Overview
The directorate, through Shared Services, provides a range of ICT and corporate services including infrastructure, applications support and development, ICT project services, transactional human resource and finance services to directorates and agencies.
The directorate delivers key services to government agencies, as outlined in the Shared Services ICT catalogue of services, and affirmed through various service level and support agreements including:
- management of the WoG data and communications network;
- payroll and personnel services;
- records management and courier activities;
- end to end financial services including; financial reporting, accounts receivable, accounts payable, debt management services, salary packaging services; and
- publishing services including multimedia, online, print and signage services.
Highlights
In 2018-19 the directorate:
- successfully concluded the procurement process for the Human Resource Information Management Solution (HRIMS) Program. Contracts with the chosen implementation partner, Ernst and Young and the product partner SAP were executed in first quarter 2019 which has facilitated implementation planning and high-level design activities;
- automated the calculation and administration of Long Service Leave (LSL) for ACT Government employees. As a result, ACT Government employees can now receive their LSL balances immediately and the LSL balances have been made available on the employee’s payslips, which has significantly reduced the number of LSL queries and improved the turnaround times in managing LSL requests;
- participated in a review of the Shared Services cost/charging model. The review was undertaken to maintain fairness, transparency, equity and consistency in the charging model. Part one of the review concluded in February 2019 with an agreed approach for Shared Services to receive direct appropriation for agreed core services across Finance and HR;
- successfully updated over 6,000 assets across ACT Government by upgrading Microsoft Office Tools and standard operating environment. Work is continuing with directorates to upgrade the remaining assets;
- Shared Services took responsibility in managing debt on behalf of directorates. End-to-end debt management is a concept that bridges better debt policy, enhances compliance, increases coordination through improved usage of standardisation and reporting, and offers greater transparency and accountability. A Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) debt management and debt recovery system has been procured and Shared Services has commenced mapping out business rules and requirements of the system;
- processed 201,649 invoices through the Accounts Payable Invoice Automation System (APIAS). For invoices processed through the APIAS, 95% were paid on time;
- progressed work on the Cloud Adoption Program including:
- applying a Security Risk Management Plan (SRMP) controls to cloud environments;
- delivering Amazon AWS IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) capability, demilitarized zone (DMZ), DR (Disaster Recovery) simulation, PaaS (Platform as a Service), sample migrations and training; and
- establish a cloud broker service that will enable Directorates to have cloud selection
pre-determined based on set criteria as well as a future state of self-service provisioning.
- redesigned the Jobs ACT website to provide a better user experience and to modernise language;
- under the Modernising Government ICT Infrastructure program, Shared Services achieved increased capacity and redundancy improvements for approximately 70 sites. The Canberra Hospital data centre and campus benefited from work improving the connectivity and network transmissions speeds as well as improved resiliency and redundancy;
- successfully implemented two public cloud platforms capable of providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) for directorates, and capability for vendors with Software as a Service (SaaS) to connect with broader ACT Government systems;
- upgraded ten directorate instances of TM1 (planning, budgeting and forecasting software) to the newest version; Planning Analytics2. The new TM1 system has reduced manual effort while improving the timeliness and accuracy for internal reporting and the effectiveness of external and internal budget development; and
- processed pay rises and back pays for approximately 17,000 ACT Public Servants for the six Enterprise Agreements that were approved in 2018-19.
The directorate met or exceeded six out of ten accountability indicators against this output and did not meet four accountability indicators.
The two accountability indicators that did not meet the target by more than 5% were:
- Average time taken for telephone service requests to be answered by a Service Desk Officer – was 97 seconds (target 30 seconds) due to a substantial increase in call volumes as a result of the rollout of new Microsoft Operating systems across government while still maintaining the average for resolution of calls at first point of contact; and
- Number of successful attacks on internally hosted ACT Government websites – was 1 (target 0) due to a security breach on the ACT Government managed ‘Active Directory’ Cloud service. The ACT Government network was not compromised.
Future Direction
In 2019-20 the directorate will:
- lead the WoG program to implement a contemporary payroll and human capital management solution for the ACT Government workforce encompassing all aspects of the employee life-cycle;
- continue to rollout the Microsoft 10 and Microsoft 365 applications across government;
- working with directorates, continue to review the current application suite with the view to rationalise the number of business systems and look to leverage off the recently established Cloud capability;
- deliver a comprehensive Territory strategy to meet requirements in key areas relating to financial, contract and revenue management, and consider the feasibility of moving those functions currently performed by on-premises hardware and applications to the cloud;
- support the creation of the new Shared Services governing committee, the Quality, Measurement and Advisory Committee (QMAC). QMAC will seek to ensure that the quality and timeliness of services provided meets customer expectations, supporting directorates and agencies to provide critical services to the community;
- expand the usage of the Accounts Payable Invoice Automation System to include the processing of staff reimbursements and community payments;
- implement the COTS debt management cloud-based system and complete the contractual arrangements for the use of a mercantile agent for the management of ACT Government debtors; and
- process pay rises and back pays for ACT Public Servants for the 12 Enterprise Agreements that are anticipated to be approved in 2019-20.
Further information can be obtained from
Shaun Strachan
Deputy Under Treasurer
Commercial Services and Infrastructure
+61 2 6207 1001
Shaun.Strachan@act.gov.au
Graham Tanton
Executive Group Manager
Shared Services
+ 61 2 6207 5757
Graham.Tanton@act.gov.au