Following yesterday’s meeting of the ICT Committee, I am pleased to announce that agreement has been reached on a model for THO Transition. Members have endorsed the preferred recommendation, which I strongly believe is a positive result for the OCIO.

As a result of this agreement ICT will remain under a centralised model, providing the primary source of ICT expertise and service delivery for Health and Human Services across the State, as well as significant economy of scale benefits.

As part of the agreed transition model the OCIO will transfer three vacant Band 7 positions for the critical role of ‘THO ICT Manager’. This will place one Band 7 position in each THO establishment. These positions, in addition to the two vacant positions that have already been transferred (Band 8 position for Director eHealth THO-North and Band 3 for THCI merging) will provide THOs with a greater capacity to organise their own ICT workload.

All other positions will remain in the OCIO.

In addition to the agreement on where resources will be located, we are proposing an organisational structure change within the OCIO. A diagram showing this proposed new structure is attached. I welcome your feedback on the proposed structure during the next 2 weeks.

I strongly believe that these changes are positive for staff and will provide new opportunities both now and into the future.

The key points of the proposed change are as follows:

The formation of a new “eCare Services” team, led by Warren Lewis, which will focus on supporting the needs of THOs and our Human Services clients

A new “eCare Strategy and Planning” team, with a focus on strategy and the National ICT Agenda (including NEHTA and the PCEHR)

The applications team will move under the eCare Services team

A consolidated and strengthened Financial, Contract and Support Services team

The new eCare Services team will provide the following services:

Technical Clinical applications support for clinical, patient administration and client management systems;

Support for local and statewide projects in relation to systems integration;

Project Management services for local and statewide projects;

Business Analysis services for local and statewide systems;

Vendor / Contract Management;

Financial Management;

Stakeholder Engagement, and

Governance including co-ordination of statewide System Owners Groups.

These services will be performed by the current statewide Application Administration team and the PMO team. These teams will move into the eCare Services Group within the OCIO Organisational Structure as shown in the attachment.

You will note that the structure below has a dotted line connecting the eHealth Directors to the eCare Strategy and Planning group working on the National eHealth Agenda. This indicates a collaborative relationship to this function and is not indicating any structural change to these positions.

Understandably, some of the finer details regarding the implementation of the model still need to be finalised. I will continue to provide you with information as decisions and agreements are reached.

I also recognise that this announcement will raise questions for a number of you. I am aware of this and will seek to provide clarifications as we move forward. As previously mentioned, please feel free to arrange a meeting with me or your manager if you would like to discuss further. If there is sufficient demand then I am also happy to organise another OCIO branch meeting to answer questions.

Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge that this has been a long and difficult process. I’d like to thank you all for being patient, as well as the people who have put a lot of work into getting a resolution on this. These include Warren Lewis, Tamlyn Goc, Richard Eccles, the THO ICT Working Group and many others.

Onwards and upwards…

Regards,

Tim