There have been a number of reports recently released by public sector audit and parliamentary committees in Australia and the United Kingdom analysing the success or failure of major ICT procurement projects.
The most recent of these is the Report of the Queensland Health Payroll System Commission of Inquiry dated 31 July 2013. A number of common themes have been identified as being associated with unsuccessful projects across the basic recurring lifecycle of ICT asset management, defined as:

planning ->

procurement ->

contract ->

implementation ->

planning ->

procurement ->

contract ->

implementation ->

planning ->etc->

This paper will explore:

(a) defining "success" of public sector ICT implementations;

(b) the characteristics of successful projects; and

(c) the common themes and lessons to be learned at each stage of the ICT asset management lifecycle,

drawing upon the above reports and the author's experience (personally and collectively with the Allens Linklaters alliance in Australia and the UK).

The paper will also provide examples by way of case study of how the State of Queensland is implementing steps which draw upon the lessons learned.

About the author: Michael is a partner with Allens and specialises in all corporate and regulatory aspects of technology, media and telecommunications and intellectual property. He has approximately 13 years' experience working in Australia and London across a range of TMT sector issues in Australia, Europe, Singapore and PNG. He is particularly experienced in large projects that involve the procurement and outsourcing of ICT, business process outsourcing, ICT systems separations and associated business transformations, and corporate transactions and projects in the TMT sector. He also regularly advises clients across all industry sectors and government on data security and privacy issues. Michael's regular clients include the State of Queensland. He was a core part of the team which recently acted for the State in its largest ICT procurement as a managed service – being the $457m Government Wireless Network to be delivered by Telstra, and has the lead legal advisor role in the implementation and delivery phase.