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Better ICT investment
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Each year, the NSW Government spends around $2 billion on ICT.
What strategic ICT initiatives will provide better outcomes for our state?
This online discussion forum has concluded. You can still browse the site but the discussion area will no longer accept new comments or votes.
Comment 1 24 Nov 2011, 4:15 PM
this is misleading question." better outcome" is full of amburality
Indeed, the following is my suggestion.
1. what is our objective for the improvement ? such as "less delivery time", " better customer-satisfaction rate", " less cost underline", " better quality with better SLA" ?
2. How we measure those objective ?
3.
Comment 2 28 Nov 2011, 2:25 PM
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Comment 3 30 Nov 2011, 6:33 PM
I work for the education department. I wish the department would stop customising everything we buy off the shelf. Everytime the vendor then upgrades their product, we can't upgrade ours because of the customisations. We end up with a Frankenstein system - all alone, left with bugs, problems and lack of desired features that the vendor has otherwise rectified or included in their current product. Just leave it alone. We should work with the vendor's product as it is. If it's not good, the vendor should fix it. Our Remedy service desk is just one example.
Comment 3.1 6 Dec 2011, 10:12 AM
Stu,
I look at the customising apps as employment security, whilst ever a vendor is meeting the customer needs there is no need to have ICT staff.
The truth is that all systems have bugs, no matter what platform or vendor the real task is managing user/management expectations of these systems.
Comment 3.1.1 7 Dec 2011, 5:39 PM
Mylo,
If "all systems have bugs" you have not dealt with the issue of who should "fix" them, other than to say it provides work for DET staff. Is that the official purpose of NSW DET: an employment provider or a body responsible to training people?
Comment 3.1.1.1 8 Dec 2011, 9:45 AM
Richard,
The term "fix" is rather ambiguous statement.
It's unrealistic to have perfect systems if they was such a system ICT Staff levels would be significantly lower.
You refer to DET as two sided. That's absolutely correct to just about every NSW Government Department.
You have the public facing service and then you have the support service (ICT) to help deliver the public facing service.
As for responsibility NSW Government has the worst accountability I've ever seen in and organisation.
Comment 4 30 Nov 2011, 8:42 PM
The employment of more support staff in schools and regions would make the using ICT in schools a a lot easier. We are very understaffed in my region. Better infrastructure in schools would also as be a nice start - I mean things such as power points and data access points. in some cases we haven't got the facility to plug in additional computers let alone discuss
"ICT initiatives"
Comment 5 8 Dec 2011, 9:16 AM
To be blunt - The ICT initiatives should wait for a coherant ICT strategy which needs a couple of elements: 1. Before we upgrade and invest, we should conduct a government wide ICT review to understand every system whether legacy or not and make a comparison of all the solutions across government. Once these baselines are established, the ICT strategy should be about retiring legacy systems, upgrading core systems so that they are at a common level across government, and reducing or removing the duplication of systems and services, or leveraging the total government spend rather than agancy spend 2. more…
Comment 5.1 8 Dec 2011, 4:02 PM
Big Picture,
If you want one central ICT strategy why not merge all ICT and Corporate Services to the Commonwealth and get the benefit accross all of Australia with Datacentres in each state replicating the whole nations data set.
For a strategy like this:- policy, proceedures and standards need to be implace and inforced.
That the political debate going on right now...
The main downside for "NSW Government Contracts" and that prices are 2 to 3 times higher than market rates, the process to procure is long and expensive and adding a central body will just increase the costs.
If it was just about money outsourcing all ICT infrastructure and leasing all equipment would be the best option for Government.
But it's not!
It's about securing our states data and securing the knowledge here in our state for future use and growth and development.
Comment 5.1.1 13 Dec 2011, 2:27 PM
Mylo,
I would disagree with your view that it cannot be done and takes too long. There are significant organisations that live in more complex enviroments than us that are able to achieve this (to varying degrees). The fact that our infrastructure is fragmented, are strategy is inconsistent, our approach to market is not clear enough, and often not competitive enough leads to the problems you elluded to above. The central planning would allow for a better co-ordination, over the medium to longer term) and enable us to get market competitive pricing if we are disciplined.
In regards to outsourcing and leasing, or BPO's and MSAs this has major advantages, however cost is often not one of them. Having been involved in serval BPO's the cost can be extremely high, however the benefits are derived from a single group responsible for maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure. However these arrangements are complex, and need some serious thought. If this was done on a piecemeal basis it would end up being counterproductive and very very expensive.
Comment 5.1.1.1 13 Dec 2011, 3:51 PM
Hi BigPicture,
It can be done. It's just the process is not politically acceptable.
That's why the single group model will not work.
The only way to get the politics out is to terminate all staff and recruit in the open market to ensure you get the best people for the positions required.
And if all positions where KPI based than you'd probably get alot more success stories.
Comment 5.1.1.1.1 20 Dec 2011, 5:03 PM
Tend to agree around the KPI. Howeer I think that since budget is top down, the top should look at the ROI and TCO of their current expenditure program. Typically we seem to massively underestimate the complexity and cost of doing it righ and when it gets delayed and exceeds budget we find it all too difficult.
We neet to have a 5 year roadmap signed by the CEOs/DGs that endorse the future ICT vision and have the program alogned to that. Then set the management KPI's to deliver those in a realistc timieframe. The group single model can work at the infrastructure level....eg. everyone moves off legacy ATM/Frame relay solutions and on to an IP infrastructure. Upgrade everyone to VoIP, continue the move down a stardarised set of ERP solutions and have them integrated and upgradable. Upgrade the offices all to fibre pipes ready for NBN etc. These can all be done generically and now
These can be done. Most of the time the excuse is we don't have the funds or we ran out and took shortcuts.
Comment 6 11 Dec 2011, 6:42 PM
The State Government must work with the Federal Government to fast track the roll out of a High Speed Broadband (HSB) network. HSB would play a key role in building competitive advantage in the Regional Australian economy. It is increasingly becoming a fundamental tool to improve the productive capacity of, and innovation in, Regional Australian businesses. HSB would drive electronic business practices by creating new ways of doing business, enabling efficiencies in corporate and manufacturing systems, and generating new products and services.
By utilising HSB smartly, Regional companies would be better able to move from a product focus to a customer more…
Comment 7 13 Dec 2011, 11:58 AM
Further to Irish's point - spending ICT in regional centres (Evocities) can help encourage more people to make the move. Particularly in respect of professional services - accounting, web development, certain legal work for example - could be sourced from Sydney and/or other capitals and performed remotely with good ICT infrastructure in place. Government should consider further incentives to encourage this.
Comment 8 21 Dec 2011, 1:49 PM
A number of governments (state and internationally) have wasted money on shared services and it has never worked. This should be avoided.
I think that there should be a standard set of applications across back office for all agencies if this is deemed suitable after assessing all requirements. They should not be customised. It would provide better pricing as a whole of government pricing model could be achieved with the vendors. Upgrades of back office applications should not require an indepth business case for DG approval. This is a time consuming process that is unnecessary and ends up with applications being no longer supported or maintenance costs increasing considerably.
A consolidated state own data centre would save the increasing carbon emisions with each agency and reduce costs of cooling, electricity and maintenance. Each agency would still own their own infrastructure and manage their own applications. This could be an interim solution until cloud computing is standardised and more secure for government.
I have plenty of ideas but this will suffice for now.
