The 2012 Budget contains an item which directly affects our ExecCorro for Government suite and in particular what Random has been working on in partnership with Federal Agencies for many years.
Our latest Web 2.0 version of ExecCorro for Government R8.0 should be the system of choice for a whole of government rollout as the system is used heavily already in the Commonwealth, works with many technologies, provides the smoothest transition to a web-based solution with all the features required by Government agencies. However, the budget has revealed that DEEWR and the Department of Finance plan to compete directly in the software market, spending over $10M initially to build a competitive system, and then leave the agencies to fend for themselves in regard to operational support.
This approach flies in the face of industry development, assisting small business and jeopardises export earnings for Australia.
The section responsible in the Department of Finance, AGIMO, despite being approached several times, has not engaged Random Computing Services at all during this process. It has conducted an in-house review over 14 months of Parliamentary Workflow Systems while blocking any business as usual income by asking agencies to not procure any commercial PWS solutions.
While the concept is sound to have all agencies run one system, we totally disagree with the conduct of the review and the suggested outcome. The cost to the taxpayer with this approach will be substantially higher than working with existing vendors and using their proven commercial solutions and support. What happened to a fair go?
While AGIMO should be issuing policies on interoperability, it has clearly gone a step further in deciding to turn the Commonwealth into a software house and compete against the very industry it should be supporting.
Attached is our vendor statement on the conduct and potential outcomes of the AGIMO review, and what can be done to improve the situation.