There was a lot on the topic last week:
First we had this:
Thursday, 22 September 2022 07:29
Audit office releases scathing report on DTA's ignoring of procurement rules
The Australian National Audit Office has released a scathing report about the Digital Transformation Agency's handling of nine selected procurements, saying it "did not conduct the procurements effectively and its approach fell short of ethical requirements".
In the review, released on Wednesday, the ANAO also said for these nine procurements the DTA failed to manage contracts effectively and, while it had a procurement framework, the implementation and oversight of it were weak. The original value of seven of these procurements was $25.4 million, but the amount blew out to $55.7 million by July 2022.
The review said of one direct-approach procurement that the contract value had increased 40 times from $121,000 to close to $5 million over two years.
This procurement involved a direct approach to a company known as Nous Group for myGov funding case support. Initially, Services Australia told DTA in March 2020 that some Nous contractors were available for hire.
The company agreed to begin work on myGov updates with a change to a Services Australia contract, but began the work before the contract was finalised. The new contract was signed on 25 May 2020 for $121,000 and then varied 10 times to take its final value to $4.9 million.
Another case study involved a direct approach by the DTA to the company CyberCX, a firm that was set up in 2019 with former Optus Business managing director, John Paitaridis, as its head, and Alastair MacGibbon, former head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, as chief strategy officer.
This procurement was for a new initiative called Harden Australian Government IT, which was to involve consideration of secure cyber hubs.
In this case, 16 suppliers who were on the digital marketplace were approached and five tenders were obtained and evaluated. But in the end all were ignored and CyberCX was given the contract in December 2020, for an initial amount of $1 million.
More here:
Then we had this.
Govt handpicked Deloitte for myGov upgrade
Justin Hendry
Editor
Concerns have also been raised with a similar approach used to source a funding case for a future stage of the myGov update, with the subsequent contract with Nous Group increasing to “40 times its original value” in two years after a procurement process that fell short of “ethical behaviour requirements”.
Both procurements were probed by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) in its audit released on Wednesday, which revealed the DTA failed to follow the Commonwealth Procurement Rules (CPRs) on nine key procurements worth almost $55 million.
Deloitte was contracted to deliver “enhancements to the myGov portal” under the ‘myGov Upgrade Horizon 1’ procurement in March 2020, having initially handed it $1 million to develop a prototype for a new government digital experience platform, dubbed GovDXP.
The audit found the DTA approached Deloitte directly for the work despite it being a panellist on the Digital Marketplace and accepted a “verbal offer”, as it did with Nous Group for the myGov funding case support procurement.
The contract – which was not published on AusTender until 52 days later in breach of Commonwealth Procurement Rules – was “incorrectly” reported as $9.5 million on AusTender but was later revised up to $19.5 million.
Since then, the value of the contract has climbed to $28.1 million – an increase of 44 per cent. Together with other contracts relating to the myGov refresh, the federal government has paid the US consulting giant more than $45 million for its work.
The ANAO said the discrepancy was only discovered by the DTA “one month after the contract had been signed”, despite several reports citing the incorrect figure just days after the contract was published.
The audit also found the DTA reported the contracts as resulting from an ‘open tender’ despite approaching the contractors “directly outside of the Digital Marketplace portal” for both myGov procurements.
With the use of a direct approach, the ANAO said there was no evidence the myGov Upgrade Horizon 1 procurement was conducted in line with the CPRs, with no procurement plan developed and no consideration of value of money.
The rationale for directly approaching Deloitte for the work is not explicitly laid out in the audit. The DTA cites the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic for several other procurements conducted in early 2020 but failed to set aside the CPRs relating to the pandemic for any of the procurements.
The audit also found the myGov refresh “did not have a record of the spending advice or approval”, calling into question whether the DTA provided complete advice to decision-makers on value for money and whole-of-life procurement value.
For the procurement of the myGov funding case support from Nous Group, the audit found the original $121,000 contract – sourced using a direct approach – climbed to $4.9 million – an increase of 40 times, or 3,894 per cent.
The audit also indicates that Nous Group began its work before a variation to an existing Services Australia contract had been finalised, and that when a contract was developed it was done so through emails with the supplier.
“The scope of an additional contract was developed between the Nous Group and the DTA through emails,” the audit said.
“The contract was reported on AusTender as an ‘open tender’ through the Digital Marketplace, although it was never advertised on the Digital Marketplace, the Digital Marketplace portal was not used, and no tender evaluation report was completed.
More here:
https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-handpicked-deloitte-for-mygov-upgrade/
And lastly a related story here:
No proof COVIDSafe app developers were delivering
Joseph Brookes
Senior Reporter
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) also failed to notice multiple overpayments to the company totaling nearly $400,000, which have not been paid back six-months after being identified. The agency was made responsible for Australia’s controversial contact tracing app early in the pandemic.
According to a scathing new review of the DTA’s ICT procurement, agency officials decided to “bypass the usual process” to select the developers of COVIDSafe because it was related to the pandemic.
They would later fail to notice overpayments or properly monitor exactly what the company was delivering.
COVIDSafe was officially scrapped last month by the new Labor government, which called it a “colossal waste of more than $21 million of taxpayers money” after it discovered just 17 unique close contacts in the two years despite millions of downloads.
The development of the controversial app followed a procurement process that had no or non-compliant evaluation plans, criteria or request for documentation, according to the Australian National Audit Office, which examined the procurement along with eight others in a damning review of the DTA’s processes.
The DTA approached and selected only one company to develop COVIDSafe, Australian technology services firm Delv.
Delv had already been engaged by the Health department before responsibility for the contact tracing app was transferred to the DTA, which used its Digital Marketplace panel arrangement to transition the company by listing the work for just two days.
This appears to have been a formality, with Delv the only supplier approached and quickly awarded a $1.8 million contract to develop the app in March 2020.
It meant there were ineffective processes in place to determine if taxpayer money was being well spent, as is required by Commonwealth Procurement Rules.
The contract has since climbed to $6 million through two revisions, but value for money was never discussed in any of the spending approvals, the ANAO found.
The DTA was also unable to “produce any documentation to demonstrate that performance had been monitored”. The agency told the ANAO the contract manager for the COVIDSafe app development is no longer employed by the DTA and it could not find “any relevant records”.
More here:
https://www.innovationaus.com/no-proof-covidsafe-app-developers-were-delivering/
Here is a link to the full Audit:
This particular report might be a very good place for the new planned National Integrity Commission to start work! I envisage quite rich pickings would be found!
Maybe the Integrity Commission can give us what we need?
David.
2 comments:
You would expect some level of entitlement after all there is even legislation in place to ensure taxpayers money is at least governed. I sense this is a rip of a rather large iceberg.
Government process are to ridged and operate on ticking boxes - very easily to implement workarounds.
...but value for money was never discussed in any of the spending approvals"
There's a thing. That's the Health Department's super-power - never ask about value for money, just promise and potential.
Post a Comment