It would seem that Lindsay Tanner is following in the footsteps of many politicians before him and it seems we still have not got a member of parliament that gets IT. Previously we had the program of massive projects which delivered all of the government IT into the hands of overseas companies who had the financial clout to carry the risk. What did it deliver to the taxpayer a number of fiascos and a lot of money went in effect offshore. Then some realisation that the large collective units where hindering the delivery as they were not flexible enough. Now we have a centralised procurement service, that should produce a nice little bottleneck further reducing the capabilities of delivery in Canberra.

Mr Tanner what government needs is a strong CIO’s office which will provide overarching direction for the delivery of IT services, They need to deliver clear guidelines about technologies to utilise and Australian companies should be weighted with a preference. The vendor of supply is of no consequence and each department should now be able to take its own choices. If Mr Tanner your procurement offices purpose is to provide a single vendor for a product such as databases or middleware across the whole of government then you are travelling to failure and you have doomed the Australian IT sector to bit players in the Federal government. The current skills shortage is hampering delivery of IT in Canberra, that will remain for the foreseeable future, however, a centralised office will do little to improve that. A strong CIO’s office should do better.

Good luck Lindsay it sounds like you might need it

See ya round