A push to investigate a trail of government IT blunders has won the backing of the main public service union, building momentum for a probe that could uncover the causes of failures in the Coalition's multibillion dollar tech spend.
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But the Community and Public Sector Union has warned that a Senate inquiry into the government's troubled roll-out of digital services should not become a forum for public service bashing or scapegoating.
After Labor revealed it was planning to move this week for a probe into a series of website crashes and tech wrecks marring the Coalition's digital projects, the government pushed back saying it had improved oversight of IT upgrades.
The inquiry needs crossbench support and would drag government officials before a parliamentary committee to explain failures culminating in the Department of Human Services' controversial "robo-debt" system, the 2016 "censusfail" episode and ATO website crashes.
CPSU assistant national secretary Michael Tull said public servants struggled to deliver good outcomes in an environment dominated by outsourced IT planning and delivery, and called for the Senate probe to focus on the government's reliance on contractors.
"If anyone thinks that public sector IT problems can be fixed by blaming a few public sector workers and then giving even more contracts to the big ICT companies, they haven't been paying attention," he said.
"Over recent years we've seen government try to fix IT problems by throwing money at external vendors, always to no avail."
Assistant Minister for Digital Transformation Angus Taylor said the government was finalising a Digital Transformation Agency review of 50 programs across agencies and more than 250 critical business systems, and would recommend fixes to ailing projects.
The review, announced in February, focuses on IT projects valued at more than $10 million.
"If the provider is getting on and fixing the problem, the customer is more forgiving. The government is establishing unprecedented visibility and oversight of the $6.5 billion annual IT spend," he said.
But Labor says the review would not explain the causes of the government's tech failures and a Senate inquiry was needed to understand the problems.
Opposition digital economy spokesman Ed Husic said the government had ignored calls from Labor to investigate its IT problems earlier this year.
The government was expected to spend nearly $10 billion on information technology last financial year, a massive boost of nearly $3 billion since the Coalition came to power.
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