NSW govt flies in 31 457 workers for shared services

The NSW government has revealed the onshore contingent of its GovConnect outsourced shared services program delivered by Unisys and Infosys includes 31 overseas workers on 457 visas.

The state announced in June last year that it would hand off the finance, payroll, HR and IT work previously done by government-run outfit ServiceFirst to the pair in a deal worth $215 million.

The deal is expected to save it $20 million per year compared to the cost of running ServiceFirst.

At the time the government said it had negotiated a 70:30 split between onshore and offshore workers in consultation with unions.

Between them, Unisys and Infosys have 144 offshore workers from their Indian bases working on the NSW account.

But the state government revealed in recent budget estimates that 31 overseas workers have been flown in on 457 visas to form part of the 262-strong contingent of 'onshore' workers.

In answers to questions on notice, the state government said the 31 457 workers had been hired to “monitor and control the operating systems on behalf of the NSW government”.

“They are domain experts who have been deputed to service NSW government, and they will continue in the role,” the office of finance minister Dominic Perrottet said in a statement to iTnews.

The workers' specialist skills are across human resources, finance, procurement and SAP domains, and in Infosys quality and governance frameworks, Perrottet's office said.

"In order to ensure a successful transition to GovConnect, this detailed knowledge of Infosys’s systems and processes is required, including for the purposes of training local employees," he said.

"In accordance with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's requirements, any 457 visa holders working on GovConnect are employed to meet critical skills shortages."

Budget estimates also revealed that only 22 former ServiceFirst workers made the switch to the new outsourced shared services scheme.

Of an estimated 254 former ServiceFirst workers, the government handed out 147 voluntary redundancies and 14 job swaps.