Parliament IT and cyber project budget put at about A$40 million

About A$40 million over four years is funding upgrades to Parliament’s information technology and security systems, Department of Parliamentary Services chief operating officer and deputy secretary Nicola Hinder said at senate estimates.

Hinder said commercial sensitivities meant the funding was initially not for publication and was left out of budget papers. The Parliamentary Information and Cyber Resilience project covers government information assurance, cyber improvements and Parliamentary Computing Network activities, alongside Parliament House’s electronic security systems.

The network links Parliament House with electorate and ministerial offices nationwide. Hinder said parliamentary department staff currently operate under the same broad system controls as parliamentarians and their staff.

An early priority is to divide the network into segments. Hinder said this would make the DPS secretary responsible and accountable for settings for her staff, with the accountable authorities for parliamentary departments responsible for their own staff settings. She said work on the network was progressing and would run until 2029/30.

An audit separately identified gaps in the department’s cyber risk management, including the absence of a single consolidated record and risks still allocated to people who had departed. Hinder said a dedicated governance, risk and assurance team had created a central register.

The team discovered 104 historical assessments listed as complete with no assessment evidence and was reviewing them, she said. It was also working on 33 new risk assessments, had 18 new cyber assessments in progress and had completed 61 new cyber risk assessments.

Following high staff attrition, Hinder said the cyber security branch had maintained full staffing for close to 12 months.