Indigenous colour-coding furore after Finance bungle

Finance department officials will undertake culture and diversity awareness training over darker colour-coding identifying Indigenous suppliers in an accidentally leaked spreadsheet.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher received a complaint about colour coding Indigenous suppliers in department spreadsheets. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

Finance department officials will undertake cultural and diversity awareness training after an Indigenous contractor complained to Katy Gallagher that Aboriginal suppliers were identified by darker colours in an accidentally leaked spreadsheet.

A damning review into the Department of Finance bungle, which leaked commercial rates and personal information across hundreds of the nation’s biggest service providers, revealed an Indigenous supplier lodged a complaint with Senator Gallagher after The Australian broke the story in February.

Following the second damaging government leak of sensitive contract details in three-months, an Indigenous supplier wrote to the Finance Minister on February 23.

The complaint, sent days after the leak of service provider details which impacted firms including KPMG, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture and Minter Ellison, concerned the “cultural insensitivity of colour coding for Indigenous suppliers on the inadvertently revealed spreadsheet”.

The independent review led by former Commonwealth and ACT ombudsman Michael Manthorpe said the complainant “noted that Indigenous suppliers had been identified by colouring the cells in a particular orange/brown colour”.

“Indigenous suppliers were the only ones identified with a consistent colouring system. I am advised that Procurement Division in Finance has apologised for any offence caused to the Indigenous supplier,” Mr Manthorpe said.

“It has taken steps to change how Indigenous suppliers are identified for legitimate purposes related to the Indigenous Procurement policy. Procurement division has advised the review that it will ask relevant staff to undertake culture and diversity awareness training, and indeed a cultural briefing has recently been conducted.”

The Manthorpe review, released on Friday, found it was “unfortunate that Finance itself appears to have twice breached the same confidentiality provisions that it now asks suppliers to abide by”.

Finance Department secretary Jenny Wilkinson has accepted nine recommendations including fast-tracking a new secure platform and banning the use of Excel spreadsheets in sharing commercial-in-confidence and pricing information.

Mr Manthorpe said while the primary focus of the review was the two government data breaches, “a further issue came to light during the project which raised concerns about the cultural capability of officials”.

The colour coding used to identify Indigenous suppliers on the Management Advisory Services (MAS) panel was to “assist agencies in meeting their Indigenous Procurement Policy targets”.

“I am aware that the colour has been used publicly in some other contexts that promote or celebrate Indigenous programs or policies; that the colour coding has been in place on the relevant spreadsheet for some time; and am assured that the team had no intention to cause offence in the choice of colour coding,” he said.

On the wider leak of sensitive details, Mr Manthorpe said “all the officials, from the most junior to the most senior, sincerely regret the inadvertent data releases that are subject to this review”.

“Although mine is a relatively short administrative review, rather than anything more onerous, I have no reason to suspect that anything other than human error was the source of both breaches. That said, the breaches are serious,” he said.

Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said the Manthorpe review found the two breaches were “likely to meet the threshold for a significant non-compliance with the Finance law”. Fifteen of the 239 suppliers caught-up in the February leak are yet to sign confidentiality agreements, which Finance requested following the mistake.

Senator Hume said the Finance Minister must explain “why a second breach could have occurred so soon after the first, and why her department did not consider whether a broader procedural or policy review was necessary after the first breach”.

The first accidental leak occurred in November last year when Health officials shared the billing rates of around 400 firms to 22 service providers. The updated fee schedule distributed in February was intended to rectify that error.

“What is Katy Gallagher doing about this? Labor has been so focused on enforcing standards of behaviour on suppliers of services, but have now fallen short of their own standards twice,” Senator Hume said.