University of Technology Sydney responsible technology program from September, while the government is yet to commit to replacing him at the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Former Australian Federal Police commissioner Andrew Colvin has joined Deloitte as a Canberra based financial advisory partner in the forensic practice.
Mr Colvin, who was also the inaugural leader of the National Bushfire Recovery Agency until recently, said he looked forward to delivering “equally positive outcomes” for Deloitte clients in areas like organisational transformation, conduct, regulatory and financial crime risk.
Deloitte also hired former Service NSW chief technology and security officer Michael Cracroft as director for cyber and cloud in its risk advisory services practice. Mr Cracroft also held senior IT roles at the NSW Department of Industry and NSW Office of Water, as part of nearly two decades in government IT shops.
The multinational consultancy also added Paul Goodall as a director of data science this month. Mr Goodall has worked as a senior data scientist for the Commonwealth Bank and was most recently a principal data scientist for Telstra Purple.
Sandro Bucchianeri has been appointed as National Australia Bank’s new chief security officer, replacing Nicholas McKenzie who left the bank in April for a group security role at crowdsourced cybersecurity platform Bugcrowd.
Mr Bucchianeri has held security roles at several banks and investment firms, including the last four years as chief security officer at South African financial services group Absa.
On demand worker platform Airtasker has a new chief marketing officer, hiring Noelle Kim from Facebook. Ms Kim was head of marketing (APAC) for Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
In her new role she will oversee the expansion and management of Airtasker’s product and growth marketing teams and will work closely with Tim Fung to grow the Airtasker brand in the US and UK markets, the company said.
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The federal government has handed Deloitte a further $5 million to continue the redevelopment of myGov, with the multinational consulting giant now being paid nearly $40 million since early last year for work on the government services platform.
It’s already been a bumper month for Deloitte, with the firm also recently awarded a $18 million contract for a significant piece of work around Australia’s digital health infrastructure.
Services Australia is leading the project to create an “enhanced” version of myGov, after taking control from the Digital Transformation Agency late last year.
The project involves a complete revamp of the myGov platform to bring the user experience more into line with offerings from the private sector, along with a number of other redevelopments.
Deloitte has now been awarded a $5.5 million contract, running across the second half of 2021, to develop a new myGov app as part of this project.
The federal government will have paid Deloitte just under $40 million by the end of the year for its work on the new version of myGov.
Deloitte has been involved with the project since the very beginning after it was awarded a $1 million contract to develop a prototype as part of a 90-day sprint at the start of 2020. IT was then handed a further contract to turn this into a working beta, with the value of this deal ballooning to nearly $30 million across 2020.
Deloitte was appointed to Services Australia’s Systems Integrator Panel, established to continue work on the new myGov, in late 2020.
It was then awarded a $4.5 million contract earlier this year to continue its work on the myGov project.
While the most recent contract with Deloitte is listed as merely being for “information technology services”, a spokesperson for Services Australia confirmed it was related to myGov, with Deloitte to “design, develop and deliver a mobile application”.
Services Australia also recently handed Ireland-based consultancy Accenture a $3.3 million contract for its work on myGov, through the panel of private companies. This contract was also listed only as “information technology services”.
The other members of the myGov panel are IBM and ARQ Group, as InnovationAus revealed last week.
Services Australia took control of the myGov project from the Digital Transformation Agency late last year, and has since posted contracts related to it publicly with the general titles of “information technology services”, rather than what they specifically are.
It comes in the same week Deloitte was also awarded a significant contract with the Australian Digital Health Agency to develop the “foundational capability” for Australia’s future national digital health ecosystem.
The contract, now revealed to be worth just under $18 million and running for three years, is for the development of the Health Information Gateway, which links in with My Health Record.
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The federal government is paying American tech giant Accenture nearly $2.5 million per month for work on its digital identity service.
At the start of the year, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) awarded Accenture a $12 million contract for a “digital identity piece of work”. Before the contract had even been posted publicly it was amended to increase the value by $2 million. It was then posted on AusTender at the end of March.
Accenture’s digital identity contract with the ATO is now worth $14,904,488.39 million, and runs from 1 January to 30 June this year.
This means Accenture, a tech giant founded in the US but domiciled in Ireland, is being paid $550,000 per week, or more than $100,000 per working day, for the digital identity job.
Accenture has been contracted to assist with the delivery of the ATO’s digital identity work program, a spokesperson said, which includes developing new functionality and prioritised enhancements for its digital identity service myGovID, which sits within the federal government’s broader digital identity program.
“The services to be provided by Accenture under this contract include contribution to both the ATO’s internal programs and the Digital Transformation Agency-led digital identity program,” the ATO spokesperson told InnovationAus.
There are currently 70 Accenture staff members working on this ATO project, the spokesperson said, but this number will vary across the contract’s timeframe.
The digital identity work program includes new functionality for myGovID and the Relationship and Authorisation Manager, along with tech support for migration of applications to the cloud and transition to the new secure integrated gateway.
The ATO spokesperson also said the contract was amended and its value increased by $2 million in order to expand its scope to include additional analytics models.
It comes after the ATO awarded UK company iProov an $11 million contract to provide a “liveliness solution” for myGovID earlier this year. This contract will run for at least the next three years.
The ATO is the leading agency for the development of the government’s own digital identity service, myGovID, which is now widely available.
myGovID has now been integrated with myGov, and can also be used with the Unique Student Identifier Portal, the Relationship Authorisation Manager and a range of other business services.
It’s part of the government’s wider digital identity program, which aims to create a whole-of-government federated digital identity ecosystem, with participation from state and territory governments and the private sector.
This project had been led by the Digital Transformation Agency, but was transferred to Services Australia earlier this year.
The ATO has been developing myGovID under this project for several years, and it was launched in beta form last year.
Last year security researchers alerted the ATO to a “flaw” in the myGovID protocol that could allow an attacker to trick a user into handing over access to their account and control of their linked government services.
The ATO has said it is aware of this issue but that it is a public awareness issue rather than a flaw with its system, and it will not be changed.
In a further submission to government, the security researchers said that myGovID has an “extremely brittle architecture that would allow for large-scale identity fraud if that one component comes under the control of a malicious party”.
The digital identity program received a further $250 million in funding in last year’s federal budget, more than doubling the project’s overall cost.
