GoProcure project shrinking

By ADAM GIFFORD

The Government's much-hyped GoProcure project is shrinking, with the State Services Commission backing away from its aim to create a whole-of-Government electronic procurement system.

State Services Minister Trevor Mallard said the idea was now to create a "core transaction hub" which suppliers could use to offer their catalogues to Government agencies.

The hub uses technology from Oracle and is being built and maintained by consulting firm Cap Gemini New Zealand.

While the cost was put in March at $5.5 million over five years, down from $7.5 million, the Government is now talking about spending only $2 million, and then reviewing whether to proceed in November.

E-Government Unit director Brendon Boyle said GoProcure was designed to be completed in stages, so agencies could learn as they went along.

"We have to pick the right things to do, and this is why we are changing things now," Boyle said.

In the first phase of the project, Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry were to install the Oracle electronic procurement application, which would allow them to order electronically from suppliers.

Boyle said it soon became clear the Oracle full-suite option was more difficult to implement and operate than initially thought.

"It is a time thing as much as anything. You are talking about integration with financials, so there is a significant amount of change and Government agencies are at different stages with their systems and their procurement processes," Boyle said.

He said many agencies had bought financial systems which included requisitioning and procurement modules, so they would be better off using the GoProcure transaction hub to update catalogues and pass transactions to suppliers.

With the initial guinea pigs dropping out, testing of the transaction hub will continue with the Police Department, which uses an SAP procurement system, and Auckland University, which uses the PeopleSoft module.

Boyle said the project had been reorganised into three parts - completion of the stage one evaluation and testing, scoping out what might happen after November in stage two, and a project to assess how Government agencies could go about syndicated procurement.

Outside contractor Terry Jackson has been brought in to manage the programme. Phil Worsley, who was running the Cap Gemini side of the project, has left for a job elsewhere.

Boyle said the transaction hub was always the key to GoProcure.

"That is where the catalogues can be hosted," he said.

This means agencies don't have the overhead of hosting and maintaining their own version of supplier catalogues, but can get access to them from the central hub.