Peter Grant: I'm not like other Govt CIOs

Grant is "no fan" of the Gershon report - the review that recommended across-the-board cuts to Federal Government IT spending that won backing from Canberra.

Peter Grant

He believes it's an approach that would not work in the state of Queensland.

Grant takes particular exception to Gershon recommendation number three, which saw a 15 percent cut in business-as-usual funding to agencies.

“Just taking a flat number off the top of agency budgets penalises agencies that are already efficient and rewards those that were not," he says.

"The latter can remove 15 percent easily without any pain at all."

Grant also raises concerns that blanket cuts assume government agencies are not going to innovate.

"If somebody wanted to change the business model for IT, the Gershon review made that difficult with the KPIs put on them, based on how they were working before," he says.

Grant says there are more effective means to improve the operational efficiency of IT than the strategies proposed and accepted under Gershon.

For example, Queensland is looking for opportunities to remove duplication across the government.

“If you could imagine, a system selected some years ago for very good business reasons may get to a point where it could be replaced with a better alternative (one with lower operating and whole-of-life costs for example)," he says.

"Removing duplication and intelligent portfolio management has underpinned Queensland's approach to cost reduction".

Skills shortages

Grant identifies addressing ICT skills shortages as a priority for his current term.

"You just can't bring in 500 new people, even though you want hundreds," he says.

"If you bring them all in at the same level you have no one to mentor them and no one to grow their career, you create problems doing that, too."

The problem won't be resolved in the next 12 months.

"We have to develop a position where we can bring [recruits] in over time. We have to accept that work not done in the past is causing this problem now."

The Queensland Government already has a skills program called ICT's "most wanted".

The program has run twice, with a total of 91 participants. Another 48 participants are due to start next month.

Grant says a separate IT graduate program attracts some 600 applicants each year with up to 40 accepted into the program.

"We have the cream of the graduates to start with. On top of that there is a two year program where they have a whole bunch of skills developed around being really good professionals."

Some 73 percent of the graduate intake remains after a year, which Grant says is remarkable given the demand for these positions from industry and other governments.

"All the positions in the program are temporary. When the program finishes they all have to win jobs in Government. Most do."