Hidden in the pre-Christmas holiday fun, the ABC[1] published an ‘investigations exclusive’ by Linton Besser and defence correspondent Andrew Greene[2] that needs more attention.

It appears project ICT2284 (One Defence Data), a $515 million project to unify and exploit the data resources held by the Department of Defence is in trouble due to Hastie (pun intended) decisions made before the last election. Within this overall project, a $100 million One Defence Data “systems integrator” contract was awarded to KPMG Australia Technologies Solutions on the eve of the last federal election, and the then assistant minister for defence, Andrew Hastie, announced KPMG’s contract, promising it would “deliver secure and resilient information systems”.

This award was made after KPMG had been paid $93 million Between 2016 and 2022, for consulting work on a range of strategic advice, which included the development of ICT2284 and its failed forerunner, known as Enterprise Information Management, or EIM.

Unsurprisingly, the review by Anchoram Consulting highlighted both governance and procedural issues including:

• The project has been plagued by a “lack of accountability” and conflicts of interest.
• The documents suggest there is profound confusion inside Defence about who is in charge and what is actually being delivered.
• Core governance documents have not been signed off and key requirements of KPMG’s contract have been diluted from “mandatory” to “desirable”, sometimes in consultation with KPMG itself.
• The project had been “retrospectively” designed to justify a $100 million contract that was issued to KPMG Australia Technologies Solutions, or KTech, exposing the department to “significant risk”.

The heart of ICT2284’s problem appears to be the project’s fundamental design work had “not been done due to … the rush to meet deadlines tied to the Cabinet submission and related procurement activities”, with “no understood and agreed, desired end-state”.

Predictably both the area of Defence running the project, known as CIOG, or the Chief Information Officer Group, and KPMG reject the report findings.

The full ABC report is at: https://amp.abc.net.au/article/103247476

From a governance perspective the biggest on-going issue appears to be the lack of capability within CIOG and government generally to manage this type of complex project. The downsizing and deskilling of the public service has been on-going for decades (under both parties). This means the outsourcing of policy development to the big consultancies is inevitable, and their advice will be unavoidably biased towards benefitting them.

The actions by the current government to reverse this trend are admirable but will take years to be effective. In the meantime, we watch.

For more on governance failures see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ORG-005.php#Process4

For good governance practice see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ORG-005.php#Process3

[1] Australian Broadcasting Corporation

[2] Posted Tue 19 Dec 2023 at 6:41pm:

However, the PMI survey did highlight a stark difference between high performing organisations with a better than 80% success rate, and low performing organisations with a greater than 40% fail rate. And, the survey also clearly showed the processes typically used by the high performing organisations (and ignored by low performing organisations) are straightforward to implement and use; they include:

• Using standardised project management processes.
• Establishing a process to mature project, program and portfolio management practices.
• Using a process to increase project management competency.
• Employing qualified project managers.

Most of these elements coalesce around an effective project management office (PMO). Simply by standardising project management processes, the survey shows an organisation can expect a 25% increase in project success.

None of this new is new, KPMG demonstrated exactly the same point in its 2002 and 2003 surveys, supported by similar findings by PwC in 2004 (see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Resources_Papers.html#Proj_Off).

What’s worrying me is the large number of organisations whose middle and senior management are simply failing their stakeholders by not implementing these simple pragmatic steps. The question that should be asked is WHY?

The stakeholders whose rights are being ignored include the owners who have a right to expect efficient use of resources entrusted to the organisation and the people employed on the failed projects whose work life is made unnecessarily stressful.

As Deeming pointed out in the 1950s, quality is a management responsibility. Therefore, allowing poor quality project management processes to exist in an organisation is a management failure. To quote another mantra: quality is designed in not inspected in. Workers and project managers cannot be expected to retrofit quality into defective systems; systemic failures are a failure of management.

What makes the situation even more worrying is that the tools to develop a quality project management system are readily available. Models such as CMMI, P3M3 and PMI’s OPM3 maturity model has been around for years and are regularly updated.

PMI has recently moved to improve the availability and support for its OPM3 Self-Assessment Module (SAM). This basic assessment system is now sold and supported by organisations such as Mosaic that are qualified to deliver the full range of OPM3 services and help businesses achieve the best return on their investment (for more see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/OPM3.html). OGC have similar arrangements for P3M3 as does CMMI.

So, given the tools are available, the knowledge is available, and the value has been consistently demonstrated; why are organisations still prepared to squander $millions on failed projects rather than investing a fraction of that amount in simple systems that can significantly improve the value they deliver to their stakeholders?
I would be interested to know the answer.