• Royal Australian Navy personnel, Lieutenant Kit Low (foreground), from HMAS Waterhen and Leading Seaman Electronics Technician Callum Spence, from HMAS Kuttabul, use Computer Aided Design to develop ideas at the Centre for Innovation, Fleet Base East in Sydney.
    Royal Australian Navy personnel, Lieutenant Kit Low (foreground), from HMAS Waterhen and Leading Seaman Electronics Technician Callum Spence, from HMAS Kuttabul, use Computer Aided Design to develop ideas at the Centre for Innovation, Fleet Base East in Sydney.
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The plethora of seminars and conferences available at the Land Forces event next month has lost a contender; an industry brief on the ERP program has disappeared. ADM understands that the presenter who was slated is no longer available but a representative for ERP will be available on the CASG stand.

The massive $1-2 billion IT program reached second gate approval earlier this year but has gone eerily silent. ADM understands that both Accenture and IBM were informed almost two months ago that one of them would be informed within the week which had been selected as preferred partner. Then, nothing.

Two months later, former DIO director Frank Lewincamp conducted a two-week review into the CIOG/VCDF Group program this month. ADM understands that the review has been completed but the results are not available at this time.

The last industry briefing in December 2015 provided the following timeline and capability focus when the program was known as Defence INSIGHT (ADM assumes this moniker was dropped due to headlines like ‘Defence lacks insight’):

Tranche A – Foundation and finance

Tranche B  - Logistics, procurement and estate

Tranche C – Engineering and maintenance


“A target of two Systems Integrators are expected to be selected to deliver three tranches of work, and this may result in a number of vendors acting together in order to cover the full scope of work within a work package,” the industry slide pack said.

“Each System Integrator will design, build and implement functionality that is organised to deliver incremental capability drops (e.g. every 6 to 12 months).

“The System Integrators will earn the right to continue with successive capability drops within the work package(s) based on its ability to meet performance and commercial expectations.

“Each System Integrator will need to demonstrate capabilities across the whole solution.”

As far as ADM knows, these metrics have not changed significantly in public (though the methodology allegedly has). Nor has the expiry date of MILIS support contract of 2020. An upgrade program for MILIS is not on the cards at this time despite being considered three years ago as part of the Central Processing project.

At the time of the brief, IOC was slated for each of the above tranches in December of 2019, 2021 and 2023. The brief also acknowledged that the program would affect 600 applications as either replaced or integrated into the SAP based Defence ERP. SAP has been adopted under a whole-of-government approach for IT, a drive which began in 2011 with mixed results across the federal IT enterprise. 

The Department of Human Services is also conducting its own ERP effort known as the Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation (WPIT) program, which many of the same industry players are in the mix for. Many in the IT sector have expressed doubts over the ability of the sector to absorb both programs at once given workforce and clearance restraints.

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