NSW Govt ditches 'unsuitable' e-recruitment contract for list

The NSW Government will move away from appointing a single provider of e-recruitment and human capital management systems across the state when the current contracts expire this year, in favour of offering agencies a choice of options via an approved list.

The state government has been using Oracle’s Taleo since 2009 for its state-wide e-recruitment system.

But the solution is not considered appropriate by a number of agencies, including NSW Health which opted against Taleo and implemented its own e-recruitment system based on Mercury technology.

Similarly, the Taleo solution proved “too complex” for agencies that required only standard recruitment processes.

The Taleo and Mercury contracts expire mid-way through this year and will not be replaced with a one-product approach, the state government has revealed.

Despite the Taleo system’s “clear efficiency and consistency benefits”, the state decided the “critical functionality limitations” which forced NSW Health to implement its own system, coupled with “significant enhancement and integration costs for large agencies with complex recruitment needs”, made the case for a list offering agencies a choice of solutions was strong.

The state will take the same approach with its human capital management (HCM) systems.

“Based on this experience and the increasing availability of flexible systems to meet user needs, the NSW government has agreed that market retesting establish lists of HCM and e-recruitment products meeting essential requirements that are common to government agencies, rather than a single product,” it said in tender documents.

“This will make it possible for clusters [of agencies] to select the solution best suited to their needs (the intention is for the strategy to be led by the cluster/ lead department on behalf of all agencies in the cluster).”

The state government will not award any contracts following the request for information (RFI) process currently underway, but will endorse a number of products for listing in its NSWBuy catalogue.

In accordance with its 2012 ICT Strategy the government said it prefers pay-as-you-go, software-as-a-service models, to “avoid the expense and implementation costs associated with on-premise delivery models”.

It expects to notify successful vendors of their inclusion on the lists by June this year.

Arrangements for the Taleo and Mercury systems have been extended for interim use until the new lists are created.