It is another significant contract that Accenture has landed with the ATO in the last 18 months. In 2020, the tech firm won two contracts each worth more than $40 million with the tax office, for a computer services single touch payroll and for “ITX / ITAPS performance testing piece of work”.
Accenture received about $187.5 million from the ATO last year, accounting for more than half of its overall government work.
In total, Accenture was paid $358.4 million by the government in 2020, up nearly 15 per cent from the previous year. The overall contract value won by Accenture last year was $786.4 million.
Accenture was also recently awarded a one-month contract worth more than $245,000 to develop policy framework for the Digital Transformation Agency.
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The Victorian government is looking to fill the top executive role at its newly established digital service delivery agency, with Digital Victoria to be up and running by July.
Applications are now open for the chief executive officer position at Digital Victoria, the newly-created entity responsible for the state’s digital and ICT strategy.
Digital Victoria was unveiled through last year’s November state budget with nearly $200 million in funding. The new agency will centralise and simplify the Victorian government’s digital services and follows in the footsteps of Service NSW and Services Australia at the federal level.
The new agency sits within the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Government Services minister Danny Pearson posted the job listing on LinkedIn, saying the chief executive is to be responsible for leading the planning and delivery of priority whole-of-government digital and tech reforms and initiatives.
They will provide executive leadership, management and strategic direction and drive the delivery of digital reform across the state government, Mr Pearson said.
The new Digital Victoria CEO will receive a salary of up to $480,000 annually, and will hold a senior leadership position in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Applications for the position close at the end of this week.
The May state budget included a further $180 million in funding for digital service delivery, with $70 million for Service Victoria to bring more service online, such as grant applications and business licencing approvals.
Another $25 million will be provided in the next two financial years each on improving customer experience with digital government services.
Following a scathing review of efforts to establish a new digital platform for Victoria’s fines system, the Auditor-General called for the establishment of an “information technology projects centre of excellence”, which would be a centralised, dedicated team of tech experts to build capability across government and agencies.
Digital Victoria will fulfill this role, the state government said in its response, with the new agency to coordinate the digital transformation agenda.
Mr Pearson was also appointed in the role of overseeing the government’s digital services as part of last year’s budget announcement.
“This pandemic has asked us to rely on technology more than ever, requiring the Victorian government’s online systems to adapt – fast,” the Victorian government said in last year’s budget.
“Digital technology has been pivotal in keeping us connected during the pandemic, but whether it’s going online to update your licence or sitting down for an important conference with colleagues, the safety and reliability of this technology is crucial.”
Of the funding provided in that budget for Digital Victoria, $30.5 million was allocated for the current financial year, $27.2 million for 2021-22, $33.9 million for the following year and $64.5 million for 2023-24.
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There has been a “large reduction” in the Digital Transformation Agency’s funding and responsibilities, with a number of its key projects moved to other agencies, its chief executive Randall Brugeaud has confirmed.
Speaking at a Senate Estimates hearing on Monday evening, Mr Brugeaud said the agency would shift away from service delivery and project management and instead focus on delivering whole-of-government advice and strategy.
He also confirmed that responsibility for the myGov redevelopment and digital identity projects has been moved away from the DTA and handed to Services Australia.
This month’s federal budget revealed the Digital Transformation Agency’s (DTA) funding would drop from $425.5 million this year to $336 million in 2021-22, a cut of about $90 million. The agency’s staffing level is to be cut from 255 to 227,
This coincides with the DTA being moved from Services Australia and returned to the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet.
At the Estimates hearing, Mr Brugeaud provided further information on this funding cut, saying that taking into account lapsing measures and other factors, the DTA is facing an actual funding cut of $39.388 million.
“It mixes our special account with our departmental appropriation. Just as with any organisation we have a series of measures that lapse and a series of measures that are created depending on proposals that are put forward,” Mr Brugeaud told the Senators.
Of the $90 million reduction in total, just under $40 million of this is from a reduction in departmental appropriation for the DTA, with $62.2 million relating to lapsed measures, $300,000 due to indexation and efficient dividends, along with $23.1 million in funding for new measures, he said.
The further $55 million reduction in funding is due to pass-through costs of the telecommunications panel, and the lapsing of the whole-of-government deal with tech giant SAP, with no new deal signed yet, he said.
Along with the funding cut, the DTA has been ordered to shift its focus away from service delivery to mainly handle strategy and policy advice, Mr Brugeaud said.
This will see responsibility for projects including the redevelopment of myGov and the launch of a digital identity scheme moved from the DTA to Services Australia, with $32.5 million in funds reallocated.
“It is a large reduction in overall budget but also a large reduction in what we’re being asked to do, and as part of our transition into PM&C there are a number of delivery functions, particularly myGov and digital identity, that will transfer out to delivery agencies,” Mr Brugeaud said.
The DTA launched the project to develop a new, more user-friendly version of myGov at the start of last year, bringing consulting giant Deloitte on board to develop a prototype and then a beta of the new platform.
But contracting responsibilities for this project were quietly transferred to Services Australia late last year, and Mr Brugeaud has now confirmed that the Department is leading this project, with the DTA to provide advice at a whole-of-government level.
“The primary focus that the DTA will have moving forward is the strategy element and the whole-of-government strategy of myGov. The delivery, architecture, and production of content that sits on the websites and apps will move to Services Australia,” he said.
The DTA was moved to Prime Minister & Cabinet in April, and Mr Brugeaud said he only found out about this when it was posted publicly in the administrative arrangement orders.
But he said he has been in ongoing discussions about the agency’s plan and was not surprised about the announcement.
“There have been discussions about the DTA’s role and mandate for a number of months and as a consequence of reviews that have been conducted the appropriate placement for the DTA has been considered and discussed,” Mr Brugeaud said.
“We were having ongoing discussions…we weren’t in any way, shape, or form blindsided by it. This reinforces our role on the whole-of-government policy and strategy table.”
There were advantages to being housed in Services Australia, Mr Brugeaud said, especially around the proximity to service delivery.
“There are pros and cons in placement. To be very close to service delivery is a very good thing. As with any agency, you make the very most of the hand you’ve been dealt and we will make the very most of the hand we’ve been dealt at PM&C,” he said.
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Nearly a third of the Digital Transformation Agency’s total workforce are temporary labour hire staff, as concerns continue to grow over a lack of in-house tech expertise in the public sector.
As revealed in answers to Senate Estimates questions on notice this week, the Digital Transformation Agency’s (DTA) total headcount of 277 people as of the end of March includes 112 labour hire and contractor staff.
