This popped up last week!
Budget cuts needed after $1b blowout in business registry revealed
The revelations come as Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares to deliver a statement on Thursday that will paint a dire picture of the state of the federal budget, which is forecast to remain in deficit for the next decade.
Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said the cost of the federal government’s $480 million program to consolidate 30 separate business registries into one had blown out to more than $1.5 billion.
“We’re going to have to look and find new sources of savings or new sources of revenue,” Mr Jones told The Australian Financial Review.
“We’ve got a set of budget rules, every new dollar spent has got to be offset with one dollar saved somewhere. So unless an exception can be made for this, we have got a set of budget rules that we’re going to comply with,” he said.
The tax office has so far awarded Accenture more than $196 million in contracts and extensions for the project, taking the cost of the firm’s work to more than $70,000 per day over the life of the contracts, InnovationAus reported this month. New Zealand-based firm Foster Moore won a multimillion-dollar federal government contract to provide registry software.
Mr Jones accused the former Coalition government of dishonesty and said the $1 billion blowout was known for at least a year but not disclosed.
“They either knew about it and kept it from the Australian people, or they were so monumentally incompetent not to know that a major project [wasn’t going well],” he said.
“There is no way of avoiding additional cost. The question is how much that additional cost is going to be and whether there are any mechanisms to reduce it or to recover some of that cost.”
Stuart Robert, who is now the Coalition’s financial services spokesman, told the Financial Review he took Mr Jones’ comments with a grain of salt.
“Treasury are obliged to report all government decisions and all other circumstances that may have a material effect on the economic and fiscal outlook that were in existence before the issue of the writs for the election under charter of budget honesty in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO),” he said.
“Given there was no such mention in the recent PEFO, the question needs to be asked if Stephen Jones is being honest.”
Read more and weep!
It is hard to imagine how a project can be a billion dollars over budget and running years late but that seems to be the case and worse no one really knew bout the shambles until the new Government took over apparently!
There is little more to be said until the Audit Office comes out with a forensic report to tell us just how this f..k up happened.
Wanders off shaking head.
David.
9 comments:
Decision makers in the Federal government are dominated by lawyers, economists, bureaucrats and political advisers. Very few, if any, know how the world really works and how to build things that actually deliver useful outcomes. But they think they do.
Can anyone spell Robodebt? MyHR? Climate Science?
This is borderline criminal, at best gross negligence resulting in the immediate sacking of those involved and all SES and above demoted to an APS 4.
I have seen consultants farming clients before but this looks criminal
what @7:42 seems to be saying is that the government can never really specify what they want accurately in a contract with a service provider.
It's no surprise then that the service provider has trouble delivering what the government wants, if the government doesn't know what it wants.
Don't blame the service provider, blame the government departments.
“We’ve got a set of budget rules, every new dollar spent has got to be offset with one dollar saved somewhere. So unless an exception can be made for this, we have got a set of budget rules that we’re going to comply with,” he said.
I wonder who's rule that is. It certainly hasn't been applied in the past ten years of NEHTA/PCEHR ADHA/MyHR
The $3b money pit has meant that it hasn't been spent on useful things like aged care and the homeless.
I see Mark Butler is most concerned about the state of GPs - they are leaving in droves, new ones are not being educated.
Just as well the Department of Health spent all that money on the Practice improvement Program (PIP) and ePIP and My Health Record. Where would GPs be without all that help they have been given?
If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
I bet there's no study/review into the return that was supposed to come from all that money.
I wonder if anyone has told GPs about the wonderful health ecosystem ADHA is busy working on.
Of course, it could be one reason why they're leaving - technology overload. Turning skilled and humane doctors into little cogs in a big healthcare machine, constantly being monitored and subject to rules, regulations and bureaucratic processes.
Reminds me of an old saying: flogging will continue until morale improves.
Well David, if you are shaking your head over this $1 billion blowout, can you help me CBC understand please what the original My Health Record was budgeted to cost and by how much has that budget blown out. Should I be shaking my head too or is the MyHR within budget?
I have never seen a consolidated budget for the 12 years of tomfoolery!
Anyone have the goss?
David.
NEHTA published a blueprint for the PCEHR now the My Health Record.
Version 2.0, FINAL, 30th Sept 2011
You can get a copy here but you need to register.
https://developer.digitalhealth.gov.au/specifications/ehealth-foundations/ep-1048-2011/nehta-1026-2011
It says this:
"1.3.1 Benefits Estimate
Deloitte Consulting has estimated that an investment of $2.6 billion over 10 years in EHealth in Australia will yield a benefit of $5.7 billion in net present value over 10 years [AHMC08]. The main source of benefit is derived from time saved related to manual information handing and a reduction in avoidable hospital days related to adverse events. Additional benefits are also seen in the areas of improved chronic disease management, reduced unnecessary repeat testing and reduction in travel.
Booz Allen also looked at how EHealth value could be better optimised and constructed an investment model [BOOZ2010]. The Booz Allen model looked at benefits from adopting a range of EHealth solutions. When the EHealth investment model is used to calculate the economic value of these benefit categories, Booz Allen found that the successful rollout and adoption of core EHealth capabilities in Australia are expected to be worth an estimated AU$7.6 billion annually by 2020. Approximately two-thirds (AU$5.1 billion) of the quantifiable EHealth benefits in Australia can be attributed to two benefit categories: reduced errors and enhanced adherence to best practices."
The Booz Allen model is available here:
https://vdocument.in/optimizing-e-health-value-viewpoint.html?page=1
Page 13 has this
"Moreover, the results only quantify direct savings in the healthcare system itself. They do not include economic flow-on effects that can be substantial. For example, a GDP impact of between AU$7 billion and AU$9 billion by 2019 as a result of a shared electronic health record service in Australia has been estimated."
Maybe somebody independent can do a study and tell us what actually happened. AFAIK, nobody in or associated with government has ever published any estimate of the net financial benefits of the PCEHR/MyHR
Likewise Bernard - I have never seen any actual outcome / implementation reports.
Anyone know anything?
David.
Post a Comment