Defence ICT Spending: Land of Milk and Honey?

James Riley
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 11:44

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Long term warfare support plans contained in the $60 billion Defence Capability Plan will have enormous short-term implications for the local ICT sector as the department seeks to get its back-office systems in order.

Defence ICT spending in the past four years has been worth triple the money spent by the next three largest Government buyers added together, public sector tech researchers Intermedium says. And that includes mega-agencies Centrelink, the Australian Taxation Office, and Immigration.

Intermedium head of consulting Kevin Noonan says Defence accounts for 30 per cent of all Federal Government ICT contracts – in both volume and value – and that the department is scaling its spend up, not down.

The Defence Capability Plan, released earlier this month, identifies mission-critical battle field support systems and network-centric warfare capabilities that are heavily reliant on Defence sorting out its back-end systems – ranging from data centres to human resources and payroll to transport and logistics.

Multi-billion dollar cost savings that Defence has commited are also contingent on its successfully consolidating and standardising back-end hardware and software infrastructure.

Noonan says those changes represent huge opportunities for the commercial ICT, but also challenges, with the scale of Defence projects likely to put a strain on access to ICT skills, particularly in the Canberra market.

He will tell an Intermedium breakfast focused on Defence spending that the appointment of Greg Farr as Defence CIO – the civilian equivalent of a three-star general – had given ICT the internal political muscle within the Defence establishement to achieve these ambitious back-office programs.

“Previously IT did not have much clout in Defence, but with the appointment of Greg Farr that has changed,” Noonan told iTWire. “Starting with the Defence White Paper, there is the realisation that ICT is absolutely core to the delivering the strategic defence capability in the long term.”

“The first thing they have to do is to get their house in order, and to do that they need to deal with back-office issues that have been around for years,” he said.

Other speakers at the Intermedium Defence Capability Plan breakfast include former Defence secretary Dr Allan Hawke and former Defence CIO Group senior executive Kyrill Brent.

Intermedium has assessed 25 “high ICT intensity” projects within the capability plan oincluding up to $500 million for an improved logistics system; up to $500 million on a Joint Command Support Environment (with decisions to be made either this financial ot next); the Combined Information Environment project worth $100 million; and the Geospatial Information Infrastructure and Services worth up to $500 million.

“There are clearly opportunities and it is a good time for vendors to think about moving into Defence. But Defence is a very different environment, and (vendors) need a difference strategy compared to what they may have used with other departments.”