NSW council tech officially a mess after forced mergers

A rash of unpopular and forced council amalgamations across NSW over the last three years has combined to produce an unholy mess on the technology front, after a state Auditor found gaping holes in IT management and governance that in two cases stopped councils providing their accounts.
In the first substantive financial audit of NSW councils since amalgamations were initiated by former premier Mike Baird, a litany of deficiencies in wrangling IT service providers and outsourcers has been exposed, with 51 councils listed as lacking “clearly defined key performance indicators (KPI) in the Service Level Agreements (SLA)” with their suppliers.
Information technology was cited as a high risk by an unreleased KPMG report provided to the government ahead of the mergers because of the complexity of forging disparate financials, operational and asset management systems from as many as three councils into one.
Now NSW council IT chiefs are mopping up, and the mess isn’t pretty.

OST22 March 2019