blog State Governments around Australia don’t really have a great track record when it comes to technology right now. Victoria and Queensland have demonstrated a complete inability to successfully deliver major ICT projects, and they and the other states also have wide-ranging programs with fundamental ICT service delivery to departments and agencies. However, major ICT projects still need to go ahead. Today’s winner is Transport for NSW, which, iTNews reports (we recommend you click here for the full article), has a major ERP systems overhaul on the cards:
“Transport for NSW is about to embark on a $150 million project to consolidate ERP systems across the state’s transport portfolio.”
To my mind, this is the perfect project to be set up for failure. It has all the ‘danger’ flags: A major consolidation of business systems, a huge budget, projected savings and so on. We’ve seen precisely this kind of project go haywire in multiple states over the past half-decade. Let’s hope Transport for NSW’s project is gifted with incredible project governance and stays on track. Because the evidence shows that this is the kind of project that the NSW Auditor-General will be very, very interested in in about five years’ time. I’m not kidding: This is a perfect candidate for a problem IT project, a few years down the track. I hope those running it are very aware of that fact.
Image credit: Whrelf Siemens, royalty free
Renai, whilst I agree there are always opportunities for improved governance and learnings from projects across government agencies, not all government ICT related projects are failures.
“not all government ICT related projects are failures”
Right now, in State Government, yes, they pretty much demonstrably are. I haven’t seen many successful projects delivered at all in the past several years, of the major projects at least. Happy to be corrected.
I’d argue the NSW Trade & Investment ERP consolidation and business transformation project has been successfully delivered. Perhaps it is the exception to the rule, however there has been significant notice and interest being taken by other government agencies on why and how so they can look at following a similar approach, and just Perhaps I am biased.
Good call Renai.
ERP projects are hard enough when you are spending your own money but when it comes to taxpayer funded…DISASTER. NSW Trade & Investment ERP consolidation ? How many users? The bigger the projects the more infighting and personal agenda’s are in the minds of stakeholders..
Comments are closed.