A trail of government website crashes, tech wrecks and costly projects is expected to face scrutiny when Labor moves for a Senate probe into the Coalition's troubled multibillion dollar IT spend this week.

The inquiry, if supported by the Senate, would haul government officials in front of a parliamentary committee investigating the causes of multiple controversies in the government's roll-out of digital services, culminating in the infamous "censusfail" saga and the Department of Human Services' "robo-debt" program.

A Senate inquiry will probe the government's troubled multibillion dollar spend on IT projects. Credit:Phil Carrick

Tech spending by the public service and military establishment has soared from $6.7 billion in the 2014-15 financial year to $9.3 billion in 2015-16 and it is projected to grow by another $300 million this year. But a series of high-profile blunders has shredded the government's reputation for delivering digital services.

As the government hands the national postal plebiscite on same sex marriage to the Australian Bureau of Statistics despite concerns about the agency following job cuts and the short lead-up to the survey, the inquiry would probe the ABS' readiness for the task given failures during the 2016 census.