''Post-Gershon, it's almost been like a second change of government in the ICT sector.''

The Gershon Review encouraged government agencies to find workers outside the ACT because of the skills shortage. It also called for agencies to reduce their reliance on private contractors, calling for a 50 per cent cut over two years, green measures such as those employed in Defence to save both power and money, centralisation of data centres, more teleconferencing and centralised purchasing. If only it was all that simple.

According to one senior ICT manager in the public service, the fallout from Gershon has been significant, with jobs lost, increased uncertainty and agencies putting off projects and focusing on BAUs, or business-as-usual projects, almost to the exclusion of innovation.

''There has been a general perception, since Gershon, and because of a tightening in the market place, that contractors are in a position where they have to accept lower rates,'' he says.

''Departments are using expiring contracts as a chance to put things out to tender and push prices down.''

According to the manager, projects that had been in the pipeline have been stalled or cancelled.

''Gershon recommended replacing contractors with permanent staff,'' he says. ''But what is actually happening is that departments are just not taking on new IT contracts. There are significant reviews in process within the public sector of new projects and many of these are not being approved.

''The push to outsource was significant under the previous government, but with this push for centralisation under AGIMO [the Australian Government Information Management Office], well, just look at the employment pages.

''Larger agencies have achieved some efficiencies, but smaller ones haven't benefited much. Nearly 80 per cent of work being done is business as usual, and they want to move that to 70 per cent, but they aren't hiring new staff.''

But not everyone agrees with the gloomy post-Gershon Review conclusions. Peter Acheson, the chief operating officer of Peoplebank, which sells itself as the largest provider of ICT staff to government in the country, thinks the worst of Gershon is over and the benefits are starting to flow.

''We've gone through the process launched late last year when Gershon was ratified by Cabinet, we've seen DIAC [Department of Immigration and Citizenship] and Defence, for example, respond early in the year,'' he says. ''There was a period of uncertainty in February-March when there ICT workers in Canberra were concerned, but I think that is largely passed.''

And while Acheson concedes that some contractors have lost out, he says the future is bright. He says, ''What we have seen now is that the sector has settled down. We aren't in the boom times of 2006 and 2007, but the market has returned to a degree of normalcy. ''

That's not a view shared by Buerckner. She says, ''There needs to be a set of guidelines written on how agencies can implement each area of Gershon and it should probably come out of AGIMO and the Government 2.0 taskforce.

''The way this was handled, it cost me my job, but that's not even the point. They need to do things in a sustainable way.''

www.finance.gov.au/publi cations/ICT-Review/