Global consulting giant PwC will be paid $12.2 million over the next two years to develop a data migration strategy for the New South Wales government’s huge enterprise resource planning (ERP) system consolidation.
Overdue details of the “data service” contract for the Process and Technology Harmonisation (PaTH) program were revealed by the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) this month, despite entering the contract in January.
The PaTH program is the government latest attempt to standardise the ERP systems used across the public sector, with the first ‘horizon’ taking in 40 agencies from the Stronger Communities, Planning, Regional NSW and Premier and Cabinet clusters.
The whole-of-government effort, previously known as ‘ERP 2.0’, began in the wake of the 2019 state election and was initially overseen by the Department of Customer Service, before responsibility shifted to DCJ last year.
Around $235 million from the $2.2 billion Digital Restart Fund has been set aside for the consolidation to date, with the bulk of the funding provided in the 2020 mid-year budget update.
Under the newly published contract, which runs from 10 January this year to 9 January 2024, PwC will be paid $508,000 per month to develop a strategy to assist the migration of data from existing systems to SAP.
According to the contract notice, the data migration strategy is designed to “populate and validate the SAP system with clean data need to run the businesses”, while minimising “the amount of historical data to be migrated” and any associated risks.
Accenture is already working to deliver the SAP platform that the 40 initial agencies will eventually use, having secured a seven-year, $163.7 million deal for horizon one – the first of three horizons – in December 2021.
The government will also spend a further $78.5 million on SAP software licensing and support costs over four years. SAP ERP cost over the past 15 years are estimated at $475 million, a figure that was revised down from $1.65 billion earlier this year.
A spokesperson for the Department of Communities and Justice declined to comment on the PwC contract, including its use of limited tendering and heavy reliance on non-price scaling, citing “commercial in confidence” sensitivities.
Non-price was given a 70 per cent weighting in the evaluation criteria, compared with 30 per cent for price. This was higher than the non-price/price weighting for the Accenture PaTH program contract.
The spokesperson was also tight-lipped on why the department failed to publish the PwC contract notice on eTendering within 45 working days as required, describing the six-month delay as an “oversight”.
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