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.
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 $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.
It is understood the EY consultants worked on the expansion and efficiency of testing, the vaccine rollout and contact tracing.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.