By Freya Purnell
The Northern Territory Government will scrap its Asset Management System (AMS) despite investment of $70 million, after the system was found not to meet the Government’s needs and cannot feasibly be fixed.
The project was originally initiated by the Department of Infrastructure in 2006, to replace nine ageing legacy systems with a solution based on SAP to manage government assets including houses and highways worth $11 billion.
With Fujitsu appointed as systems integrator, the project was originally supposed to cost $7.2 million.
But problems with the project began to emerge as early as 2010, according to a report by the Auditor-General for the Northern Territory, released in March 2013.
This week, NT Minister for Corporate and Information Services David Tollner (pictured) announced that the Government would be cutting its losses, after KPMG undertook a review of the system and provide options to get an alternative system up and running.
KPMG found that the AMS did not meet the Government’s needs, and was so fundamentally flawed that remedying the system was simply not feasible, a press release issued by Tollner stated.
An earlier review by the NT Department of Treasury and Finance similarly found that only 11 per cent of the AMS was fit-for-purpose.
Tollner said rectifying the system using the existing software would require it to be rebuilt from scratch.
“KPMG estimate this would cost taxpayers a further $120 million and take five years to complete. We will not be taking the approach of throwing good money after bad,” he said.
Instead, the Government will establish a network of existing asset systems called ASNET, which will utilise updated versions of three legacy systems that were left in operation, due to the difficulties with the AMS.
By integrating these systems into a new web-based portal at an expected cost of $12.5 million, the Government plans to engage the local IT sector in the project.
“One of the many failings of the AMS was its reliance on high-end software specialists that were not available in the NT. We literally had to fly a technician from interstate every time something went wrong with the AMS. With ASNET there will be vastly more opportunities for local suppliers, many of them small ICT businesses,” Tollner said.
An improved management framework will also be adopted for ICT projects, according to Tollner.
“The single most critical thing is to put in place a stronger, more robust governance approach and get the right senior people within Government participating in it,” he said. “If we get this layer right, other factors such as project scope, resourcing and contract management can be properly addressed through an effective governance process.”
