The department’s corporate plan is out and while there’s a commitment to rely less on outsourcing, the elephant in the room will barely notice the flea bite.
The Department of Health and Aged Care plans to save almost $9 million this financial year by reducing its reliance on “outsourcing of core work”.
In its 2024-25 Corporate Plan, released late last week, the DoHAC said it was committed to ensuring “APS employment is the default”.
While not ruling out external arrangements altogether, the plan said any outsourcing would be “in line with the APS Strategic Commissioning Framework”.
“Our targets for 2024–25 are focused on reducing outsourcing in the job families of Accounting and Finance; Administration; Communications and Marketing; Compliance and Regulation; Policy, Portfolio, Program and Project Management and Service Delivery,” read the plan.
“We anticipate a reduction of $8,948,250 in outsourcing expenditure.”
In the overall scheme of things, however, a saving of $9 million is a drop in the procurement ocean for the DoHAC.
Accenture, for example, just signed a $289 million contract with the department for a large-scale digital transformation program in the aged care sector. That’s on top of the $157 million contract the company signed to deliver the foundational Government Provider Management System, vital to the aged care digital transformation agenda.
The Australian Digital Health Agency has a $500,000 tender out to hire a consultant to tell it how to fire consultants, not even ironically. It also issued a $750,000 tender yesterday for allied health connectivity.
The department outlined its continued implementation of its information communications and technology strategy, begun in 2023-24.
The 2024–25 focus includes:
- operationalising fit-for-purpose communication and collaboration tools that enable better internal and cross-government engagement;
- unifying the desktop experience for all staff working across unclassified and protected information;
- advancing further consolidation and standardisation across new and existing externally facing health and aged care services;
- enhancing the department’s data storage, sharing, interoperability and security capabilities;
- empowering informed decision-making through an insights-driven approach to data access and use;
- strengthening the department’s cybersecurity incident detection, response and resilience capabilities, supported by the Department of Health and Aged Care Security Strategy 2023–26;
- development of a strategic approach to digital transformation, supporting broader whole-of-government initiatives and the delivery of health and aged care services in a digital-first world.
In April the department established the Office of the Chief Health Economist, Professor Emily Lancsar.
“The Office will provide an economic lens to the department’s strategic activities, enabling linkages across its fiscal reporting requirements,” said the corporate plan.
“The Office will focus on building a forward-looking strategic policy agenda to achieve better health and aged care outcomes.”
Back in February the DoHAC was the subject of a damning audit which found that the department had failed to show that primary health networks were achieving their objectives.
As a result, the department’s Primary Health Quality and Coordination program was selected to participate in a pilot of program logic modelling.
“The department intends to utilise the lessons learned from this pilot and roll out across each program area throughout 2024–25 to ensure our performance continues to be underpinned by evidence-based, reliable, verifiable and information that is free from bias,” said the corporate plan.
“In the pursuit of continuous improvement, we will continue to review the department’s performance framework to ensure our key activities and corresponding performance measures are relevant, up-to-date and aligned with government priorities.
“A prioritisation list is currently under development to determine which of the remaining 18 programs will be included in the next round of program logic modelling, which will occur over the next 12 to 18 months.”
The full corporate plan can be found here.