Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has acquired Canberra-based Web development company eDIME in an attempt to maintain a stranglehold on Government IT contracts.eDIME is a Web design and development company that has developed Web sites for a large number of Federal Government agencies, and also acts as an Internet consultancy firm for large Government projects such as elections. It developed, hosted and managed two of the largest Internet events in Australian history, Election 98 and the 1999 Referendum, which received 8 million and 12 million hits respectively.
"We have the biggest portfolio of Government Web sites in Australia, with 35 Government agencies on board," said Marcus Dawe, managing director of eDIME, who has since taken the position of national business development manager for e-business at CSC. "CSC brings us big project management experience and back-end integration capabilities."
Considering his extensive relations with Federal Government agencies, Dawe distanced himself from the recent ANAO audit report, which slammed the inefficiency and mismanagement of Government outsourcing contracts, one of which involved CSC.
"We are totally isolated from the whole-of-Government' outsourcing branch of CSC," he said. "Our clients see this deal more as eDime gaining more resources."
Over the last three years, Dawe claims to have been courted by several companies, and at one stage was a day away from floating on Nasdaq until he realised it was not in his company's best interests.
"This isn't about money," he said. "We have a low turnover of staff - uncharacteristic for this industry. We want to keep it that way. We have kept all our designers and developers on board, and I have negotiated favourable conditions for the staff and have managed to retain our company name.
"We're not taking a big company attitude on board," he said. "We'd get stuck in the bureaucracy - we know we need to be quick to market.
"Unlike Spike or Zivo, we don't sack clients to move onto bigger ones," he said. "We satisfy our existing clients and continue to use a policy of having no salespeople. We take the line that we shouldn't have salespeople out there who either don't know what they're selling or sell services like they are products. It has dirtied the waters of the IT industry."