The Australian Government's Department of Health and Aged Care has awarded professional services giant Accenture a $289.4 million contract to supply staff to ensure aged care digital systems are supported by the Department's permanent workforce throughout the continued rollout of significant aged care reforms, including the New Aged Care Act and Support at Home.
The contract, which has a value of nearly $400,000 per day, runs until 30 June 2026.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Aged Care told The Weekly SOURCE, "This workforce uplift supports the temporary demands of reform initiatives while ensuring the ongoing capability and capacity to maintain the future aged care digital eco-system is retained in the department’s permanent workforce.
"Accenture is one of a number of service integrators augmenting the departmental workforce, primarily in the design, development, and implementation of application solutions on the department’s Salesforce/Mulesoft platform (underpinning technologies for the broader aged care digital transformation).
"Accenture has capabilities in cloud, digital, and security domains, and provides the department with specialist ICT skills in areas such as architecture, solution design, delivery management, software development, testing, release management, and application support."
The contract comes after the Government committed $1.2 billion over five years in the May Federal Budget for the "sustainment of, and essential enhancements to, critical aged care digital systems so they remain legislatively compliant and contemporary and can support the introduction of the new Aged Care Act from 1 July 2025".
In February, Accenture was contracted to develop the Department's Government Provider Management System (GPMS) and in July were awarded a $10.5 million contract to deliver 'computer services' related to implementation of the new Aged Care Act.
In July, the Department released its Aged Care Data and Digital Strategy 2024-2029, which includes the GPMS, business to Government connectivity, AI and innovation frameworks, a virtual nursing in aged care project, My Aged Care to My Health Record integration, aged care data governance framework, and a healthy ageing support tool - LiveUp.
