Government drags feet over spending transparency – Aged care minister defies senate order to produce documents for bungled aged care technology upgrades

Aged care industry leaders and advocates are growing increasingly frustrated and fearful over the widening cracks of aged care in the face of billions of public funding spent. The call for transparency over spending is reaching new heights, with procurement requests in parliament showing senators are listening to a call for insight over mismanagement of funds. In the latest instance of ineffective spending, the upgrades to government aged care technology systems, tech giants seem to have blown through $800 million with little to show. Minister Rae has recently defied a Senate order to provide documents detailing the discussions and money spent on the upgrade.

What to show for increased spending

Aged care spending has been rapidly increasing. In 2017-2018 $18.4 billion was spent, that number is now inching towards $40 billion, with 2023-2024 seeing $36.4 billion spent. With concern over the low support for residential care builds, meeting the target of 10,000 beds a year to meet upcoming targets, inflating home care waitlists, and rising copayments, aged care leaders and seniors alike are keen to understand the decisions and direction of public funds in aged care.

The long-beleaguered upgrade to the government’s aged care technology systems has taken a further opaque turn. Outsourced to international software and service giants, the procurement and spending of the now $800 million has yet to see substantial opportunity for scrutiny. A new opportunity to review these documents has been shut down with Minister Rae’s office noting the request was unreasonable.

In a counter move, the government has offered to provide the Senate with documents already publicly available, with the result that particularly insightful information such as tender evaluation reports, assessment and ministerial communication would remain out of eyeshot.

Senators continuing to push

Senator Fatima Payman led the most recent push to secure an order in the Senate to formalise the pressure on government to produce the comprehensive collection of documents. She has communicated that while the government has indicated they will not comply with the order, she intends to continue efforts to elicit key information.

Minister Rae’s words shows a formal dismissal of the push to make the requested documents public, “I have not directed the Department to deploy resources to compile and assess those documents”, he wrote six days ago.

Ballooning costs

As hundreds of thousands of Australians sit on waitlists for the new Support at Home packages, the overall $1.4 billion tech allotment from the government is drawing further ire, particularly in how it is being spent, and lack of transparency.

The $800 million allotted for the upgrade to digital systems, like My Aged Care and other digital assets to underpin the new aged care act, and its novel care and reporting rules, looks to have been spent with systems still plagued by glitches, vulnerabilities and confusion.

The shining light of the upgrade, the Government Provider Management System (GPMS) has been assessed by many aged care heads as almost unusable, confusing and insulting in its lack of support for high-performing providers seeking to provide excellence in care, not only to meet standards but as a moral obligation. Seeing the results of colossal government spending with international tech giants, with little to no accountability on project result, is rapidly souring trust.

Accenture, Salesforce and Capgemini were the figureheads leading work on the GPMS initiative to establish the foundational footprint for the reporting requirements that have come in effect November 1. The business-to-government portal (B2G) was touted as a way to seamlessly facilitate provider software connection to government systems, lauded as a way to increase productivity and reduce administrative time so as to free up resources to focus on elevating care. This key performance indicator was central to the upgrades, heavily reliant on Salesforce software.

Initially tendered to cost only $13.5 million, the budget has been reported to have ballooned past $150 million. Yet the problem remains, with sustained opaque information from Canberra, the true measure of cost blowout has yet to be clearly pinpointed.

Exhausted budget

Of the $800 million specifically allotted to new digital systems to aid the new act, care and reporting rules, it has become evident that the small number of international software companies approved by the government to complete the work have not met targets.

As the deadline for the care and reporting updates blew past in July this year, it has become evident that the tech suppliers have consumed close to the entirety of the gargantuan sum. While the depth of incompleteness, when it comes to the project must be addressed, it is in how the government reached this point that current orders to procure information are seeking to discern. The glaring question remains, how has $800 million been spent with so little to show?

With what has now been dubbed “tech wrecks”, public bungles over digital project handling, there is growing pressure for government to ‘face the music’. The seemingly singular reliance on Accenture, involved in multiple such “wrecks” by Canberra recently, the procurement scandal involving Salesforce is only intensifying calls for transparency, inside and out of parliament.

Pushing for transparency

The order in October, for the production of documents had been successful, seen by parliament as appropriate and worthy of actioning, yet evidently the hurdles for information remain. Senator Payman’s order was meant to force the government’s hand to provide the Senate with significant information on the GPMS project particularly.

Included in the documents asked for are uptake levels, expenditure amounts, software licensing agreements, reviews on process and work, formal suggestions to government on how the work should proceed and price comparisons surrounding Salesforce, its subsidiary MuleSoft as opposed to their competitors.

Speaking to InnovationAus, Senator Payment said, “For GPMS alone, contracts with a combined value of $700 million have been signed for what appears to be the simple configuration of a Salesforce instance.”

In his response to the order, Minister Rae declines to comply with the order as the request would entail searching for and examining 130,000 documents, pointing to the higher importance of current work being undertaken to support “the Government’s priorities and essential services”.

A private briefing with Senator Payman, and provision of public documents was countered along with the defiance to the order.

Senator Payman remains committed to push for transparent insight on government spending in the aged care space.

“I intend to move further orders for the production of documents that are designed to capture specific documents to reveal whether value-for-money was achieved through these contracts”.

“I also hope to prosecute these matters during the forthcoming estimates hearings next week.”

Productive spending

As the need for more beds in RAC becomes more and more dire, as the new pricing model of Support at Home and copayments see both residents and loved ones struggling to access dignified aged care, the scrutiny surrounding government spending in other areas of aged care is set to intensify.

The sentiment towards the mismanagement of funds to eye-wateringly cashed-up software giants, as opposed to targeted and effective spending for senior Australians, and the sector that cares for them, has reached a fever-pitch of frustration with industry heads, advocates and Australians nationally.

The call and push for transparency is rightfully set to continue.