Page 2824 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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Longer term cost effectiveness and efficiency initiatives should include:
continued consolidation of administration practices, facilitating an integrated business model across TAMS
a parallel of procurement strategies, including bundling of outsourced services, and Asset Management Plans to determine if there are alternative methods to packaging and supporting requirements which will promote increased savings for TAMS
It also states:
Review of services provided which can be delivered through alternative business models, including
shared services
outsourcing
related services
The role that Shared Services plays is very important. When you have an area of government which has the reach, the tentacles, that Shared Services has, it means that when things go wrong they have potential to go very badly wrong. An example of that is, of course, the W drive saga which happened last month. As has been mentioned in estimates and was played out in the Canberra Times, six or so weeks ago I alerted the Chief Minister to a problem, or a perceived problem, with the common drive of the ACT government computer system. I said that about four files were not intended to be there. I alerted the Chief Minister to it and there was very little action. It appeared that these documents were not meant to be there. In fact, it appeared that they might even be cabinet-in-confidence documents. They also appeared to have information about personnel in the public service, including their names, their employee numbers and even their salary.
When I alerted the Chief Minister to this tremendous breach of security, you would have thought that he would have moved heaven and earth to make sure that this breach was fixed. But instead there was very little action from the Chief Minister, in spite of the obvious security risk. That was on Wednesday, 12 May. By Thursday, 13 May nothing had happened until the afternoon, I believe, when the government set up a new folder within the W drive, the shared drive, called “security”. The irony of having a security folder that was not secure is not lost on me, nor on my colleagues, but it does highlight just how amateur this Chief Minister really is.
I alerted the appropriate authorities that there were these files and they were available. It was not until late on Friday afternoon—that is, Friday the 14th, I believe—that these files were removed. One of those files contained the names, ID numbers and salary information of 15,000 ACT public servants. It is not known how many people accessed it and it is not known exactly how long it has been on that common drive. But one thing is for sure: it was a clear breach of trust. The ACT government, in particular the Chief Minister and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services,
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