Vic Govt to sack CenITex board

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blog The Victorian Government is set to remove the board of troubled state IT shared services agency CenITex, according to a report published by Melbourne newspaper The Age late last week. The newspaper reports (click here for the full article):

“In the Victorian Government Gazette yesterday, CenITex was declared a ”reorganising body” under the State Owned Enterprises Act 1992. This allows the government to effectively remove the board and appoint an administrator.”

I need hardly go into the ongoing issues which CenITex has suffered over the past few years at this point, nor highlight the many articles which detailed just how much the agency has been paying some of the talent it has retained. However, in case readers have forgotten, The Age’s article contains a litany of CenITex’s faults over the years. My personal favourite was the time the agency took down thousands of public sector email accounts for up to a week. Or there’s also the time the police were called in to investigate a contract which CenITex staffers had allegedly awarded to themselves. You know, normal run of the mill stuff for CenITex.

11 COMMENTS

  1. “My personal favourite was the time the agency took down thousands of public sector email accounts for up to a week. ”

    Except it was because the departments that were affected didn’t want to pay for more servers/resources to keep the mail system going.

    “there’s also the time the police were called in to investigate a contract which CenITex staffers had allegedly awarded to themselves”

    And this was contractors, so sure they were contracted by CenITex but yeah.

    “nor highlight the many articles which detailed just how much the agency has been paying some of the talent it has retained”

    eh? Most contractors that they want to retain are being offered on going positions and so VPS pay or else they’ll just be cut lose, well that’s what’s been happening as of late.

    • “Except it was because the departments that were affected didn’t want to pay for more servers/resources to keep the mail system going.”

      So the CenITex response was just to shut it down? That doesn’t appear to make sense, no matter who was responsible. It also shows that the govt shared services model of internal billing has wider problems.

      As for the police matter, it hardly matters. Permanent staff or contractors, they were acting for CenITex.

      And on the pay issue, I’m not talking about low or mid-level people here. I’m talking highly paid high-ranking executives. I don’t want to link to the articles concerned, but there’s a lot of info in the public domain on this issue.

  2. soooo… after all these months, the Victorian government is actually making a decision about something?

    …anything?

    …wow

  3. Great decision if the non-remunerated Board is removed. Now:

    (1) change models for data/application control and delivery to encourage market innovation (2) shift desktop, hosting and network services to the private sector and (3) reform the accountability framework under the Financial Management framework to make Departmental CIOs accountable inc. the CenITex Board.

  4. Putting a bunch of public servants together and calling it a different name is still a public service organisation.
    Ratio of duds to doers is absolutely insane, worse than big 4 or big telcos (been there too).
    Total lack of people management, lack of architectural rigor (either they were asleep at the wheel or not given the authority to do things properly, in any event they all leave in a year or two anyway after cashing the big bucks).
    Contractors running contractors (ETS), what did you think was going to happen.
    On top of all that the factors that Renai has already identified re: govt departments constantly shooting themselves in the foot indirectly by doing what they do best: obstruct any attempts to get things done.

    Just a pity that so many undeserving people made out like bandits whilst good staff on VPS wages do all the lifting and get left nothing

  5. Ditto re: VPS people doing the heavy lifting. Almost three quarters of CenITex’s workforce – close to 75 per cent – are on VPS wages and making CenITex work. The many great achievements of CenITex, such as rolling out collaboration tools, email and software across government needs (and deserves) to be recognised. An organisation that each and every day is delivering more for Government in Vic.

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