The Albanese government’s ambitious overhaul of aged care is once again on shaky ground, with its planned November rollout in doubt due to ongoing IT failures and soaring contractor costs.
As The Saturday Paper revealed, a confidential briefing to Health Minister Mark Butler has flagged serious concerns about whether the digital systems supporting the new Aged Care Act will be ready in time. Central to the problem is the Government Provider Management System (GPMS), a troubled Salesforce-based platform meant to modernise how aged care providers interact with the government.
Instead of delivering a seamless digital transformation, the rollout has been plagued by delays, missed targets, and escalating costs. What was initially sold as a streamlined solution has morphed into a bloated, multi-vendor project riddled with complexity and lacking clear accountability.
Salesforce’s role in the saga is particularly contentious. The company was first brought on with a $13.5 million contract in 2022. Since then, its earnings from aged care-related work have surged past $50 million.
This comes despite the tech giant being caught up in a separate Senate inquiry into procurement misconduct at the National Disability Insurance Agency, where officials accepted undisclosed gifts and meetings. Despite the controversy, Salesforce continues to secure high-value federal contracts, raising serious questions about the government’s procurement safeguards.
Other contractors have also seen their involvement balloon. Capgemini’s aged care digital transformation contract has doubled in size, while Accenture has pulled in over $450 million in total engagements. Wipro, Kyndryl and other global IT firms have all had their contracts extended or modified, with little transparency and delayed reporting.
The ballooning costs raise critical questions about whether taxpayer money is being used wisely. What began as a relatively straightforward digital refresh has become a costly quagmire.
The public service seems far too comfortable approving contract variations worth tens of millions of dollars without clearly defined outcomes or explanations. When decision-makers are not spending their own money, it is all too easy to greenlight bloated deals.
But for a sector crying out for more carers, better resources and urgent reform, this kind of financial mismanagement is inexcusable. The real cost is not just monetary, it is felt in the aged care homes and by the older Australians still waiting for meaningful change.
Smaller and rural aged care providers are also struggling to prepare. A government-commissioned impact assessment earlier this year found many providers remain unready for the new digital systems, particularly the GPMS and its companion Business-to-Government (B2G) Gateway.
These tools are supposed to provide real-time data sharing and improve oversight, yet both have experienced major setbacks. The B2G Gateway still hasn’t passed basic testing phases.
Two separate government assurance reviews – one under the Morrison government and another under Labor – have already warned of these issues. The first found the IT foundations of the reforms were off-track as early as 2022. By 2023, many of those issues had worsened.
It appears that the government continued to fund new phases of the project, injecting an additional $151 million even before the initial stage had been completed successfully.
The result has been a confused, fragmented rollout that has left providers in the dark. The star ratings system for aged care homes, intended to be part of the GPMS launch, had to be implemented through a makeshift email process because the digital system wasn’t functioning.
Meanwhile, public communications continue to insist that the GPMS is “live and operational,” a claim that is technically true but practically meaningless given how little of the intended functionality is usable.
The consequences of this failure go far beyond missed deadlines and budget blowouts. This digital transformation was meant to underpin one of the most important aged care reforms in decades. Instead, it has become a prime example of how poor planning, weak oversight and overreliance on external vendors can derail a reform process.
Had even a portion of this funding gone directly into frontline care, support workers, essential equipment or basic safety improvements, the impact would have been immediate and measurable. Instead, hundreds of millions have been absorbed by software licenses, consultancy fees and delayed development timelines.
With just four months to go before the revised start date, many in the sector are bracing for yet another extension. This time, the delay may be less about political will or legislative readiness and more about the hard truth that the technology simply is not up to the task.
The aged care sector, and the Australians it serves, deserve better. If this digital mess is allowed to continue unchecked, it risks becoming not just a missed opportunity but a full-blown scandal.
No great surprise. The current delay is due in part to the inability of some of the smartest people being unable to create safe and workable platforms to meet the complexity and regulation of what has been formed by too many with little more than, good intent.
It’s like trying to model the gait for, a fore leg roped, three humped, bull camel with five legs.
Since 2018 I have devoted my advocacy to the aged care, reviews and changes. I have been privileged to have been a consumer representative on a number of panels, committees and meetings with the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
Too often informed voices and lived experience has been overpowered by power grabs and output from government funded advocacy and promotion. We have not heard all that should be heard.
May 2025 Incoming Government Brief reads
The department is preparing advice for your [Minister Butler] consideration in the week of 19 May 2025 on whether the 1 July 2025 start date for the Aged Care Act 2024 (the Act), the Support at Home Program and related reforms is achievable.
