British efficiency expert Sir Peter Gershon has suggested agency budget cuts totalling $540 million, castigating the federal public sector for poor governance mechanisms on technology projects and an ICT spending model which gave individual departments and agencies too much autonomy.
Sir Peter Gershon will return to Canberra next week as the British efficiency guru gears up to deliver a landmark report to finance and deregulation minister Lindsay Tanner on how the federal public sector could better spend its annual $6 billion IT budget.
Minister for Finance Lindsay Tanner yesterday said he didnt know how long it would take to reignite IT spending in Canberra following the Gershon review.
The Federal Government has taken a step into the Web 2.0 world, with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Finance Minister Lindsey Tanner starting a Digital Economy blog to stoke the opinion fires of digital policy.
The Federal Government today launched a taskforce to investigate web 2.0's ability to make government more transparent and increase community engagement.
The long-term net impact of Gershon's idealistic review will realistically be negligible at best and at worst will prove to be a distraction for years to come.
Gershon's recommendations are consistent with those of other jurisdictions that have undertaken similar reviews, and are aimed at giving the ICT centralisation/decentralisation pendulum a shove back towards the centre. This is, however, easier said than done.
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