Oz healthcare gets IT boost

The Australian Federal Government will invest more than $530 million over the next four years to integrate ICT infrastructure and Web sites of Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support Agency into the Department of Human Services, reports ZDnet.

In addition, the Australian Department of Human Services has allocated $373 million of this investment towards consolidating the ICT infrastructure of the three agencies.

Over the next four years, the department will move to a single shared gateway for the three portfolios with a single security management system for payment systems across the three agencies.

The department will also invest in a new data recovery centre to house customer data, and move to a single consolidated data management system.

The Australian states that to deal with the administrative and physical integration of Medicare, Centrelink and Human Services into a single department, the government will provide a further $297 million over four years.

This will pay for a change management programme to assist staff in the integrated workplace, internal and external communications, and the redesign of jobs, business processes and training programmes.

The amalgamation is expected to generate savings of $69.5 million over four years through efficiencies and process improvements, especially in human resources and administration.

A further $38.7 million will be provided to complete the transition to a single Web site and telephone number for the entire department's portfolio, as well as the implementation of an automated voice recognition system, says Delimiter.

The funding allocation represents a major step in the road since 2009, when the federal government revealed the consolidation of large and small departments into the Department of Human Services.