By Paul Malone
It's a pity that next to no one reads editorials, because just a month ago the Canberra Times published a prescient leader observing that the Australian Public Service lacks the right staff to implement and manage complex technological services.
The truth of this observation was confirmed only last week when Paul Shetler resigned from his post as Australia's chief digital officer.
The Digital Transformation Agency's ex-chief, Paul Shetler, has slammed Centrelink's failures.Credit: Christopher Pearce
In a parting shot published on Linkedin he said the federal government's digital failures underlined the need for the public service to train its own workers and end its reliance on expensive and wasteful private sector outsourcing.
Cheers could be heard across the ACT and comments flooded the Canberra Times website's report of the statement.
Mr Shetler was hired to head the Digital Transformation Office in July 2015.
But DTO work, which was supposed to help transform federal government service delivery, soon bogged down and the office was relaunched in October with a new name, the Digital Transformation Agency.
Mr Shetler was replaced at the helm by career public servant Nerida O'Loughlin.
Given this reorganisation, it was hardly surprising to hear last week that Mr Shetler had resigned his post.
The issues he has raised deserve close attention.
As he pointed out, the government spends more than $16 billion a year on IT and there are real questions about whether we get value for money.
"Over the last 40 years, as we've outsourced technology, there's been a progressive de-skilling of the public service," he said. "The reliance on consultants is remarkable and the amount spent on them is eye-watering. That's just not necessary if we re-skill the public service, which was one of the Prime Minister's goals on establishing the DTO. Government's biggest challenge in the digital age is to completely upskill the public service so that it is well equipped to deliver the change that's needed."
Mr Shetler believes the situation is made worse by the lack of technical and contract management expertise in government.
"Too frequently, we actually ask vendors to tell us what they think we should buy."
The Canberra Times editorial made a similar point a month ago, saying the suspicion remained that the public service lacked the right staff to implement and manage complex technological services.
Because it lacked the expertise needed to manage contractual relationships effectively, the service was often captured by the businesses from which it bought IT services.
Proposals to reduce this reliance on contractors are not new.
In his Review of the Australian Government's Use of Information and Communications Technology published eight years ago, Sir Peter Gershon recommended a 50 per cent reduction over two years in the total number of ICT contractors in use across commonwealth agencies and an increase in the number of public service ICT staff.
He estimated that this should save the government $100 million.
He also wanted to create a whole-of-government Australian Public Service ICT career structure, including training and development programs for ICT professionals in key skills areas.
It is worth noting that Sir Peter was appointed when Labor was in power.
The big push to outsource government functions began under the Howard Government, which was elected in March 1996.
Many old-school senior public servants, including department heads, realised early on that the change would not generate savings. But few, if any, gave this advice frankly and fearlessly to their government bosses. They simply managed the process.
As a result we have today's de-skilled service.
This is not to say that the service did not need a shake-up.
Changes to the cosy job-for-life attitude, work-stress-leave industry and lazy work practices service were required.
But rather than giving managers the right to hire and fire and get on with the job, the human resources management sections promoted a host of fashionable fads – re-engineering, change management, total quality management, 360-degree feedback, etc.
There was limited evidence that these systems worked in the private sector and next to no evidence that they worked in the public sector.
But why let that stop you?
On top of that a view emerged that we must have mobility. A generalist administrator could be appointed to head up a division of the Patents and Trade Marks Office (sorry, now renamed IP Australia so that its title give no indication of what the organisation actually does.) A CSIRO scientist could do a stint in public administration. No expertise required.
This of course applied to information and communications technology sections.
Any old generalist could head up a division and make decisions about what technology was required.
I have only anecdotal support for this conclusion.
Australian Public Service Commission statistics show that in recent years Senior Executive Service officers have increased their length of stay at senior levels. But they also show that about one fifth of the SES have worked in four or more agencies.
Many will also have moved around within an agency.
In my experience, you're lucky if you can find a program manager who's been in the job for more than three years and who is really an expert in his/her field of operations.
With their limited understanding, ICT managers hire consultants to help them manage the process of letting a tender.
It is clear from the census debacle that the Australian Bureau of Statistics did not have the expertise to manage its contractor, IBM.
Often when a provider wins a major contract, it has the agency at its mercy.
Having selected SAP as the preferred supplier for its welfare payments systems, the Department of Human Service is now locked in virtually forever to this software provider.
But two things taxpayers who shelled out $9.6 million to have IBM provide the online census service will be happy to hear is that not only has the computer giant paid compensation, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics has no post-census contracts with IBM.