As of the end of March, 28.3 per cent of the agency’s total workforce were labour hire staff, with the total value of labour hire contracts the DTA entered into between 1 July and 31 December last year hitting $14.7 million.
The DTA was originally launched by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in part to bring tech expertise back inside the public sector, but the agency has become increasingly reliant on short-term contractors, labour hire staff and consultancy firms.
The agency is involved with a number of key government projects, including the redevelopment of myGov, the digital identity scheme, the new visa processing platform and the COVIDSafe app. It is also in the processing of refreshing the government’s digital transformation paper.
But the DTA is facing a significant funding and staff cut in the coming years, as revealed in the recent federal budget. The DTA’s funding is set to drop from $425.5 million in 2020-21 to $336 million the following year.
The DTA’s average staffing level will also fall from 255 to 227.
The reduction in resources coincides with the DTA being returned to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet after being housed in Services Australia for several years. Despite the move, the DTA will remain under the control of Stuart Robert, who is now the employment minister.
The DTA has continually combatted high rates of staff turnover, due mostly to its reliance on short-term contractors and secondments from other departments.
In July last year it was revealed that the DTA had experienced near-100 per cent staff turnover in the 18 months prior, with 251 people ceasing employment at the agency from July 2018 to February 2020, out of a total workforce at the time of 256 staff.
Out of those who ceased employment in this time, 242 were contractors.
Earlier this year InnovationAus revealed the DTA had entered into contracts worth more than $20 million in this financial year alone for “temporary personnel services”, worth a combined $20.23 million.
The DTA has also increased its reliance on private contractors and consultants, with its contracts with tier one management consultants increasing by nearly five times in the 2019-20 financial year compared to the previous 12 months.
A number of other key tech and government services agencies and departments are also heavily reliant on labour hire staff.
The Department of Social Services’ total workforce has 14.6 per cent labour hire staff, with 410 staff out of 2340 in total
Services Australia, responsible for a wide range of government digital services, has a total headcount of 26,608, with 1427 of these being labour hire staff, equating to just over 4 per cent.
More than a quarter of the National Disability Insurance Agency’s total workforce are labour hire staff, with 1427 temporary staff out of a total workforce of 3169.
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The key agencies tasked with delivering the government’s billion-dollar digital spend are facing staffing and funding cuts, leading to concerns the funding will flow straight to private contractors and consultants, and do little to improve expertise in the public sector.
Last week’s federal budget included a $1.2 billion digital economy strategy, with funding for a range of tech projects and digital transformation efforts.
The large bulk of spending went to ongoing projects, with more than $200 million over two years for work to develop a new version of the myGov platform, and more than $400 million for “enhancements” of My Health Record.
The government also allocated more funding for GovERP, a standardised back-end technology platform across the public sector. But the amount was kept secret for commercial-in-confidence reasons.
There are concerns that the bulk of this spending on the key digital government services projects will flow directly to private contractors and consultants, with no effort to improve APS in-house skills.
Services Australia, the agency responsible for the myGov rebuild and the GovERP project, saw its average staffing level cut by 800 full-time staff in the 2021-22 budget.
The Digital Transformation Agency is facing a huge cut in its annual funding, with a planned drop from $98.41 million in 2021-22 to $48.22 million the following year, with an accompanying ASL cut from 255 to 227 full-time equivalents.
Both the myGov and GovERP projects have been primarily led by consultants and contractors so far rather than being built in-house, with the government showing no signs that it will bring the work within the APS.
The true test of the billion-dollar digital package will be whether the significant spending is used to build skills within the APS, Community and Public Sector Union assistant national secretary Michael Tull said.
“Review after review, from the recent Thoday review and others stretching back over a decade, have all identified the need for the APS to reduce its reliance on external private providers and rebuild public service in-house ICT capabilities – which means more APS ICT staff, and more skills development opportunities for those staff,” Mr Tull told InnovationAus.
“But what we have been seeing from the Morrison government is spending up big on expensive consultants and external providers. This has to stop. The test for the government is whether this budget spending will deliver more staff and build in-house capacity or whether it’s just more money for consultants.”
The DTA has been working on a new version of myGov to initially run alongside the existing platform and eventually replace it since the start of last year. This platform will be based on those offered by the private sector and aims to provide a better user experience for the delivery of government services.
The bulk of the work has been completed by big four consultancy Deloitte, which has so far netted more than $30 million for this work, with the new myGov still in a beta phase. Last week’s federal budget provided more than $200 million to this work, but little information on what will be completed with it and the timeframe for the proper launch of the new platform.
Services Australia now appears to be responsible for the project, with the department establishing a Systems Integrator Panel for private providers working on it, but is still yet to reveal who is sitting on this panel.
The only current contract for work on the new myGov is with Deloitte.
The GovERP project, a modernised government technology for managed accounts, resources and workforce, has been running for several years, with the Department of Finance originally responsible for it.
The new digital funding package should come with requirements that the work is kept in-house and skills are developed in the public sector, Mr Tull said.
“So far CPSU members see no evidence that the more than $1 billion announced is going to translate into any new APS ICT roles. In fact, the two agencies playing a central role in the government’s plans look to be losing staff in Services Australia’s case, or in the case of the DTA, having their budget halved,” he said.
The Department of Finance this week revealed that more than half of the funding allocated to the GovERP project in 2019-20 and 2020-21 has gone towards private contractors and consultants.
In an answer to a Senate Estimates question on notice, the department said that of the $67.1 million allocated over two years, $35.5 million has gone towards outsourced work. This is because there is not the necessary expertise within the APS, the Department said.
“The program will implement a new technology in which the APS has not yet developed expertise. The majority of contractors and consultants are engaged to provide specialised skills and services to support the program, many of which are small-to-medium enterprises, particularly with respect to ICT labour,” the Department said.
The government provided a further two years’ funding to this project in last week’s budget, but did not reveal the dollar amount due to commercial-in-confidence clauses.
More than $400 million has also been provided for the My Health Record platform and the Australian Digital Health Agency. Several contractors have also worked on this project, with Accenture winning a $571 million, nine-year contract to provide national infrastructure services, Wentworth Healthcare being paid $5.7 million to support the expansion of the program in 2017 and Allegis Group Australia also being contracted for “improvements” in 2017.
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The Digital Transformation Agency has a whole-of-government approach to data and digital policies in its new home in PM&C, employment minister Stuart Robert says.
