Australian Taxation Office

About This Project

The Australian Taxation Office needed to relocate its IT systems to a new facility in order to meet increased demands and changes to the scope of service.

Despite significant investment to improve their existing IT systems, it had become clear that the existing infrastructure and systems were slowing the ATO’s ability to meet customer demands and keep pace with the changes and demands within the IT environment.

In order to future-proof their operations and support the resources required to meet their objectives, the necessity to upgrade their facility was a top priority for the ATO.

The situation

A large-scale project was initiated by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to relocate its IT infrastructure to an alternate location. The project scope involved assessing the existing state of the IT environment and developing a detailed plan for the relocation of all technology systems and services from their previous data centre to a new facility.

The organisation was experiencing many challenges with the existing infrastructure. The capacity and performance of the ATO platforms were under immense pressure due to increasing service demands from consumers, along with deteriorating system resources. In addition to this, there had been a significant expansion in the scope of services provided by the ATO that were placing additional strain on their IT systems.

The existing environment, based on the current state of technology, was not able to support or accommodate future changes to scope and requirements.

The decision was made to relocate their infrastructure to better provide resilient and robust systems along with the required services for government agencies. The move would enable them to improve management and governance of the systems, identify opportunities for increased system performance and reduce costs.

We were approached by the ATO to lead a large-scale program of work, including developing the Second Pass Business Case for this program as well as developing a detailed integration and automation framework for the ATO to follow.

The approach

Information Professionals Group worked together with the ATO to review and assess their current infrastructure — providing recommendations for what should be included in the new facility and developing a clear strategy for implementation.

We also assisted the ATO in updating and clarifying the governance, engagement and delivery framework for the program.

The total budget for the project was over $220 million and required a significant effort across all business areas including technology and organisational architecture and scope management, cost estimation and financial modelling, stakeholder management, benefits management and risk assessment.

During the course of the project, we had to liaise extensively with the ATO’s stakeholders, gaining internal agreements across a range of decisions and external agreements through Finance, Treasury and the DTA.

The business case we developed covered various options, including full cost, risk and benefit analysis.

Because of the deadlines imposed by the Cabinet, we were required to break down the work into milestones and iterate on a weekly basis. Using agile management techniques, each time a set of issues was resolved and a version delivered, another new or refined milestone scope was released in a new version for stakeholders’ feedback and consideration before approval.

The impact

The second pass business case was developed and delivered within tight deadlines and successfully approved by Cabinet.

The integrated framework and digital transformation strategy we developed for the ATO clearly outlined the available options and our recommendations for organisational change, while also providing specific guidance on how to implement these changes.

Our close relationships with executive-level stakeholders at the ATO ensured that they had a clear understanding of our recommendations from a business value perspective and how to ensure a smooth transition to implementation.

We received strong feedback from the ATO that the quality of work by Information Professionals Group was excellent throughout this large, multifaceted project.