A performance audit of the Department of Justice and Community Safety’s (DJCS) procurement, implement and management of an IT system to manage fines and incorporate new social justice initiatives has found the system failed to reach expectations.
In his report Implementing a New Infringements Management System, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves found the Department’s planning for its Victorian Infringements Enforcement Warrant (VIEW) system failed to the extent that it did not meet its expected time, cost, quality and functionality targets.
“These failures were mainly due to DJCS’s misguided and poorly implemented risk mitigation strategy to procure a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system,” Mr Greaves said.
“This is because no COTS system existed, or could reasonably be expected to exist, that could meet DJCS’s complex requirements,” he said.
“The Victorian public service must rethink its approach to sourcing, managing and governing its complex IT projects to avoid these issues recurring.’
Mr Greaves said DJCS’s overall governance of the VIEW project was ineffective.
He said that as a high value, high risk project, the system posed significant risk and materiality to the State however, DJCS’s governance arrangements, oversight and reporting were not commensurate with the project’s importance and challenging nature.
He said that in the project’s early stages, DJCS made some effort to convey to the Attorney General the likely risk that VIEW would not meet its deadline to the Attorney General and sought an extension for the project.
Mr Greaves said DJCS didn’t clearly prioritise the issue in its briefs to the Attorney-General; provide any detailed explanation of why it needed the additional time; or clearly explain the link between the IT solution and delivering the fines reform,
Nor did it identify the likely consequences failing to deliver the IT solution on time would have on implementing the reform.
“The Victorian public service and most other Australian jurisdictions have a history of problematic and failed IT projects, as does the private sector,” the Auditor-General said.
“With the VIEW project, DJCS’s failure to identify, procure and implement an effective IT solution immediately followed its previous failed attempt.”
Mr Greaves made seven recommendations to the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF) and the Victorian Public Sector Commission related to leadership training for public servants; building information technology project delivery capability; risk management; and project governance.
The Auditor-General’s 82-page report can be accessed at this PS News link.