Despite his new role in the employment portfolio, Mr Robert has retained control of the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) and will be the “whole-of-government minister with responsibility” for the government’s data and digital agenda.
In a speech at the Australian Financial Review Government Summit, Mr Robert outlined the DTA’s new structure and mandate, and provided a series of updates on a number of government digital policies, including digital identity and myGov.
Earlier this month the DTA was moved from Services Australia to the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, where it was previously located, under the control of Mr Robert.
This move came with an updated mandate, Mr Robert said, with a focus on a whole-of-government approach to tech policies and digital transformation.
“We are now taking a whole-of-government and, where appropriate, a whole-of-nation approach to building scalable, secure and resilient data and digital capabilities that will not only deliver for Australia in a customer sense, but give us competitive advantage as a country and as an economy,” Mr Robert said in the speech.
This will involve the DTA working across portfolios, departments and agencies, and with state and territory governments, Mr Robert said.
“The problems we face currently as a nation – whether it is economic recovery from COVID and creating more jobs, protecting our health and the vulnerable, or defending our national interests – require that we interact across all portfolios and tiers of government,” he said.
“Government must operate as a consistent platform that brings together stakeholders, systems, processes and data to solve the challenges ahead of us. This is the only way to deliver the alignment we need, to be on the same pages with all Australians, to develop the right policies and deliver the right services.”
The DTA has also already covered many whole-of-government IT policies and strategies, including large deals with tech providers such as IBM.
The agency’s mandate now includes responsibility for whole-of-government ICT governance, strategy, policy, architecture, processes and procedures.
The DTA is currently developing a whole-of-government architecture to map out the existing capabilities of government and gaps that need to be addressed.
This strategy will take into account the age and complexity of existing government systems to get a “complete picture of what we have, what we need, what we must invest and by when”, Mr Robert said.
In the speech, the Minister also announced that three cyber hub pilots will be establish allowing large agencies such as Home Affairs and Services Australia to provide cybersecurity services for small agencies that “cannot match their breadth and depth of skills”.
“We can see a future where such hub models may be established for other types of scalable services, not just cybersecurity,” Mr Robert said.
Mr Robert flagged changes to address “long and complex” government procurement processes which only serve the “specialised industry that has been built around them”.
“Government often finds itself with investment proposals that are presented as urgent or critical, but with limited opportunity to consider the broader strategic context of those proposals,” he said.
“Such practices cost government and providers a lot of money, use precious time that can be more productively put towards implementation and artificially restrict the available providers to those that can afford the high costs and long timeframes involved.
“As a result, the government may be missing out on significant innovation from segments of the market, including Australian providers, who may find it easier and faster to engage with private sector customers, rather than go through the long procurement cycles in government.”
The Commonwealth’s federated digital identity program is now a “high priority” across government, with Mr Robert revealing that Eftpos has recently applied to have its digital identity service accredited under the scheme, the first private sector organisation to do so.
He also said that a further round of consultation on legislation underpinning the digital ID scheme will open soon.
Mr Robert also drew attention to the ongoing redevelopment of myGov, with a beta site launched several months ago.
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The federal government continued to recover money from welfare recipients despite admitting its robodebt scheme was “legally insufficient,” in part because its IT systems were not up to scratch, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has found.
In its report into how Services Australia implemented changes to the robodebt scheme in 2019 and 2020, and the refunds process commenced last year, the Ombudsman found the government was not proactive enough in communicating with individuals, or in efforts to assist those who were automatically repaying an unlawful debt.
Ombudsman Michael Manthorpe criticised the department for continuing to recover debts raised unlawfully under roobodebt after it had begun the process of refunding these debts. This was in part because IT systems that was unable to properly organise the process.
The Online Compliance Intervention system, dubbed robodebt, was launched by the Coalition in 2016 and used an algorithm to average out a welfare recipient’s yearly income using data from the ATO and cross-matching this with income reported to Centrelink.
If a discrepancy was detected, a “please explain” notice was automatically issued to the individual, placing the onus on them to prove that they did not owe any money before a repayment notice was issued.
The system was found regularly to incorrectly match this data and produce inaccurate or non-existent debts.
The Ombudsman’s first report into the scheme in 2017 found systematic issues around fairness, transparency and usability.
In late 2019, the government announced it would no longer use the averaged ATO income data to raise a debt and would freeze repayments of debts issued in this way, admitting that there was “legally insufficient” grounds to do this.
In May last year, the government said it would refund repayments made on debts that were based wholly or partially on average ATO data.
Later that year, the government settled a class action lawsuit over robodebt for $1.2 billion, with $112 million of compensation to be paid to 400,000 victims.
The department undertook a “highly manual and non-prescriptive” approach to determining which debts would have to be refunded, the Ombudsman found, with its IT systems not providing any indicator of how each debt was raised, significantly slowing down the process.
“If Services Australia had recorded reliable system indicators to track what information was relied on to raise the debt, including whether a debt had been raised relying wholly or partially using averaged data, this would have reduced the intensive and manual nature of this process and reduced the adverse impact upon affected individuals,” Mr Manthorpe said.
And because the department did not know which debts should have been frozen and refunded, it continued to recover some debts after admitting many had been issued on “legally insufficient” grounds, the report said.
“We acknowledge that not all debts raised under the [robodebt] program relied wholly or partially on income averaging,” Mr Manthorpe said.
“However, in the absence of knowing which were and were not, we are concerned that Services Australia nevertheless continued to recover income averaged debts despite a high risk that many of those debts were ‘legally insufficient’.”
“There was a period of some months during which debt recovery action was continuing in relation to many debts which Services Australia knew had a high likelihood of being raised on ‘legally insufficient’ grounds.
“We consider this created a high degree of risk for Services Australia and unnecessary hardship for individuals affected, which was compounded by Services Australia’s knowledge that the identification process would be largely manual and therefore take some time to complete.”
A better approach would have been to pause all debt recovery on all income compliance debts, but Services Australia’s IT systems did not allow for this, the Ombudsman found.
The system was unable to isolate an individual’s income compliance debt from other debts that may have been raised, and when a repayment is made it isn’t to a particular debt due to the way the IT system is designed.
“Services Australia advised that because of this, it believed a freeze could not be implemented ‘en masse’ for all income compliance debts, because any individuals with non-income compliance debts would also have these debts frozen,” Mr Manthorpe said.
