The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
The New South Wales Government has embarked on a very Gershon-like process of reviewing its service delivery platforms – its information technology – as part of planning to consolidate 160 government agencies into just 13 super-departments.
Treasurer Eric Roozendaal has appointed economist of Stephen Sedgwick –
a former departmental secretary at Finance and proverbial safe pair of
hands – as chairman of his so-called Better Services and Value
Taskforce.
Sedgwick, former Hawke adviser and 30 veteran of the Australian Public
Service, is a director of Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and
Social Research at the University of Melbourne. He is also a director
of the Asian Development Bank.
Roozendaal has tipped as much public service clout into the Taskforce
as possible, announcing also that the NSW Treasury secretary Michael
Schur and secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet would also
join the task force.
Sedgwick will be supported newly appointed head of the powerful Expenditure Review Directorate within NSW Treasury.
The Taskforce has been given a clear directive to focus on savings and
improved service delivery – but importantly, has been told to apply
special focus to expenditure on IT and legal services.
As with the Lindsay Tanner-appointed Sir Peter Gershon’s review of federal
ICT procurement and management, Roozendaal wants to see how savings can
be derived out of streamlined and consolidated technology operations.
Gershon came up with recommendations for the Commonwealth – accepted by
Cabinet – that he says will save Government $1 billion. And NSW clearly
has an eye on a similar-sized prize.
Very specifically, Roozendaal has told Sedgwick to “rationalise
whole-of-government spending” on IT. Like Gershon, this has enormous
implications for departmental IT operations – in particular on data
centre consolidation and on the use of IT contractors.
As required, temporary independent members with relevant specialist
expertise will be recruited on to review steering committees to provide
advice on specific issues, including IT.
The Better Services and Value Taskforce was announced in the 2009-2010
Budget. It is expected to identify savings to feed into the 2010-2011
Budget process.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
