Ongoing multimillion-dollar deficits are dogging the Department of Internal Affairs’ Common Capabilities ICT procurement programme.
In June, the Auditor-General reported the programme was at “significant fiscal risk” with estimates its memorandum account could book a closing deficit of $24.2 million in the year to the end of June 2023, up from $19.8 million in 2022.
The cost of running the programme was forecast to break-even from the 2021 financial year, but that had not occurred.
DIA developed and administers a number of common capabilities ICT services that can be used by any central or local government agency. Examples include the common web platform, enterprise content management as a service and desktop as a service.
The deficits are not new, having persisted at least since the common capabilities were brought together under one account in July 2015.
The department told Reseller News it had now put measures in place to contain the growth of the deficit resulting in a better than budgeted end of year result for 2020/21.
“We continue to carefully manage costs and progress a business case focussed on a longer term approach to future sustainable funding,” a spokesperson said.
The department said it was working with stakeholders to explore the range of options available to reduce the deficit including how we establish and charge for services.
“We know a sustainable funding approach will ensure existing and new services continue to be available to the public sector,” the spokesperson said.
Financial benefits achieved through government being treated as a single customer continued to accrue for consuming agencies.
“The projected accumulated savings for government to 2021, from common capabilities, framework agreements and other arrangements are $793 million,” the spokesperson said. “This is forecast to rise to accumulated savings of $937 million total in 2022.”
These numbers represented total cumulative savings across all agencies since 2012.
The Auditor-General also reported some select committee members had expressed concern at service performance in the Government Digital Services appropriation during the department’s 2020/21 annual review.
“Of the nine indicators, one was achieved, three were not achieved, and five did not have information available
to assess their achievement,” the Auditor-General’s report said. “One of the measures not achieved was that all-of-government ICT Common Capability products (where the department is the lead agency) meet service-level agreements.”
The department also noted several service failures in 2020, which included major service outages and ongoing issues with Vodafone connectivity.
In this year’s estimates, the same measure was estimated as “not achieved” during 2021/22.
The Department responded to the concerns raised by the committee noting some existing strategies and the work programme for Government Digital Services had been reviewed and refreshed and the existing performance measures did not reflect the work undertaken.
Plans were in place to review the existing measures to align with the current work programme.