“If Services Australia wishes to maintain the ability to pause some debts and not others, we consider its systems should be designed to facilitate this approach.
“In our view, not being able to pause debt recovery action on all debts of a particular type, without slow and resource-intensive manual intervention, creates significant risk of inappropriate debt recovery action,” he said.
This process was also “exacerbated” by an absence of communication with people impacted by the changes between the 2019 and 2020 announcements, the report found.
The Ombudsman is also concerned that Services Australia did not have any plans to communicate with individuals who had a debt raised under the robodebt scheme and who were not eligible for a refund.
“We are concerned there may be a large number of individuals who are broadly aware of issues regarding the way Services Australia raised debts under the Income Compliance program, but do not know whether their particular debt is eligible for a refund,” the report said.
The Ombudsman said the department also hasn’t been “sufficiently transparent” that debts frozen or repaid may be raised again in the future.
The Ombudsman made nine recommendations to government, including that it should communicate with people deemed not eligible for a refund, to review the advice offered to staff, and to publish general information that the decision to refund a debt does not mean another debt won’t be raised for the same period using a different method.
The report offered seven further comments about Services Australia’s handling of the issue but that need no remedial action. This included that the agency should have recorded how the debts were raised, that it should have immediately frozen all debts after revealing they were “legally insufficient” and it should have “immediately” communicated with those impacted after the 2019 announcement.
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The public sector union has slammed government secrecy in relation to the redevelopment of the myGov platform, saying the public has the right to know who is completing this work, and there was no valid reason for not disclosing it.
The federal government has been working on a new version of myGov since early last year. The new service will initially run alongside the existing platform before eventually replacing it and is meant to offer a user experience more in-line with private sector services such as Facebook or Netflix.
Much of the work has been outsourced, with Deloitte picking up the bulk of the contracts. Deloitte has so far been paid more than $30 million since early last year for work on the new myGov, which is still in a beta phase.
Late last year Services Australia, which has taken over contracting responsibilities from the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), established a Systems Integrator Panel for companies that would be contracted to work on the final stage of the new myGov – or myGovDXP as it has been known.
But Services Australia is yet to disclose publicly which companies are on the panel. Earlier this year Deloitte was awarded a $4.5 million contract through this panel, making the Big Four firm the first to be revealed.
But Services Australia has refused to disclose the other companies on the panel, saying it would do so “once all aspects of the procurement process are complete”.
Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) assistant national secretary Michael Tull said there was no excuse for the government not saying what companies had been selected to work on the myGov project.
“The public has the right to know who the government is contracting to do what work and at what price. We all suspect that ‘commercial in confidence’ is used to hide many sins. But refusing to even reveal who has been chosen for a panel is a whole new level of concern,” Mr Tull told InnovationAus.
“It is hard to see a valid reason for keeping this secret. The government’s justification – that the procurement process is not yet complete – doesn’t stack up and isn’t based on any provision of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules that I can see.
“And given the type of procurement being done here – a panel of providers to work on systems integration – there’s a pretty good argument that potential tenderers would benefit from knowing who else is on the panel.”
In February Services Australia went to the market for contractors to “provide suitable software capabilities to enable any of the prescribed bundles of the core customer experience capabilities”, including content management, experience delivery and experience analytics.
The entire myGov rebuild project is now shrouded in secrecy, with the government declining to disclose any further information on the systems integrator panel, the timeline for the project, or the roles of Services Australia and the DTA.
InnovationAus asked Services Australia when it expects to finalise the contracts under the panel and to disclose its members, for an outline of the project timeline and its various stages, and what roles Services Australia and the DTA would play in the project.
In response, a Services Australia spokesperson said to refer to previous answers, which did not elaborate on any of these questions.
A spokesperson for the DTA also pointed to “recent response” on the project, despite not providing an answer to InnovationAus on the matter for several months.
The increasing use of similar panel-type arrangements for procurement is troubling, Mr Tull said.
“CPSU has long held concerns about transparency and competition in government procurement, and in particular about the use of panels,” he said.
“In our experience, panels make it harder to keep track of who has won what, while on the competition front the ANAO found in 2018 that panel use was increasing, and that most panels had a small proportion of suppliers being awarded the majority of contract value.
“A lack of transparency and declining competition among tenders is not a recipe for the best use of taxpayer dollars.”
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The federal government is preparing to launch an NDIS app within months, amid concerns raised by former NDIS Technology Authority chief Marie Johnson that experimentations with new technologies through the scheme could lead to a “dangerous future”.
National Disability Insurance Agency chief executive Martin Hoffman told a Senate Estimates hearing last week that Services Australia has been developing the My NDIS app since late 2019, with plans to launch it widely in the next quarter.
The app provides a version of what is currently available to NDIS participants through the web browser on smart phones, including viewing budgets, current plan timelines and to make and manage claims.
Services Australia ran a pilot of the app from July last year with 422 participants, which was “very popular and well received”, Mr Hoffman said.
“Currently access to information about participants’ plans and the ability to make claims and so forth is only available through a full web browser. We think it will enhance the participant experience if it is also available through a mobile app,” Mr Hoffman told the hearing.
“I think it’s a great app but it’s not exactly a radical thing these days to provide services and information via an app. It’s something we should do.”
Five private suppliers have worked on the NDIS app in recent months. This work was not put out through public tender, with the suppliers selected from a Digital Transformation Agency-maintained panel.
The most prominent contractor is Melbourne-based digital consultancy DB Results, which has received $1.393 million, while Optus has been paid $112,000 for penetration performance testing, while law firm Clayton Utz has also landed $11,000.
Ms Johnson, who is the chief executive of the Canberra-based Centre for Digital Business said that NDIS participants are saying they feel like “guinea pigs” in the government’s wider digital strategy, with a trial of blockchain technology also recently completed.
Ms Johnson said she is also troubled by the potential for these technologies to be combined, with Labor senators at the Estimates hearing questioning whether myGov will be linked with the new NDIS app.
In response, Mr Hoffman said the current version of the app does not do this, but it will likely be linked in the future.
This is the ultimate end goal of the government’s digital strategy, Department of Social Services secretary Kathryn Campbell said.
“We’re hoping for one app to be for all Commonwealth government services. One to rule the world. It would come up and tell you each of those, it’d make life a lot easier,” Ms Campbell said at the hearing.
