Auditor takes aim at concessions bungle
The State Government’s beleagured and expensive attempt to coordinate its concessions and seniors cards scheme is under the spotlight of the Auditor-General.
While the state’s top overseer of public administration has taken the Concessions and Seniors Information System (CASIS) program to task in the last five of his annual reports, it appears he’s set to take the big stick to the scheme’s continued failures.
And he’s roped in several other Information and Communication Technology stuff ups for special review, including the Health Department’s patient records system EPAS, the subject of several InDaily reports.
Auditor-General Simon O’Neill’s 2014 annual report, tabled in parliament yesterday, made brief reference to the failures, indicating that a separate supplementary report is being finalised.
Supplementary reports are traditionally made when an Auditor-General has serious concerns about a particular area of public sector administration.
“Previous reports have included commentary on some major ICT project developments … to highlight problems,” O’Neill’s annual report states.
“The problems, if not managed in a timely and proper manner can result in increased costs, time/benefit realisation delays or material loss through project abandonment, functional deficiencies or prolonged use of legacy systems.”
The report said that Audit was “finalising a review of some development projects”, notably:
- RISTEC – replacement taxation revenue management system
- Oracle Corporate System – whole-of-health integrated financial system
- Enterprise Patient Administration System – replacement for a large number of patient administration systems in health units
- CASIS – a system development for the management of concessions and seniors cards administration.
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Problems in CASIS were first raised by Audit in 2009-10.
Each year, the Department of Communities and Social Inclusion, which has charge of the scheme, has promised to fix the problems and complete the project to efficiently coordinate the payment of rebates and concessions for electricity, gas, water, council rates and other charges.
“The past five audits have commented on the department’s inability to comprehensively reconcile concession payments made with client details maintained on departmental databases,” the report noted.
“The department has advised Audit that the CASIS project is expected to eventually address this matter and other deficiencies in management controls.
“The CASIS system was not completed and implemented during 2013-14. Existing systems continued to process concessions without matching to individual records of eligibility before payment for the year 30 June 2014.”
It appears Audit has tired of the six-year ongoing failures. The supplementary report may finally explain how and why it has been such a failure.
The CASIS failures have been the subject of an ongoing series of reports in InDaily since mid-2013 when the company in charge of the project went into liquidation.
In July this year InDaily reported how the costs of the bungled project had blown out by another $1.1 million.
The latest blowout took the cost of the CASIS project from its original anticipated cost of $600,000 to $5.8 million.
Communities and Social Inclusion Minister Zoe Bettison admitted the blowout in State Parliament’s budget estimates committee hearings in July.
“This is like a never-ending story; it just gets worse and worse and we haven’t seen the end yet,” shadow communities minister Duncan McFetridge told InDaily at the time.
In a prepared answer to McFetridge’s questions, Bettison also revealed a number of people claimed concessions for their energy bills despite being ineligible – and repayment would be sought.
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It was the first full admission by the State Government since InDaily revealed the project’s failures in July 2013.
“The total cost of the life of the project (from 2008-09 to the end of the 2013-14 year) for the development of CASIS is estimated at $5.8 million,” Bettison told parliament.
The blowout figure, however, is limited to the development costs of the project, which set out in 2009 to merge seniors’ cards and other concessions into a single client record.
Bettison also confirmed that recent checks had uncovered over-payments of concessions and rebates to people who were not eligible to claim them.
“DCSI was unable to match 5173 concession payment records between the total active records in the concessions and rebates tracking system and the files of active concession recipients provided by energy retails,” the minister admitted.
“As at 11 June, from these records it has been determined that 2026 customers were entitled to continuing concessions and 987 were ineligible for a concession. As at 11 June, concessions totalling $311,157 were overpaid to 569 of these customers. Of the remaining 418 ineligible customers, DCSI is waiting for further information from energy retailers.”
InDaily has been told by department insiders that the over-payment of concessions and rebates is the tip of the iceberg and that energy companies have already indicated it is not their problem.
When InDaily first reported that the interstate company hired to develop and run CASIS had gone into liquidation, the Minister (then Tony Piccolo) said the project cost was $1.294 million.
One week later, a department spokesman confirmed the cost of the project was $3.63 million.
By October 2013 the figure had blown out further.
The Auditor-General’s 2013 report shows an ever-growing problem.
“In response to audit inquiry of the department in August 2013 regarding the status of the system development, the department advised actual expenditure to 30 June 2013 on the system development was $3.71 million and a further $780,000 is estimated to be required to complete the system development.”
Today the bill stands at $5.8 million and counting.
The project started out in 2009 as a $600,000 proposal to deliver a better financial control system for the various rebate and concession schemes by 2010.
It is yet to be delivered in full functioning capacity.
More than $600 million worth of concessions have been paid in the last six years using the flawed computer systems.
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