Tanner slices up Gershon reinvestment fund

The Government today announced 44 projects from 20 different agencies that will share $230 million of its $502.4 million ICT Business-As-Usual Reinvestment Fund.

The fund is a result of the 2008 Gershon review, which recommended that the Government reduce inefficiencies in its everyday IT activities.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner expected efficiency gains from the newly announced 44 projects to generate further savings of $78.9 million over four years, and $23.9 million annually thereafter.

A further $271.1 million remains in the Reinvestment Fund to be allocated over the next three years.

Projects listed by agency

Attorney-General's Department:

• Data integration project to consolidate applications that manage staff identity and access to business systems.

Australian Customs and Border Protection Service:

• Customs Connect Facility Environment remediation to prepare data for migration to a new system.
• Data warehouse platform consolidation to consolidate cargo and passenger information to improve intelligence and detection activities. 
• Email archival project to provide robust access to long-term archives of e-mail. 
• Interactive Reporting Environment remediation to replace legacy systems that manage cargo and passenger reporting. 
• Migration of services from a Legacy Windows NT 4.0 domain to Windows 2003.
• Mainframe optimisation to improve communications to and from the cargo industry.
• Procurement of perpetual software licenses for products currently purchased on a subscription basis. 
• Unified Communications to replace a fragmented in-house and outsourced approach to its unclassified network infrastructure.
• WAN optimisation to allow faster transfer of intelligence and clearance information between frontline staff.

Australian Electoral Commission:

• Migration of its enterprise reporting solution to enhance collaboration with State and Territory electoral authorities.

Australian Human Rights Commission:

• Replacement of its 19-year-old Complaints Database Application that handles and manages records of complaints.

Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC):

• $5.1m project to relocate and consolidate existing data centres by mid-2011.

Australian Trade Commission:

• The engagement of experts to coordinate a tender that aims to reducing international telephony costs.

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Bureau of Meteorology:

• $0.5m project to establish common software architecture for an Australian Data Archive of Meterology.
• $2.0m for a Regional Infrastructure Virtualisation Project to increase reliability and reduce operational risks of distributing forecasts and warnings in six state offices.
• $0.9m to upgrade business system applications, consolidating multiple systems into a single system.

Centrelink:

• $8.0m ICT shared services project to develop a common system to simplify service delivery across the Human Services portfolio.
• $14.7m virtualisation project to enable Centrelink to utilise the current server fleet more efficiently.

Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry:

• $0.9m identity lifecycle management solution to integrate the access management to business systems, reducing manual handling.
• $0.8m thin client solution to improve ICT services to regional and rural Biosecurity Services Group offices.

Department of Finance and Deregulation:

• Comprehensive redevelopment of Central Budget Management System to establish automated data processing and enhanced reporting capability. Financial details have not been disclosed.
• Consolidate application holdings and maintenance with an aim of decreasing the number of servers while leveraging existing technology.
• $11.9m to implement a whole-of-Government Data Centre Strategy.
• Reduce number of databases by improving efficiency and utilisation of existing machines.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade:

• $40.0m to pay for part of a workflow solution that supports efficient passport application processing, contributes to the National Identity Security Strategy, and is callable of managing projected growth in passport issue rates for at least the next ten years. 
• Legacy Microsoft Access database conversion to improve the management of critical business functions.
• Removal of 55 legacy Lotus Notes applications and services to enable the migration to a standardised ICT platform.

Department of Human Services: 

• Automated Outbound Dialling Pilot to test a new approach that minimises the high number of unsuccessful attempts to contact customers of the Child Support Program.

Department of Veterans' Affairs:

• Rationalisation of Application Platforms to migrate from its legacy code base to a new environment via automated software code conversion technology.

Federal Court of Australia:

• eCourtroom Integration to meet the growing demand from judges, the legal community and public for technologies that can improve the efficiency of service delivery.

Geoscience Australia:

• $2.9m to replace its legacy data storage systems and provide for greatly increased scalability of data storage capacity.

Insolvency & Trustee Service Australia:

• $0.1m to introduce email archiving to provide improved access to old email records.
• Insolvency & Trustee Service Australia: $0.4m to update the Debt Agreement Service to provide an online facility to SMBs for electronic receipt and information sharing.

Medicare Australia:

• $3.6m for automating pathology claims processing to reduce the need for manual intervention in processing.
• $2.0m to remove hard coding from business rules and lists, resulting in a more flexible ICT system.

Migration Review Tribunal and Refugee Review Tribunal:

• To develop and implement archiving and tiered storage for all Migration Review Tribunal and Refugee Review Tribunal data and documents.

National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT):

• $0.1m to upgrade its electronic document and records management system into the latest stable market release.
• $0.2m replacement of standalone office legacy phone services with VoIP across eight interstate offices.

Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman:

• Public Contact Voice Networking Replacement to improve the quality of service offered to complainants contacting the office by telephone.

Details of four projects were not provided as the projects were deemed commercial-in-confidence.