“It’d be able to tell people when they have appointments coming up and obligations. That is our long-term plan for government digital.”
The NDIS app will also soon allow participants to track their cases, Mr Hoffman said.
“We are investing in our IT systems such that being able to case-track where your particular claim or particular inquiry or review matter might be up to through the process. I really want this to be a leading app in terms of accessibility for people with a disability,” he said.
The app will be launched in the coming months pending final bug testing, accessibility enhancements and improved API data flows with Services Australia.
“A lot depends on those three factors. We don’t want to be going out and be slow in terms of getting data – people have expectations about how apps should work,” Mr Hoffman said.
In a recent submission to an inquiry into the NDIS Independent Assessments, Ms Johnson warned about a “dangerous future” as a result of the government’s tech experimentations through the NDIS which could lead to significant human rights violations.
“The committee needs to be alerted to the linkages between future blockchain and facial recognition applications as a means to control and monitor NDIS participants, and the risks that algorithms pose for people with disability in accessing services,” Ms Johnson said in the submission.
“The absence of an ethics and co-design framework exposes NDIS participants to potential human rights violations from these experimental whole-of-government digital activities.”
The Digital Transformation Agency recently trialled the use of blockchain technology to make payments through the NDIS, in partnership with the Commonwealth Bank. This was done through another app, called Smart Money, which allowed for payments for specific uses by specific people through the NDIS.
Technology shouldn’t be used at the expense of people with disabilities, Ms Johnson said.
“Australian civil society must not tolerate the actions of government that forcibly and arbitrarily subject people with disability to lifelong examination, study and monitoring. History is a reminder of where these actions can lead,” she said.
“That this control of people with disability will be effected through technologies such as biometrics, algorithms and blockchain is anathema to a harmonious and inclusive civil society and the human rights of all people.”
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The dollar value in government contracts awarded to Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey doubled in 2020, with both large US management consultant firms enjoying a sharp increase in federal work during the pandemic.
The value of contracts awarded to Boston Consulting Group (BCG) increased by 105 per cent year-on-year in 2020, rising from a total spend in 2019 of $15.1 million to $31 million last year, according to an InnovationAus investigation.
The total value of contracts held by BCG that were either awarded last year or that were still active during 2020 was $60.3 million. This included an increase of more than 200 per cent in the dollar value of contracts awarded to BCG by the Industry department for work specifically related to the pandemic or Australia’s economic recovery from it.
For fellow American management consultancy McKinsey, the value of government contracts jumped by 173 per cent, or nearly tripled. The total spend in 2019 on McKinsey work for the government was $18.5 million, which soared to $50.6 million in 2020.
This included a more than 1000 per cent increase in work from the Digital Transformation Agency across a range of projects.
To calculate these figures, InnovationAus analysed all contracts active in those years as posted to tenders.gov.au, to compare 2019 to the pandemic year of 2020. The reporting structure involves the reporting of any contract that is active in that period.
For the yearly spend, InnovationAus measured the length of each contract, calculated the daily expenditure for that work, and multiplied that figure by the number of days each contract was active during the periods being investigated.
Last year was shaped by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with the focus and spending of the government focusing on the health crisis. There was an increased reliance on outsourcing and private consultants across a range of departments and projects.
Overall, government contracts increased by more than $20 billion or 6 per cent, reaching $331.275 billion in 2020.
The InnovationAus analysis revealed that BCG’s growth largely stemmed from increased demand for the company’s services from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources and from the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), both key departments and agencies during the COVID-19 response.
The DTA did not award any contracts to BCG in 2019, but handed the firm $2.232 million during 2020 across a range of projects, including the development of the much-maligned COVIDSafe contact tracing app.
BCG earned $1 million for its work on COVIDSafe, providing an advisory role in the early phase of its development. The firm was also contracted for whole-of-government ICT policy and governance and a funding options analysis worth $875,000.
DTA chief executive Randall Brugeaud worked briefly at BCG from 2008 to 2010, while former DTA chief strategy officer Anthony Vlasic left the agency in February 2020 to join BCG.
BCG’s work with the Industry department jumped sharply by 234 pe cent in 2020 compared with the previous year, from $684,000 to $2.2 million during the pandemic.
These contracts included a first pass report on the supply chain resilience initiative, worth $330,000 for one months’ work, and a new $5.5 million contract for “model delivery, consultancy services and reports” for the industry department.
The firm was also awarded an $80,000 contract to provide advice on integrating gas modelling for the department, a key facet of the government’s COVID-19 economic recovery plan.
McKinsey’s increase in government contracts came largely from Services Australia and the DTA.
The firm enjoyed a near-1000 percent increase in the dollar value of its contracts with the DTA last year, from just $186,000 in 2019 to $1.9 million in 2020.
McKinsey won a $1 million contract in May last year to develop a business case for a revamped version of the myGov platform which Deloitte is building. It also was awarded $1 million to work on a new visa processing platform.
The firm’s work with Services Australia increased by 281 per cent, from just under $6 million to $22.9 million in 2020. This comes after McKinsey helped to design Services Australia itself in late 2019 under a near-$1 million contract.
Services Australia now accounts for 45 per cent of McKinsey’s government work, while the DTA accounts for 3 per cent.
McKinsey’s three contracts with Services Australia in 2020 were all for “business advisory services”, with one of these contracts worth $8.6 million over eight months.
The public sector union last week raised concerns that Services Australia had been “run down” by a reliance on outsourcing and private contractors which has led to “substandard” IT delivery.
“Services Australia has lost sights of the benefits of in-house ICT development. A lack of career paths for ICT professionals and the government’s bargaining approach have impacted the agency’s ability to attract and retain ICT talent,” the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) said in a submission to government.
“The CPSU has been vocal about the phenomenal increase in consultancy expenditure both in Services Australia, and the APS more broadly in the past five years.”
Photo Credit: Shutterstock – canyalcin; mariakray
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The government has declined to name the companies that were selected for a panel last year to work on the myGov redevelopment project, while responsibility for contracting for the project has shifted between agencies.
The government is working on developing a new version of myGov to initially run alongside the existing platform, before eventually replacing it. The new platform aims to replace the user experience of private sector offerings, with the bulk of the work so far contracted out to consulting giant Deloitte.
While the initial work and contracts was handled by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), its parent department Services Australia is now issuing the contracts for work, and handling requests about its progression.
These contracts are now being posted publicly under broad and general titles after previously being labelled with GovDXP, making them more difficult to identity.
