After announcing the formation of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) executive council early last year, NSW CIO Paul Edgecumbe has been working with the individual agency CIOs on a plan to streamline backend operational expenditure by A$565 million over four years.

To achieve this, backend applications like messaging and payroll will be consolidated and shared among the agencies freeing them up to enhance their unique, customer-facing IT requirements.

Edgecumbe described the strategy as unique among the "many other" government ICT strategies in that it is centred on people, community services, business, and is not about interoperabiliy, open source, or data centres.

"It's about services to the community," he said. "EBay is creating an expectation the government has to live up to, which may be e-learning, telemedicine, or electronic health records."

NSW's core agency systems were put in "many years ago" and require replacement and "a lot of money". The primary strategy is to replace those systems while staying within existing spending levels.