A $1.3 million State Government information systems project aimed at “one-third of the state population” has stalled.

The interstate company hired to develop and run the Concessions and Seniors Information System (CASIS) has gone into   liquidation less than a year after it started the project.

Endpoint Corporation Pty Ltd was signed up by the Department of Communities and Social Inclusion to “develop an IT system for the Concessions and Seniors Information System and then to service it”, a department spokesman has confirmed.

Endpoint’s liquidators are  now settling creditors’ claims that the company  owes money to the Australian Taxation Office for super and tax, Queensland’s Commissioner of Payroll Tax, WorkCover, ANZ Bank and others.

State Government officials took two days to confirm InDaily’s information that the deal had stalled.

“This contract commenced on 1 November 2012 with an anticipated conclusion of the project being 31 March 2014,” a Department of Communities spokesman said in an email statement late yesterday.

“The contract value was $1,294,000 (GST exclusive).”

Department insiders have told InDaily the project has already run over-budget.

The man behind the small, single-director company was Stephen Alexander.

Alexander, who became the sole director of Endpoint in September last year, says on his personal website that he is “regarded as a thought leader in the art of creating meaningful value in the evolving interconnected, eco like on-line world, that is currently redefining the core requirements to not only survive but excel in a 21st century knowledge based economy”.

As for his involvement with the South Australian Government, he described his role in the project as “senior advisor to the conception, design, implementation and when launched, the operations of a cloud based welfare concessions model that will fully automate applications, eligibility verification, entitlement calculations and payments for seven concessions”.

“This will service over one-third of the State population,” he wrote.

Eight months after Endpoint started the project, it struck trouble and appointed administrators on June 19.  It was liquidated yesterday.

InDaily asked the appointed administrator, Paul Nogueira, of Worrells in Maroochydore, Queensland, if the State Government contract would be handed on to another company for completion, or handed back.

Nogueira later advised he was required to refer all inquiries to “the media unit of the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion”.

Stephen Alexander, meanwhile, appears to have already moved on; he lists himself now as a director of Cloud Compliance Pty Ltd.

InDaily has asked the State Government if Mr Alexander’s new company is involved in the continuation of the stalled IT project.

In its initial response, the spokesman said: “As a result of Endpoint Corporation Pty Ltd having gone into administration, the continued delivery of the system is being provided by another entity.

“Negotiated arrangements with this entity are currently being finalised.

“That entity has engaged key staff from Endpoint to ensure project continuity.”

Departmental insiders have a much more scathing view of the project, telling InDaily it was a waste of time and money.

“Where was the business case for this? Where was the open tender and what did (they) have to offer?” one public servant said on the basis of anonymity.

“How does a South Australian department end up going to a company in Queensland that appears to have little substantive background and now has collapsed into administration?”

Stephen Alexander’s own website and online profile suggest he speaks a language that bureaucrats might be attracted to.

“Predicting insightful end points for initiatives, organizations or sectors and generating more value outcomes with less resources through the creative use of new trends and mixing emerging online capabilities, is Stephen’s hallmark,” he says about himself.

”He also employs a unique methodology to determine the likely endpoint of a given policy, initiative or program of work to each of the stakeholders and what operational verifiable value would be generated from their given perspective.

”This is of particular interest to sponsors of complex initiatives, who are not usually able to enforce adoption and change upon each of the stakeholders, which is essential for achieving a critical mass of adoption, by providing the evidence of value where the criteria is based on meaningful outcomes as defined by the sponsors themselves.”

Despite the project being signed up in late 2012 and hitting the wall in June 2013, there is no specific mention of it in the Budget papers.