Ms O'CONNOR - Minister, page 249 of budget paper 2, volume 1 shows a decline in the information technology and digital services strategy and policy development output in 2024-25 of about $700 000. There's no footnote to explain this. What does this decrease result from?
CHAIR - I might just remind members of the media to ensure they're not filming members' laptop screens and other sensitive information.
Ms OGILVIE - I think we have the information for you.
Mr THURLEY - The main reason for the decline is a shift in terms of how we do our services over that time. As one example, there are several shifts going on in ICT particularly with cloud services bringing efficiencies to what we do. For instance, we may change the way we deliver telecommunications through different services and therefore it won't cost the government as much to deliver those services as we transition into different types of services.
Similarly, with infrastructure we are moving more toward cloud services and less towards having infrastructure in government where we need to pay across government. You might find that those outgoings end up in some of the more direct areas in the portfolios themselves.
Ms O'CONNOR - Thank you for that answer. Presumably that doesn't mean that $700 000 was saved through the loss of staff. Is it that the services you're purchasing, you'd be able to purchase them more cheaply?
Mr THURLEY - There are elements of that. There are no staff changes. If anything, the current situation with ICT staff is that we can't find enough people, trying to get them.
People who might have been delivering a particular service under a service life cycle, their roles may change to do different types of services, but that’s all part of IT through normal occurrence.