Cost blows out on stalled concessions project
A stalled State Government information systems project has cost more than $3.63 million, department officials have confirmed, which is more than double the figure they admitted to last week.
The project, which aimed to merge seniors cards and other concessions into a single client record, began in 2009 and has run well past its expected completion date, officials admitted.
The Department of Communities and Social Inclusion (DCSI) confirmed the additional costs when InDaily asked for details of other contracts attached to the Concessions and Seniors Information System (CASIS).
InDaily revealed last week that the interstate company hired to develop and run CASIS, Endpoint Corporation Pty Ltd, had gone into liquidation less than a year after it started its $1.29 million contract to deliver the project.
The State Government confirmed that it had a current deal with Endpoint – but it now transpires that there were other deals going back to 2009.
“This contract commenced on 1 November 2012 with an anticipated conclusion of the project being 31 March 2014,” a Department of Communities spokesman first told InDaily last week.
“The contract value was $1,294,000 (GST exclusive).”
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When a reader contacted InDaily with further information, we asked the department what the total expenditure on the project has been,.
“The initial business case was developed in early 2009 and a contractual agreement with Endpoint Corporation Pty Ltd was finalised on 5 May 2009,” a department spokesman said on Tuesday. “In 2009 DFC entered into contractual arrangements with Endpoint to develop and supply a single entry point for CASIS.
“These arrangements continued until a new contract with Endpoint was negotiated in late 2012 and executed in February 2013.
“Total expenditure was $3.62 million.”
The costs will increase further when the department signs on a former supplier to Endpoint, DMI Pty Ltd, to finalise their part of the project.
“A contract is currently being finalised between DCSI and DMI,” the department said.
“The value of the remaining work under this arrangement is forecast at $65,000 covering the period through to December 2013.”
In the department’s explanations to InDaily, an inconsistency arose in the project description relating to the number of concessions being consolidated under the project.
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“The aim of the project is to consolidate four different concession types, with varied eligibility provisions and rate calculations into a single client record,” the department said this week.
Endpoint’s managing director Stephen Alexander had a different view – expressed on his website.
Alexander described the CASIS project as “a cloud based welfare concessions model that will fully automate applications, eligibility verification, entitlement calculations and payments for seven concessions”.
The department conceded the project had run overtime.
“It is a very complex process, with a multitude of variables in client types and all of these needed to be addressed through the development process,” its spokesman said.
“This has taken longer than initially anticipated.”
Department insiders have told InDaily the project is a long way from completion.
InDaily has posed further questions to the Minister’s office and is yet to receive a reply.
The questions relate to further contracts and arrangements supporting the CASIS project.
However, Communities and Social Inclusion Minister Tony Piccolo did say he was confident the State Government would retain any intellectual property developed in the CASIS project.
“The Minister owns all intellectual property rights in anything that has been delivered to him or otherwise produced in the course of the provision of the services,” he said.
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