Australian Taxation Office: Change Program

Mr Fletcher asked:

In respect of the work that has been undertaken by Accenture with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) since 2003

a) on the ATO‘s Change Program, and

b) other than on the ATO‘s Change Program: what contractual arrangements exist between Accenture and the ATO including the

   i) scope of work,

   ii) fee,

   iii) nature and scope of variation or renegotiation of contracts,

   iv) change in fee arrangements under variation or renegotiation, and

   v) reconciliation of fees, and the amounts actually paid to Accenture.

 Mr Swan responded:

Since 2003, work for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has been undertaken by Accenture for its Change Program and for other activities.

(a) (i) The Change Program was a very significant information technology and business improvement program designed to support the community, government and to meet internal ATO needs. The program has delivered improved client service through the introduction of client portals and the replacement of a number of ageing systems with a single system for processing tax and superannuation returns. Through the use of enterprise-wide client relationship management, case management and work management systems and processes, it also improved the way the ATO manages its work. It has delivered significant savings to the operation of the ATO.

Accenture was contracted by the ATO to deliver the Change Program. Accenture took the lead role to design, build, test and deploy the Change Program releases. The ATO worked alongside Accenture throughout the Change Program and is now managing the new enterprise systems so they are reliable, responsive and able to support and facilitate future change and innovation.

(ii) and (v) The Change Program Contract was managed via a Head Agreement that provided the terms, conditions and fees. Change Program activities included under the Head Agreement have been reconciled with payment to Accenture of $477 million (excluding GST) between 2004 and 2010 to deliver the Change Program releases.

(iii) and (iv) Major variations to the contract were incorporated to implement legislation changes for the following at a total cost of $198 million (excluding GST):

·         Superannuation Simplification from February 2007,

·         First Home Savers Account from January 2009, and

·         Removal from scope of Business Activity Statement (BAS) and Super Guarantee.

(b) Since 2003, other Accenture contracts for various system related work were for a total cost of $167 million excluding GST. The contracts are as follows:

 

 (i) Scope of work

(ii) and (v)

Fee and Reconciliation

(iii) and (iv)

Variation, renegotiation with changes to arrangements

Preliminary analysis and design activities for the development of the Change Program from 2 December 2003.

$20,020,920 (excluding GST)

Complete

No variation

Infrastructure support work from 24 August 2005.

Included provision and support of development and testing environments, warranty, and support of systems as they were deployed.

$109,858,086 (excluding GST)

Expires 31 May 2011.

$2,101,738 (excluding GST) to be paid.

No variation has been negotiated to date

Environment Management Support from 3 July 2006.

Provision of specialist IT contractor support including mainframe administrators, Siebel administrators/technical architects to support the Change Program.

$2,227,272 (excluding GST)

Complete

No variation

Superannuation Simplification project from 25 June 2008.

Enabling services work for superannuation systems rebuild including solution design of Super Core‘ products, high priority Release 3 changes and project set-up and management.

$976,720 (excluding GST)

Complete

No variation

Microsoft Project Server rectification from 6 April 2009.

Provision of specialist support to rectify problems associated with MS Project server failure.

$84,230 (excluding GST)

Complete

No variation

Disaster Recovery Virtualisation Phase 1a from 8 May 2009.

Technical architecture set-up for disaster recovery of Change Program applications and addition of 115 mid-range applications.

$556,783 (excluding GST)

Complete

No variation

Midrange Disaster Recovery from 12 May 2009.

Perform an initial assessment on the current disaster recovery (DR) solution and supporting infrastructure and propose a high level infrastructure design supporting a DR capability for applications meeting the requirements of IT Policy for Midrange Disaster Recovery.

$165,000 (excluding GST)

Complete

No variation

Standard Business Reporting strategic web services from 15 December 2009.

Provision of IT contractor support services.

$1,539,144 (excluding GST )

Complete

No variation

Tax Time 2010 - legislated tax changes for the tax systems from 15 January 2010.

Implement legislated tax changes for the ATO's tax systems.

$4,638,400 (excluding GST )

Complete

No variation

Building the Electronic Interactions Roadmap project from 1 December 2010.

High level design and prototypes for the refresh of ATO electronic channels to deliver on Whole of Government agenda to improve services offered to the community.

$1,246,462 (excluding GST)

Expires 31 March 2011.

$210,414 (excluding GST) to be paid.

No variation has been negotiated

Global Switch Ultimo (GSU) project from 24 September 2010.

Included upgrade of all existing ATO application databases from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008, and migration of all applications and related databases from Bruce ACT to the new data centre at GSU in Sydney.

$892,700 (excluding GST)

Expires 30 June 2011.

$103,427 (excluding GST) to be paid.

No variation has been negotiated

Pay as you go (PAYG) / fringe benefits tax instalments (FBTI) project from 9 July 2010.

Design, build and test phases (including conversion) for PAYGI / FBTI project including parallel run, technical deployment and transition following technical deployment.

$24,614,450 (excluding GST)

Expires 31 March 2012.

$14,970,406 (excluding GST) to be paid.

No variation has been negotiated