The government has also ditched the use of ‘horizons’ to designate the different phases of work on the revamped myGov, but a department spokesperson said the previous timeline is still in use.
Late last year Services Australia established a Systems Integrator Panel, filled by a number of companies that will be offered work on the myGov project. Deloitte was awarded a $4.5 million contract through this panel in last month.
But the government has continually refused to reveal which other companies are members of this panel and would be working on the project, even to other companies looking to tender for work on it.
“The Systems Integrator Panel was established through open request for tender via the Digital Marketplace panel. Information about companies selected to join the Systems Integrator Panel will be published once all aspects of the procurement process are completed,” a Services Australia spokesperson told InnovationAus.
In February, Services Australia went to the market for contractors to “provide suitable software capabilities to enable any of the prescribed bundles of the core customer experience capabilities”, related to the myGov project.
These capabilities include content management, experience delivery and experience analytics.
A number of applicants for this tender requested to know the other members of the Systems Integrator Panel, the companies they would be working with on the project, but the department opted to keep them secret.
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Services Australia has been “run down” by a reliance on outsourcing and private contractors which has led to substandard ICT delivery programs, the public sector union says.
In a submission to a Senate inquiry into Australian Public Service capability, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) said that under-investment in ICT and an increase in outsourcing had damaged the department’s ability to deliver services for Australians.
“The CPSU is greatly concerned that capability in the APS has been devastated by years of budget cuts, efficiency dividends, the government’s Average Staffing Level cap and the rapid rise of labour hire, consultants and contractors,” the CPSU submission said.
“In Services Australia, core work has been contracted to private providers driven by commercial intent at a cost of over $1.6 billion to the taxpayer.”
There has been a reduction of 6000 staff at Services Australia in the last seven years, the union said, with permanent employees being replaced by casuals and contractors.
The department’s contracts with labour hire and service delivery partners are worth over $1.6 billion, while consultancy expenditure is expected to hit $20 million in the 2020-21 financial year.
“These are eye watering figures that demand robust checks and balances to see if they bring value to the taxpayer,” CPSU said.
CPSU members have estimated that half of the ICT workers in the Canberra and Brisbane delivery centres are contractors, and insecure employment at the agency is at “unprecedented scale”.
“Services Australia has lost sight of the benefits of in-house ICT development. A lack of career paths for ICT professionals and the government’s bargaining approach have impacted the agency’s ability to attract and retain ICT talent,” the submission said.
“Additionally, the government’s Average Staffing Level cap has driven the increasing use of ICT contractors for both day-to-day and specialist ICT work.”
The Digital Transformation Agency, which is housed in Services Australia, has already spent more than $20 million on “temporary personnel services” in this financial year, across 141 contracts with recruiters and HR firms, as InnovationAus reported.
There is a steep reduction in transparency and accountability when private contractors and consultants are brought in, the union said.
“Valuable funding has been directed to a growing component of insecure workers and to corporate interests to deliver core in-house work. This is driving down the wages and conditions and reducing the employment security of the workers undertaking agency work or engaged by privatised contract call centre providers doing Services Australia work,” it said.
“These corporate interests operate without the same lines of reporting and accountability expected of departments of state, leaving the public with a distinct lack of transparency for the thousands of millions of dollars being expended.”
The Coalition government has “run down” Services Australia through program budget and job cuts, and this reliance on outsourced work, the CPSU said.
Services Australia has listed 31 contracts with labour hire and service delivery firms, with a total value of $1.64 billion. CPSU said these numbers are “staggering and previously unseen” at the agency.
These contracts include $491 million with ADECCO Australia over four years, $145 million over four years with Serco and $121 million over three years with Datacom.
The department should be required to prove that it can’t complete the necessary work in-house before going to outside contractors, the union said.
“The CPSU has been vocal about the phenomenal increase in consultancy expenditure both in Services Australia, and the APS more broadly in the past five years,” the CPSU submission said.
“Agencies must be required to demonstrate their assessment of whether they have the in-house skills and capabilities, and the benefit of nurturing specific in-demand skills and capabilities, prior to going out to tender for consultants and contractors. Agencies must rein in the amount of work that has been opened to private providers.”
As of October 2020, there were 2,277 employees in the Services Australia technology services branch, equating to 7.3 percent of the workforce. But while ICT contractors were previously used mainly for surge capacity, there is now a “strong prejudice” to go to private contractors as a first option, the CPSU said.
“The agency appears to have lost sight of the benefits of in-house ICT development. There is a lack of career paths for skills ICT professionals and this is hamstrung by an APS-wide bargaining policy that limits enhancing APS conditions to attract the best and brightest to tech APS, along with the staffing cap,” it said.
“Members also advise that skilled APS ICT staff are leaving because they have no career anymore in Services Australia.”
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The federal government has handed Deloitte a contract worth $4.5 million for further work on the new myGov platform, bringing the consulting giant’s total bill for the project to nearly $35 million over just 18 months.
The government has also gone to the market for vendors to work on the next stage of the project, which will involve the integration of “core customer experience capabilities” into the new myGov platform.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has led the project to develop a new version of myGov, to initially run alongside the existing platform before eventually replacing it.
Deloitte has been the key contractor on the project since early 2020, after first being awarded a near-$1 million contract to build a prototype as part of a ‘90-day sprint’.
The company was then awarded a $9.5 million contract to turn this into a working beta, which was launched publicly late this year. The cost of this contract has since blown out to $28.1 million.
In November last year Services Australia handed Deloitte a further $1.2 million to continue its work until the end of 2020.
The department has now handed Deloitte another contract to continue its work on the new myGov platform, this time worth $4.61 million over six months.
Listed only as being for “information technology services, a spokesperson for Services Australia confirmed the work relates to the new myGov platform, with Deloitte selected as part of the new Systems Integrator Panel.
“Services Australia is leading the technology work on sustaining the current myGov system and developing the enhanced myGov beta. Deloitte Digital is one of a number of vendors which will be engaged from a Systems Integrator Panel, which was established in late 2020, to provide technical resources to support this work and the ongoing COVID response implementation to work within myGov,” a Services Australia spokesperson told InnovationAus.
Deloitte has now worked on all three stages of the myGov project. Most of the consultancy’s work last year was on the creation of the beta platform, which included personalised contact, a web-based myGov inbox, opt-in notifications and login access to myGov. Users have been able to access the beta by choice since late last year.
