A week after abandoning a failed IT system that cost it more than $7 million to develop, the State Government has revealed it will spend more than $2 million in an attempt to come up with a new solution.
And that won’t be the end of it, with more costs signalled by the relevant minister this morning.
InDaily revealed last week that the Concessions and Seniors Information System (CASIS), repeatedly criticised by the Auditor-General, had been scrapped by the Government after the developer, ac3, told the Government it was no longer in the business of developing software.
Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Zoe Bettison, revealed in an estimates committee today that her department had allocated $2.2 million over the next two years to build a new system – dubbed COLIN (Cost of Living Concession Information).
Under questioning from Opposition MP Duncan McFetridge, Bettison revealed the new system might eventually cost even more than $2.2 million because COLIN initial focused will only be the Government’s new “cost of living” payment announced in the recent Budget.
“The department has been allocated $2.2 million over the next two years to build the COLIN system for the new concession,” she said.
“This is a hybrid solution, utilising commercial off-the-shelf system and software as service options.”
However, she said the transition of other concessions IT systems and data management tools to the COLIN system would be the subject of a separate business case.
“That business case will consider the issue of cost,” she said.
The concessions management project has been an expensive disaster for taxpayers. It was originally meant to cost just $600,000, as a means to combine seniors’ card and other concessions into a single client record.
And the costs to the taxpayer is even more than the failed IT side of the project.
The Auditor-General’s report in 2014 found that the Government had been unable to properly reconcile concession payments, leading to hundreds of customers being overpaid.
And these problems are long-standing, with the concessions system first questioned by the Auditor-General in 2009-10.
The Government revealed last year that the development cost of CASIS had reached $5.8 million.
The Government revealed last week that the costs had ballooned to $7.183 million.
Bettison told the estimates committee today that concession overpayments identified at 31 March this year was a total of $1.388 million.
She also said the Government was examining legal options in relation to the developer ac3 “because my understanding was that as a department we were going to achieve those milestones and go live”.
“We will be seeking to not pay those invoices because we do not believe that work has been completed,” she said. “We do own the intellectual property.”
