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90% of Contract Payment Withheld from Telstra due to Nondelivery of Privatised Cancer Register

posted by martyb on Thursday May 23 2019, @04:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the Same-thing-at-ten-times-the-price dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Back in 2016 the Australian Department of Health decided to combine the state and federal Bowel Cancer Screening registers into one register and tendered the contract for the project to Telstra. Telstra is Australia's oldest telecommunications company and lacked experience with managing public health systems. After signing the $220 million contract to build a new cancer register, Telstra promptly purchased companies with experience building health systems. After being chided by the AONO (Australian National Audit Office) for not having a plan for data security, Telstra tried and failed to bring services online, delaying the rollout until late 2019.

Now Telstra has set a date for delivery of the expensive cancer register of November 2019, with caveats for some functionality not to be delivered until 2020. So far, Telstra has received only $18 million of the $220 million promised in the contract as the Health department withholds payments as milestones are missed.

How much would you charge to build a bowel cancer registry for approximately 25 million people?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @11:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @11:15PM (#846837)

    The original system was built by Medicare for less than 1 million. The Health Department chooses who gets the contract for the work. It's supposed to be done by The Department of Human Services but at the time there was a surge of privatisation. This was one of several systems to be split away from Medicare to prove that private companies could do the same job as the public service.

    Cost of extending the existing Bowel Cancer Screening Register would certainly be less than 5 million including ongoing maintenance. They did this for the Child Immunization Register.

    Medicare / Department of Human Services already have corporate systems and support. They already have Medicare and other systems. So for them this is just another database, back end, front end to extend what is already there. Like if Facebook decided to make a phone app it would already have most parts in place. Telstra had to build this all from scratch.