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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 Friday May 24 2019, @09:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 24 2019, @09:21AM (#846989)

    There re metrics. The Australian government has been building systems like this for over three decades. An existing system could be used as a cost reference for how much this new system may cost. It is called Business Application Development. SDLC and co. Agile these days which may go some way for explaining the cost blowout.

    The delays are unacceptable. The lack of key delivery requirements is enough to end the contract. They should just pull the pin now. This lack of delivery demonstrates that Telstra is unable to build and maintain this type of IT system. No different from SAP and IBM failures over the years.