Yesterday at work, I bumped into a colleague of mine, Zhivan, while I was deciding what I was going to have for lunch. We got talking about my blog and he thought that the Rudd Government’s roll out of laptops for high school students was a topic worthwhile to cover.
I thought so too, so here it is!
For some background, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) made a pledge of $1 billion for new computers for every high school students as well as IT training for teachers. However, it was identified that the deployment did not have sufficient funds for support and maintenance (for both the hardware and software).
Bugger.
Putting aside the possibility that some students could probably fix their own problems (apart from hardware failure), this is an incredible oversight. Big businesses know how to handle events such as the deployment of a new fleet of computers or refreshing an existing one and the associated costs for hardware and software maintenance.
For the average consumer that goes down to Hardly Normal and buys a computer, support for the software and hardware is usually built into the retail cost along with other things such as warranty. When working on an enterprise or fleet level these costs are negotiated separately from the cost of the hardware and software.
The Rudd Government appears to have another blunder in its rush to spend money and has blown out the original cost of the scheme by at least 100%. It’s not the first time taxpayers have been stung by this government in its first term given the recent bungling of the home insulation scheme. Rudd now has an ambition to reform public hospitals on a financial scale thirty times larger at around $30.9 billion than the initial planned cost of the student computer scheme.
Other big ticket items are:
- National Broadband Network ($43 billion)
- Economic Stimulus Package ($42 billion)
Now, I’m not expecting a federal government to be an expert on technology given that there seems to be an issue putting someone competent in charge of the communications ministry (in any of its flavours). What I do expect as a taxpayer is that there is sound economic planning and management.
No wonder Kevin Rudd won’t release the tax proposal report put together by Treasury Secretary Ken Henry. I guess he’s just too busy spending the money of the taxpayer.
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