Finance dept calls in SAP expertise ahead of GovERP system build

The Department of Finance is preparing to ramp up work on the federal government’s new common ERP system, with as many as 18 SAP technical specialists soon to be called in.

The department put out the call for the contractors last week after indicating in an industry advisory that it planned to find up to 25 contractors to work on projects, including GovERP.

The specialists, which are being sourced from the digital marketplace, will sit within the department's Shared Services Transformation Group and provide services to the Service Delivery Office.

The Shared Services Transformation Group is spearheading GovERP on behalf of six shared services hubs across government, one of which is the Service Delivery Office.

The remaining five hubs sit within Services Australia, the Australian Taxation Office and the departments of Treasury, Industry and Foreign Affairs.

The contractors will “provide services to the Service Delivery Office, including the broader program of GovERP”, the department said in the notice.

But the digital marketplace brief indicates the contractors will also work on the Parliamentary Expense Management System (PEMS).

Roles on offer include principal cloud architect, enterprise architect, S/4 HANA data migration architect, cutover manager, FICO specialist and Fiori and HTML5 development specialist.

Separately, the department also went looking for three additional contractors last week, including one for GovERP, specialising in “SAP Identity Management, SAP GRC and SAP Security technologies”.

Plans for a centrally managed ERP platform emerged late last year to standardise corporate and financial systems across the six shared services hubs.

It was prompted by the need for five of the six hubs to replace their existing separate SAP-based ERP systems before they reach end-of-life in 2025, or pay a premium.

The department settled on SAP’s S/4 HANA platform as GovERP’s core ERP platform earlier this year, and in March went looking for a new enterprise cloud platform to host it.

While it was planning to award a contract for the enterprise cloud platform by July, a spokesperson told iTnews the procurement is “still underway”.

The department is also continuing to work with agencies to “complete the design of the GovERP template operating model and system”, the spokesperson said.

The department is planning to trial a prototype GovERP system with agencies before the end of this year, with a full version expected to come online by April 2021.