Harder is better for companies bidding on Australian Government ICT projects according to Government CIO Glenn Archer, and it will not be getting easier anytime soon.

Mr Archer has praised the Government’s ‘two-pass’ system for major ICT works, with every bidder on projects worth over $10 million being checked by Archer’s Australian Government Information Management Office, as well as normal measures.

AGIMO is unapologetic at the intense level of scrutiny, saying the advantages are in the prevention of failures or misallocating tenders. They say the Federal system should be rolled out to the States, where it could have helped Queensland avoid its payroll disaster, or similar problems in Victorian health and police services.

“It is not my place to be guiding the states, but I do think the value of the effort associated with some of the investment processes we have is demonstrated by the fact that we haven’t had, to date, any of those very high profile failures,” Mr Archer says.

Recent major ICT projects to run into trouble with the Australian Government have included the Taxation Office’s Change Program, which had nearly its original budget by May 2011, reaching a cost of more than $750 million, and the Department of Health and Ageing’s roll-out of a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) has struggled with deadlines and targets for patient registrations.