Andrew Colley| October 03, 2008
HUMAN Services Minister Joe Ludwig said the department would review its ICT requirements as part of a broader service delivery reform.
Senator Ludwig made the announcement after Medicare announced that it had spent $70 million to sustain its current IT infrastructure and systems for a year before making its next move."I am currently developing options for Service Delivery Reform which may have implications for our ICT requirements (in future).
"Rather than re-enter another five to seven year contract for ICT services, we have negotiated a 12-month extension to allow the opportunity for a strategic re-assessment of our ICT needs to take place," Senator Ludwig said.
The contract extension announced yesterday extends Medicare`s current agreement with IBM, which expired in March, until March 2010.
Medicare`s fleet of ageing IT systems include IBM mainframe computers.
The extension effectively means that spending on new IT projects at Medicare will be frozen while the review takes place.
The work comes under the broad umbrella of the Finance Department`s goal of cutting the commonwealth`s $16 billion ICT bill by taking a whole-of-government approach to procurement and weeding out excessive duplication of services.
The federal Government recently received a report from British efficiency expert Peter Gershon who has been conducting a multi-agency investigation into ICT procurement on the government`s behalf since early this year. It is currently reviewing the report.
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