Minister Butler’s and Sam Rae response was to delay the inevitable. Furthermore some 83,000 people approved for packages to start on 1 July were delayed until 1 Nov. My question is where did the money go that had been set aside to pay for these packages. I can only assume once again it was given to outsourced system contractors in favour of providing direct care to the 83,000 who had been promised a July 1 start to their care.
Currently Support at Home is on track to do enormous harm to our most vulnerable. The current model will create an ongoing burden on budget to subsidize pensioners and people on low incomes as they are forced before their time into residential care.
The fact that the government still pursues this crazy idea of that pensioners and people on low incomes can afford $50 each week for basic services and upwards of $150 per week to meet complex care need is a stubborn sticking to your guns while the powder becomes soggy with tears of frustration. .
The government can fix the unfixable by leaving alone what works.
Namely by
1) A continuation of the current assessment model for income tested fees
2) Introduction of meaningful safety nets. A recommendation of both the Royal Commission and the Aged Care Task Force.
3) Abandonment of the overly complicated and unmanageable individual contributions at differing rates for clinical, independence and everyday living.
By doing these three things, people will be able to budget for their care costs and not be forced to forgo services due to fluctuations in costs to meet episodic care need.
If we don’t get this ‘horrid’ part of user contributions right, the whole system will force pensioners and people on low income before their time into residential care. My preference of course is for the government to take the advice of the Royal Commission and share the cost across community as levy. We all get old.
There are some great things with the new aged care model, but there are too many inadvertent failures that need to be fixed before this beast of five legs can be let loose and expected to survive.
Peter – we totally agree with everything you say here. We operate a very successful Home Care service in mostly rural communities and almost all of our Clients are full or part Pensioners. The complexity of Support At Home as currently formulated is simply insane.
It will bewilder Clients, and new Clients required to contribute funds they cannot spare for basic services such as personal care and home cleaning will forgo services they need and struggle on at home in increasing squalor and poor hygiene. Many will fall ill or they will literally fall, and injure themselves, attempting tasks they can no longer perform safely without help.
More and more Seniors will occupy scarce hospital beds due to illness and injuries which were otherwise preventable, while they await space in Residential care they do not want, and at far higher cost to Government and the community. A lose lose outcome for everyone.
The current system of co-contribution through an Income Tested Fee is at least understandable and relatively simple.
The new system will require Home Care Providers to submit extremely complex Invoices to Clients, which will change weekly with every change in service mix, and then chase the Clients for payment as the Government’s debt collectors. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will be overwhelmed with disputes over financial matters as a consequence – further diverting the Commission, and Providers, from a much needed focus on high quality care.
If this goes ahead as currently formulated, Support At Home will go down in history as the Labor Government’s equivalent of Robo Debt.
Dave and Meg
Totally Agree from a retired aged care nurse educator and a care packet recipient.
I don’t know how much more proof the government needs to realise the Australian Public Service cannot deliver IT projects. Virtually no APS executive has IT experience or qualifications, but they are quite competent at spinning narratives. The rank and file are either naive enough to believe their leaders, or too scared not to. The system is not only dysfunctional, it is corrupt.
Capgemini was brought in to implement Salesforce without going through a competitive procurement process, despite not having the required skills or experience. Accenture was meant to deliver GPMS by December 2021, but it has used the playbook from the My Health Record where it delivers nothing of value for as long as possible and gets paid hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Salesforce is concerned about the reputational damage to its product, but not enough to jeopardise the millions it is raking in from licensing.
The government will likely replace the Aged Care executive, like it did for NDIS a few years ago, but this won’t fix the problem. A non-APS structure staffed with skilled & experienced personnel is needed to deliver real outcomes for customers, and real value to tax payers.
Not a surprise. Canberra-based politicians are divorced from the reality of life in aged care and other fields as well. Centralisation of decision-making and action enables States to escape responsibility in many fields.
The ethics of misdirecting funds to seeking magical solutions from IT etc. instead of paying and educating PEOPLE to provide care is rarely mentioned. Corporate greed disguised as efficiency.
Canberra is just a cash cow that politicians are happy to watch being milked by big business.
What a shocking waste of money by people who know little of actual aged care frontline work. It’s 101 for local providers and state based systems but seems to often to fail when federal governance and remote management take over. Bottom-up in future please!
We will all ultimately be trapped, snookered, in :
“fifteen feet of pure white snow”
(lyrics acknowledged to Nick Cave)