WA to pay $370m to scrap Shared Services

Australia's state governments move away from shared services

The final stages of the dissolution of WA’s shared services body come as a number of other states across the country begin to move away from internally provided shared corporate services.

NSW is reportedly planning to ditch its shared services body BusinessLink, with a transition plan to be implemented following a review. The Minister for Family and Community Services, Pru Goward, has declined to confirm an intention to dissolve the unit and has deferred any comment until the review is complete.

The Victorian Government is set to make its shared services agency CenITex a broker of IT rather than a provider.

Following an internal review last year which found the state did not have the funds to upgrade 75 percent of its legacy desktop, hosting and storage environments, CenITex CEO Michael Vanderheide announced to staff the preferred option was to take all core services to the market.

CenITex has been issuing requests for proposals since June and will continue doing so until March next year. It plans to transition to a new operating model after suppliers are locked down in July 2014.

Additionally, late last month the Queensland government announced Queensland Shared Services would be overhauled before it faces competition from the open market.

The Queensland Government adopted a recommendation of the state Commission of Audit report to remove the mandate for compulsory involvement with QSS, and has begun the process to develop a revised model which would see it compete with the market for shared services.

QSS runs finance, procurement, human resources, facilities and mail support services for 20 Queensland state agencies.

Queensland is also preparing to divest the State’s main technology services provider CITEC as a result of the Commission of Audit.