Communications dept out of contact after crash

Source: AAP|Published: Thursday September 7, 6:51 PM

Canberra: The federal communications department has suffered a glitch, with its outsourced website crashing just hours before a damning report on information technology outsourcing was tabled in parliament.

Both the official departmental website and Communications Minister Richard Alston's personal website were down for more than 24 hours after an equipment failure at about 1.30pm (AEDT) yesterday.

The websites were still out of action at 5.30pm (AEDT) today but a spokesman for Senator Alston said technicians had been working on them through the night.

He denied the crash had anything to do with outsourcing, and rejected suggestions it was an embarrassment for the government.

'Technical issues do crop up from time to time,' he said.

An auditor-general's report tabled soon after the crash found the cost of implementing six IT tenders, one of which included the communications department, had blown out to $40.38 million.

The report said the contracts were running two years behind schedule, and some of the financial evaluation of bids was not in line with commercial practice.

Telstra subsidiary Advantra, which won the IT contract for the communications department, said the website went down because of a series of equipment failures.

Advantra communications manager Sharlene Findlay said staff had replaced the two faulty parts and reloaded all the documents.

'As far as we can tell, there has been no loss of data,' she said.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said the whole outsourcing process smacked of grand scale incompetence and called for a review.

'This is another example of another Howard government mess,' he told reporters.

'This is an appalling piece of mismanagement, directly channelled back to the Treasurer and Finance Minister and the way in which they have conducted this whole outsourcing activity.'

But Finance Minister John Fahey said the government was on track to reach its savings goal of $1 billion over seven years, and had saved about $360 million in three years from the program.

He defended spending $17 million on US consultancies, saying the government wanted to get the best advice possible.

'The government is satisfied that the IT initiative's stated objectives are being achieved, and we believe that this has brought significant benefit to the IT industry, to regional Australia, to Australian industry,' he told the ABC.

http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/0009/07/A52347-2000Sep7.shtml

-- Doris (reaper1@mindspring.com), September 07, 2000