Iemma Gov announces plan for ICT plan

The NSW Government has announced an initiative aimed at shaving off $0.5 billion off its ICT investment over the next four years.

‘People First – A new direction for ICT in NSW’ will seek to implement a coordinated approach to NSW's ICT investment through the application of common standards, systems and processes between government departments and agencies.

The initiative aims to reduce spending on back-office applications and infrastructure by consolidating common technology and moving to whole-of-government purchasing.

Spending would instead be largely directed to services like e-learning, patient care and police operations, NSW Minister for Commerce John Della Bosca said.

The plan comes at a time in which demand for new services, constrained budgets and ageing technologies presented a serious challenge for CIOs in government agencies, NSW Government CIO Paul Edgecumbe said.

People First - which largely amounts to a plan to have a plan on IT spending - would address these issues in two phases, Edgecumbe said.

The initial phase would ‘determined the goals, priority groups and ICT strategies’ of the states’ ICT investment, while the second phase would see the ‘development of detailed ICT technical plans, project justification and implementation plans.’

The overall plan will be broken up into five priority groups, eight strategies and seventeen programs of work, which in turn are expected to generate more than 100 independent projects.

The government said despite this, each project was expected to have its own business case, timeline and milestones and be capable of being implemented independently.

The People First initiative can be viewed at: http://www.gcio.nsw.gov.au/docs.asp?CAT=2066