Stories by: Sue Bushell

Matt Eventoff, a US-based messaging and communications strategist, spends much of his time working with lamenting CIOs, CTOs and other IT executives labouring to hammer that final nail into the coffin of failed IT projects

"The stairway to heaven" - that's what Cap Gemini Ernst & Young vice-president Andrew Keene calls it. Many organisations are developing a notion of what they want to achieve with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Keene says. They know who their customers are and how they want to relate to them. You might call that ideal "CRM Nirvana", and they're striving to finding ways to build a stairway to that particular heaven.

The Australian Electoral Commission is heaping high praise on outsourcer CSC after a "fault-free" election tally on Saturday night. Counting the votes of those of Australia's 12,056,625 electors who voted on the day passed without a glitch, with the AEC's mid-range Unix servers running at less than 50 per cent capacity throughout the night and network utilisation never higher than 20 per cent.

Acer, Ipex and outsourcing contractor CSC have been the big winners in the Federal Government marketplace over the last 12 months, and Telstra the big loser. But overall Government spending is significantly down, posing challenges to the entire industry.

EDS (Electronic Data Systems) says the Federal Government's whole-of-government outsourcing agenda is under challenge from the Asian economic crisis, takeover fever and wide-ranging fatigue. And according to EDS government services director Tony Henshaw, that fatigue is proving a much more serious issue for SMEs (small-to-medium enterprises) than for the large end of town, which can always bring in extra resources whenever timetables pose problems.

Acer, Ipex and outsourcing contractor CSC have been the big winners in the Federal Government marketplace over the last 12 months, and Telstra the big loser.

The AIIA has warmly welcomed Labor's proposal to reinstate the 150 per cent R&D tax concession and the pledge to allow a limited capital gains tax exemption for foreign fund investors.

Weighing the tax policies of the two main parties is likely to leave IT&T wishing it could pick 'n mix from a grab bag of pledges. The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has welcomed two initiatives in Labor's tax plan that the ALP says will help build the industries of the future.

Don't assume IT contracting costs will necessarily drop after the Y2K flurry is over or that the skills shortage will ease. If the IT tax specialists are right, any introduction of a GST would keep costs high well into the future and seriously stretch limited staff resources.

Negotiations will start soon between the Department of Finance and Administration (DOFA) and preferred tenderers for a range of corporate services. Discussions will include human resources, financial, office and facilities management.