The full scope of the contracts entered into by the federal government for work to “enhance” the myGov platform has been revealed, with three private companies to be paid more than $7.5 million in the second half of this year.
Secrecy has surrounded the work on myGov this year, with contracts posted publicly being listed merely as for “information technology services”, making it difficult to discern exactly how much the federal government is paying private companies for work on the government services platform.
InnovationAus can now reveal that Services Australia has signed 10 contracts this financial year for the myGov project, worth a total of more than $7.5 million. Nearly all of these contracts run until the end of 2021.
The federal government has been working on a new version of myGov since early last year, with consulting giant Deloitte having already been paid about $40 million for work on this project.
A further $200 million was allocated for the redevelopment of myGov over the next two years as part of the May budget.
Late last year, Services Australia established a “systems integrator panel” for continued work to develop a new version of myGov, with four companies appointed to it: Deloitte, IBM, Accenture and Arq Group.
Services Australia has now provided InnovationAus a full list of the contracts it has entered into this financial year for work on myGov through this panel.
Since July, Services Australia has signed 10 contracts with three of its panel members worth a total of just over $7.5 million, with American multinationals landing most of the work. Most of these contracts run to the end of this year, while two extend to the end of the financial year.
US consulting giant Deloitte has won the most money for work on myGov and will be paid more than $5.3 million this financial year across five contracts, listed publicly as being for “information technology services” or “information technology specialist services”.
The largest of these contracts, worth $2.8 million, runs from 1 July to 24 December this year.
Irish-domiciled multinational Accenture will be paid more than $1.5 million in the second half of 2021 for work on myGov across two contracts. One of these contracts is worth $1.3 million and runs for less than five months.
Arq Group, the only Australian company on the myGov panel, has been awarded three contracts worth $622,000, all of them running until late 2021.
The last member of the systems integrator panel, American tech giant IBM, has not been awarded any contracts for work on myGov this financial year.
Work to develop a new and improved version of myGov, with a user experience more in line with private sector offerings such as Facebook and Netflix, has been ongoing since early last year and is still in a beta phase.
Deloitte has been involved with the project from the very start, and has now been paid more than $40 million for this work. Along with the recently awarded contracts under the new panel, the federal government has paid private companies more than $50 million for the ongoing myGov enhancement project.
Deloitte was awarded a near-$1 million contract early last year to conduct a 90-day sprint on a prototype of a new myGov platform. It was soon awarded another contract worth $9 million to turn this into a working beta, and this work eventually ballooned out to be worth just under $30 million.
While the Digital Transformation Agency kicked off this work, responsibility shifted to Services Australia late last year, and the Department handed Deloitte a $1.2 million top-up to continue its work in December.
Services Australia gave Deloitte a further $4.5 million in the last financial year for its continued work on myGov, along with $5.5 million for separate work to develop a myGov app.
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