icare procurement improvement program—total contract value updates
icare has updated additional total contract values for its service provider contracts after confirming service provisions and spend, as part of its procurement improvement program and ongoing practices.
Contract details are being updated to provide transparency about how much was actually spent across those contracts.
Case Managers select service providers from icare's panel of providers, however distribution of work can be influenced by many factors such as customer choice, injury type and geographical location of the worker.
icare has also updated the disclosure for its software subscription Management Service Agreement (MSA) with technology supplier Guidewire to reflect additional funding to support the Nominal Insurer's policy, billing and claims management systems through to 2024.
Guidewire is the underlying platform used for policy, billing and claims management systems for the Nominal Insurer.
This funding means the total icare investment for software licensing, subscriptions and consultancy fees is more than $140 million over eight years. It will also ensure we can deliver our customer consistency and reliability for the next three years.
In line with procurement remediation and NSW Government obligations, icare has updated the total projected contract value for the Agreement from $37.6 million to $87.2 million to reflect the projected spend to 2024.
More than $83 million of the contract value is for software subscription services through to August 2023. The remainder is for testing and development environments and extends through to August 2024.
icare holds another contract with Guidewire for consultancy services with a total contract value of $36.96 million and has spent $23.5 million for on-premise licensing costs from 2016 to 2020.
The Agreement with Guidewire was entered into in accordance with the Workers Compensation Nominal Insurer exemption under the Workers Compensation Act. (These services were procured under Workers Compensation Nominal Insurer exemption, to part 11, Public Works and Procurement Act 1912, per section 154a(4) of the Workers Compensation Act 1987)
Services procured under the Nominal Insurer exemption allow icare to make direct contract appointments, such as the MSA it has with Guidewire.
However, icare has amended the tendering method for the software subscription Agreement from 'limited' to 'non-tender' to align it with NSW Procurement's criteria for tenders.
The Agreement is subject to regular value for money assessment in line with industry standards.
