$425m IT upgrade for transport agencies veers off the rails

[boronia]

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/425 ... 4z5n2.html

Dubbed “Making It Work For You”, the $425 million project was meant to transform the information technology systems for the state's transport agencies.

But internal documents released under freedom of information laws show the major IT project for Transport for NSW has completed only a third of its end-user goals despite burning through $348 million since it began almost five years ago.
The confidential report has warned of 'significant broader impacts' across the transport agencies from worsening IT performance.

The confidential report has warned of 'significant broader impacts' across the transport agencies from worsening IT performance.

And a consulting firm hired by Transport for NSW to review its IT service delivery team warned only last month that the project has “limited remaining funding” to deliver the required “capabilities to successfully function as a service integrator”.

A final report by Third Horizon marked “confidential” and “sensitive”, paints a worrying picture of the state of IT systems at Transport for NSW and the agencies which fall under its control such as Sydney Trains, bus operator State Transit and Roads and Maritime Services.

The report found a new IT service delivery team established within Transport for NSW a year after the lead agency was set up in 2011 was now in a “challenging situation and is facing substantial challenges”.
Advertisement

Financial benefits from centralising IT functions “are not being fully realised”, the service delivery performance appeared to be “worsening” and its credibility was declining.

In a broad swipe, the report said the IT service delivery “does not appear to be meeting the service requirements” of the transport agencies, resulting in “significant broader impacts”.

Apart from factors such as “technical complexity”, it raised concerns about “governance issues” and took a shot at the “mindsets and behaviours” of those in the IT team that “hinder improvement”, warning that “major interventions” were needed to fix the situation.

And with the “Making It Work For You” project now scheduled to put in place “significant technical change”, the report dated February 19 this year warned of “large end-user impacts in the next four months”.

Greens transport spokeswoman, Mehreen Faruqi, who obtained the report by using freedom of information laws, said the government needed to reveal whether the IT project would ever be completed and how much more public money would be wasted.

“This government has boasted about going digital but a project that was supposed to deliver the most basic technology upgrade to one of its largest agencies has completely fallen through,” she said. “Ultimately, taxpayers bear the cost of their inability to deliver projects to budget and on time.”

Transport for NSW said in a statement that the IT project remained within the approved funding envelope and was “delivering against” a revised scope put in place in March 1017, which would be completed later this year.

The Third Horizon report does not mention the revised scope last year but has made a series of recommendations, including the need for “stronger leadership” and changes to the IT team's “structure and capacity”.

The agency said it was considering which recommendations to adopt in conjunction with key stakeholders, including the report's authors.

[Stu]

All agencies migrated user names from their respective systems over to the new system in March, one minor hurdle that was overcome was a conflict of user names. In each agency, a group of people had their their user name changed by one letter.

The IT support teams for each agency continue to work at their current separate locations and look after their own as there obvious differences in business requirements and outputs although at the same time work together in a co-ordinated
approach under TfNSW.

[LongliveSTA]

Since STA's servers were taken over by TfNSW and moved out to some server farm in Western Sydney, STA's network speed has gone down the toilet, especially if you are working in the system as a roster clerk.

It is now a common occurrence for the network to intermittently freeze all day long between 9am and 3pm, when most users are logged on. Calls to the integrated TfNSW IT service desk are met with a recorded message saying they were working to resolve issues with the network. On a couple of occasions this message was playing for more than a week!!