The Australian Taxation Office, Federal Police, the Energy Regulator and Veterans’ Affairs have all secured IT upgrade funding in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.
While a $225 million package to support the government’s adoption of AI was a major technology line item, there was also funding on offer for non-AI programs as well.
The tax office landed $60.9 million over the next two years “to develop a second pass business case for its enterprise resource planning modernisation.”
That comes after the agency engaged Deloitte earlier in the year to craft a modernisation strategy and future-state design for its ERP system.
The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has also landed a significant sum for its own technology systems modernisation.
Documents show the regulator will receive $44.1 million over the next five years, and $7.1 million a year thereafter, to upgrade its “core data and digital systems” and to “reduce regulatory burden”.
Some of the funding for the AER’s work would come from a “reprioritisation” of projects in the portfolio areas of climate change, energy, environment and water.
“Modernising digital capability” is also on the cards for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which secured $137.3 million over three years “to deliver essential ICT, digital and data enhancements.”
This funding is drawn from a mix of “existing resources” and unspecified savings in the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio.
Finally, on the modernisation front, the Australian Federal Police will receive five years of funding “to strengthen its information and communication technology capabilities.”
Exactly how much it is set to receive is redacted from the fiscal documents, which cite national security concerns.
Outside of these four key IT modernisation allocations, the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) finances some other tech-related work.
This includes:
- $79.4 million over five years, of which an unknown slice will go into maintaining federal “health IT infrastructure and systems”, while $36.4 million of the total will “extend funding arrangements for the national authentication service for health to support healthcare providers to authenticate and securely access digital health services.”
- “Over $23.4 million to the Australian Communications and Media Authority … to improve the resilience of the triple zero emergency call service.
- $19 million for a new national messaging system to provide “cell broadcast warnings during emergencies.”
- $11.6 million to improve, among other things, bushfire intelligence and related web services.
- $1.2 million over two years from 2026–27 “to strengthen the resilience of mobile telecommunications towers in the Perth Hills, Western Australia.”