The final stage of work will see the beta platform fully developed, including a dashboard, profile, inbox and forms.
Once fully functional, this new platform will offer a user experience more in line with social media giants and other tech companies such as Netflix.
“This platform will collect services, apps and other customer experience capabilities to give users everything they need. This will operate on a ‘Netflix’ model, providing users with what they need to do next based on their previous interactions with government services – similar to Netflix’s ‘recommended to you’,” the DTA said last year.
Services Australia posted a new request for expressions of interest last week for private contractors to work on this stage of the program. Vendors will be asked to “provide suitable software capabilities to enable any of the prescribed bundles of the core customer experience capabilities”.
These capabilities are content management, experience delivery and experience analytics. They include the personalisation of the customer experience on the new myGov, and the collection of data and analysing of this information.
The REOI closes on 3 march, with a product verification exercise to be required as part of the second stage of the procurement.
Along with Deloitte, a number of other contractors have been brought in to assist with the project. Fellow consultancy Nous has been paid just over $1 million for advice and support on the second stage of the project, while McKinsey scored $1 million to develop a business case for the work.
Law firm King and Wood Mallesons will be paid $1.75 million to provide legal services, while Maddocks will also be paid $100,000 in legal fees.
Proximity Advisory Services was also brought in to provide probity advice on a $100,000 contract.
Total contractor costs for work on the project over 18 months are at more than $40 million for the myGov beta.
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Work is yet to begin on the pivotal second stage of the federal government’s myGov redevelopment, with a private contractor yet to be selected for the project.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is heading the program, which will develop a new version of myGov, to initially run alongside the existing platform and eventually replace it.
Deloitte has so far led the work on the project after being contracted by the DTA, with the consulting giant paid just under $30 million last year to develop a prototype then a beta version of the platform, which launched publicly late last year as part of a trial.
Deloitte was awarded a $1.2 million contract with Services Australia for further work on this beta, running from late November to the end of 2020.
The second stage of the project, dubbed Horizon 2, will include the bulk of the work, with a “systems integrator with hosting and software partners” to fully develop the platform, including a dashboard, profile, inbox and forms.
Despite plans for work to kick off on this stage midway through 2020, a spokesperson for Services Australia confirmed that the department is still yet to sign the contract for this work, despite opening procurement early last year.
“Procurement to support Horizon 2 development is underway. The outcome will be published on AusTender once completed,” the spokesperson told InnovationAus.
This means the project has stalled so far in 2021, with Deloitte’s contract coming to an end on 31 December last year.
Consultancy firm Nous was awarded a $11,000 pay rise for its work providing advice and support for the myGov project, making its contract, running until May, worth $1.06 million.
Deloitte first won a small contract to quickly develop a prototype of the new myGov platform in early 2020. It then won a contract initially worth $9.5 million to turn this into a working beta, but this was eventually tripled in value to $28.1 million after a series of amendments in 2020.
This contract was initially with the DTA, running until November when it was awarded the new deal with Services Australia.
The first stage of the project, which has now been completed, saw the creation of the beta myGov platform, including personalised contact, a web-based myGov inbox, opt-in notifications and login access to myGov.
Once fully functional, the DTA has said the new version of myGov will offer a user experience in line with social media giants and other tech companies.
“This platform will collect services, apps and other customer experience capabilities to give users everything they need. This will operate on a ‘Netflix’ model, providing users with what they need to do next based on their previous interactions with government services – similar to Netflix’s ‘recommended to you’,” the DTA said last year.
A number of other private companies have won work as part of the myGov project. Law firm King and Wood Mallesons has been paid $1.75 million to provide legal services, along with the DTA’s digital identity project, while Maddocks was paid $100,000 for legal services.
Deloitte rival McKinsey was also paid nearly $1 million to develop a business case for the new version of myGov, while Proximity Advisory Services won a $100,000 contract to provide probity advice on the project.
myGov vendor selection faces work delays
By Denham Sadler
Work is yet to begin on the pivotal second stage of the federal government’s myGov redevelopment, with a private contractor yet to be selected for the project.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is heading the program, which will develop a new version of myGov, to initially run alongside the existing platform and eventually replace it.
Deloitte has so far led the work on the project after being contracted by the DTA, with the consulting giant paid just under $30 million last year to develop a prototype then a beta version of the platform, which launched publicly late last year as part of a trial.
Deloitte was awarded a $1.2 million contract with Services Australia for further work on this beta, running from late November to the end of 2020.
The second stage of the project, dubbed Horizon 2, will include the bulk of the work, with a “systems integrator with hosting and software partners” to fully develop the platform, including a dashboard, profile, inbox and forms.
Despite plans for work to kick off on this stage midway through 2020, a spokesperson for Services Australia confirmed that the department is still yet to sign the contract for this work, despite opening procurement early last year.
“Procurement to support Horizon 2 development is underway. The outcome will be published on AusTender once completed,” the spokesperson told InnovationAus.
This means the project has stalled so far in 2021, with Deloitte’s contract coming to an end on 31 December last year.
Consultancy firm Nous was awarded a $11,000 pay rise for its work providing advice and support for the myGov project, making its contract, running until May, worth $1.06 million.
Deloitte first won a small contract to quickly develop a prototype of the new myGov platform in early 2020. It then won a contract initially worth $9.5 million to turn this into a working beta, but this was eventually tripled in value to $28.1 million after a series of amendments in 2020.
This contract was initially with the DTA, running until November when it was awarded the new deal with Services Australia.
The first stage of the project, which has now been completed, saw the creation of the beta myGov platform, including personalised contact, a web-based myGov inbox, opt-in notifications and login access to myGov.
Once fully functional, the DTA has said the new version of myGov will offer a user experience in line with social media giants and other tech companies.
“This platform will collect services, apps and other customer experience capabilities to give users everything they need. This will operate on a ‘Netflix’ model, providing users with what they need to do next based on their previous interactions with government services – similar to Netflix’s ‘recommended to you’,” the DTA said last year.
A number of other private companies have won work as part of the myGov project. Law firm King and Wood Mallesons has been paid $1.75 million to provide legal services, along with the DTA’s digital identity project, while Maddocks was paid $100,000 for legal services.
Deloitte rival McKinsey was also paid nearly $1 million to develop a business case for the new version of myGov, while Proximity Advisory Services won a $100,000 contract to provide probity advice on the project.
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