maelorin: (Default)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/chatroom/a-happy-association/2006/05/01/1146335641194.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Crow beaters

Meanwhile, the South Australian Government is copping flak from the local ICT industry. The Government, which once outsourced its whole IT operations to EDS, is a potentially sweet honey pot for the lucky players who are picking up a piece of the action. However, the local ICT industry, which wants a slice of the $500 million-a-year pie, is up in arms over what it believes is a purchasing system heavily weighted in favour of large multinationals.

The ICT Council for South Australia, which represents 1200 companies, has called on the state's Labor government to support local players by removing the uncapped liability clause from its contracts. The council's chairman, David Raffen, says uncapped liability is a barrier for local companies and favours multinationals whose solutions may be inferior. He says while the South Australian Government happily gives contracts to overseas vendors with no local connections, Australian companies venturing abroad find it difficult to explain to potential clients why their own government is not a customer.

Sadly, this is nothing new. In the 20 years since we started reporting on the Australian ICT industry, the nation's ICT trade deficit has grown to more than $20 billion and the main culprits have been our own state and federal governments, who account for almost half the ICT spend in Australia each year.

Successive state and federal governments have at times tried to tackle the problem but there seems to be a peculiar, self-abasing purchasing culture within government agencies that believes that multinational equals big and big equals good, while local equals small and small equals bad. For what it's worth, we would like to add our voice to that of the ICT Council for South Australia and ask all Australian governments to correct their past ICT purchasing mistakes.

Stan Beer <stanbeer@itwire.com.au>
May 2, 2006
Mood:: 'complacent' complacent
Music:: Blondie - Greatest Hits - Heart of Glass

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