Top contractor earns twice as much as CenITex boss

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 25 November 2009 02:18

IT Industry - Market

Despite a concerted push to reduce the proportion of IT contractors it employs, Victorian Government entity CenITex is still paying its top contractor twice what it pays its CEO, Peter Blades.

A Victorian government contract for $900,000 running until August 2011 has been won by Pharma Insight, the company owned by Thana Velummylum, formerly CenITex’s chief operating officer and now the lead on CenITex’s Efficient Technology Service (ETS) project. That sum is substantially higher than the base salary which Blades himself received last year which was less than $220,000 according to the agency’s annual report which was recently tabled in the Victorian Parliament.

While acknowledging in an interview that “Clearly I’ve earned a lot more money in the past, but I’m passionate about what CenITex can achieve,” Blades refused to discuss the nature or scale of Velummylum’s contract, adding “I don’t need someone’s contract in the media.”

The disparity between what IT contractors can earn and what public service employees must expect will however continue to rankle CenITex personnel, who have already seen the ranks of contractors dramatically thinned by Blades. He started with a workforce which comprised of 70 per cent contractors – now that figure is around 40 per cent and expected to continue to fall.

“We have got people with real credibility. When you do the transformation you need good people. We have people who are good people who have never had that leadership before.”

Blades has been driving a major cultural reform of the organisation which was established as a state owned enterprise by the Victorian Government in July 2008 initially from a merger of the Government’s ICT Shared Services Centre and the Information and Technology Services Group.

But in February this year it received a significant fillip with government funding granted for the ETS programme. With a total funding allocation of $107 million ETS is intended to create a technology platform of core desktop, networking, hosting and log-in services; an integrated service centre; and a customer transfer group which will migrate departments across to CenITex services.

It is the development of this system that is now exercising Velummylum’s talents.

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