The Victorian government paid the consultancy firm EY more than $30m to help manage and deliver key public health projects during the pandemic, including contact tracing and the rollout of tests and vaccines.
Government contracts show the health department paid EY $17.4m for its work on the test-and-trace program, known as Operation Drasi, with EY staff seconded into the department.
A deed of agreement for the secondment, signed by the department and EY, indicates what consultants were asked to do while working on the project between June 2020 and June 2021.
“During the secondment, your duties will include assisting the department during the Covid-19 pandemic response and in particular: operation planning, specifically forward planning with a strong focus on looking ahead,” the signed deed said.
The deed said EY would be “preparing and planning the actions that need to be done to support the response; operations management including planning and scheduling the activities that must be delivered”, and undertaking “project management and coordination”.
Another $11.5m contract was awarded for separate and unspecified “management advisory services” with the department between August 2020 and June 2021, with EY staff also seconded.
Another $2.2m was paid to EY for “Covid-19 incident management team operational planning and foresight services”, which were provided on an “as and when required basis”.
A separate contract awarded $259,000 for the “engagement of EY staff to assist with specialist Covid related special projects”. Another $1.15m was spent seconding EY staff to assist with Covid operations from July 2020 to June 2021.
The department declined to comment when asked for more detail on what the consultants were paid to do, how many were seconded into the department and at what level they operated.
It is understood the EY consultants worked on the expansion and efficiency of testing, the vaccine rollout and contact tracing.
EY said it was unable to comment due to client confidentiality obligations.
Public health experts concede there was an urgent need to boost the department’s workforce, but some have called for more detail on how such a large sum of money was spent.
Dr Stephen Duckett, the former director of the Grattan Institute’s health program who is now an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne, said it was not unreasonable for governments to hire a surge workforce.
“What is extraordinary here is the amount of money that was spent on EY with virtually no accountability, just waffle words generated by the obfuscation machine,” Duckett said.
“The $30m has to be recouped as Victoria went into debt during the first stages of the Covid pandemic. So Victorians are bearing the ongoing cost of these contracts and the associated debt, and it is reasonable for Victorians to know what they are paying for.”
Dr Julia Anaf, a research fellow at the Stretton Institute at the University of Adelaide, said it was not clear to what extent the health department had delegated responsibility for planning and operations to EY.
“Unlike private sector operators, governments are democratically elected to take responsibility for the health and welfare of the public,” Anaf said.
“There will always be a role for occasional provision of specific expertise by consultants, but the outsourcing of traditional public sector roles to private interests is a threat to democracy.”
The Greens senator Barbara Pocock, who is part of a Senate inquiry into the conduct of consultants, also called for more details and transparency from the state government.
“I’d like to know the extent to which this occurred and what kind of results were achieved,” Pocock said. “The lack of any apparent evaluation makes it impossible to determine whether the millions of taxpayer dollars spent represents value for money.
“EY made millions from outsourced Covid-related contracts, yet we don’t know much at all about what they were actually doing for the Victorian government, let alone whether it was worth what was paid.”
