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When a country is as large as Australia, it's a big job to connect the nation's estimated 21 million people with public services. To inform its citizens about how their country can help them, the government created Australia.gov.au, a national Web site linking users to services and information to aid them at home, work and elsewhere.

As the go-to site for a nation of six states and 10 territories, Australia.gov.au has much ground to cover -- literally and figuratively. It's a repository of Web links to services and information that all levels of governments -- state, federal, territory and city -- have to offer. The portal features: an internal search engine; more than 800 links to public sites; separate directories of federal, state, territory and city sites and departments; travel information; weather updates; current and historical country information; an alphabetical list of government contact numbers by subject; an e-mail subscription service for news and media releases; and a really simple syndication (RSS) delivery option for news and podcasts. RSS enables people to receive news articles, headlines and other data via XML technology.

Victoria is ruling a line under its patchy HealthSmart IT rollout, and has returned to the drawing board with plans for a new whole-of-health ICT strategy for the period 2009-2013.

When the now-$427 million program began in 2003, it was hoped that the ICT refresh and rebuild across the state's public hospitals, rural alliances and community health providers would be complete within four years.

But in April this year, Victoria's auditor-general Des Pearson said HealthSmart had been overly ambitious in its targets, and was at least two years behind schedule.

The Victorian State Government in Australia has launched a new centralised ICT shared services entity called CenITex. While support for centralising ICT operations is by no means universal in the public sector, it is a bullet that governments just have to bite.

E-government's identity crisis is no reason to perpetuate fragmented and inefficient ICT infrastructure

Governments face a growing challenge as they grapple with the evolving role of ICT in public sector reform. E-government once occupied a modernisation moral high ground, with the Internet as a catalyst for citizen-centric, joined-up government. These days the imperatives are less clear. ICT is starting to be viewed as a problem rather than an opportunity.

The New South Wales state government has quietly created a new shared services agency that will, among other things, provide centralised IT services to a large number of departments and agencies.

Dubbed 'ServiceFirst', the agency's web site states it has about 540 staff providing services to about 80 agencies with approximately 8,800 staff. It was created over the past few months from the previous CCSU, CSS and Department of Commerce Shared Services branches.

National E-Health Transition Authority spokesmen have dismissed criticisms over the agency's performance as misguided, saying the board has signed off on this year's work program and will be pushing its agenda at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in October.

Acting chief executive Andrew Howard said NEHTA would adopt a different focus over the next 12 months.

"When I joined in April, my impression was of an organisation that had spent 2.5 years not delivering anything, that had no runs on the board and I was concerned it was a theoretical organisation with no understanding of the health industry," Mr Howard told the Health-e-Nation conference in Melbourne this week.