Effectiveness of the State Penalties Enforcement Registry ICT reform

Tabled Report 10: 2019–20

Tabled date

2020-02-06

Report year

2019-20

Justice and public order

Entities audited

Not identified in the published HTML audit scope.

Recommendations

1. QAO's text Addressed to: the Department of Housing and Public Works

   develops and implements a guideline to assist entities in establishing digital and ICT contracts (including software as a service contracts)

   This should include guidance on:

   • minimum vendor and product due diligence
   • clear contract milestones, break points, and pause options to ‘stop and rethink’
   • minimum contract management requirements during implementation (including reviewing vendor performance) and post ‘go-live’ (Chapters 1 and 2).

2. QAO's text Addressed to: the Department of Housing and Public Works

   works together with the Public Service Commission on strategies to upskill staff within the public service in delivering and governing ICT projects (Chapters 1 and 2)

3. QAO's text Addressed to: the Department of Housing and Public Works

   works together with Queensland Treasury and the Department of the Premier and Cabinet to ensure that major ICT projects are established with appropriate governance arrangements before vendors are engaged

   Project steering committees should:

   • be staffed with appropriate skills and experience
   • include whole-of-government representation where appropriate
   • include members who are independent of the entity
   • contribute to decisions about minimum assurance activities
   • integrate effectively with an entities’ other governance groups and avoid duplication of membership across governance groups
   • understand the risks and benefits of alternative approaches to project delivery—iterative/agile versus large scale transformation and how to contract appropriately (Chapters 1 and 2).

4. QAO's text Addressed to: the Department of Housing and Public Works

   revises its investment review and project assurance guidance to:

   • ensure project steering committee members understand that they are empowered to stop projects and rethink their position at every stage
   • enhance the availability of reporting of historic recommendations and lessons learned (Chapter 2)

5. QAO's text Addressed to: improves transparency of major ICT projects by requiring all departments to publish data on the digital projects dashboard, and a more detailed report to the Office of Assurance and Investment, for projects that end prematurely. At a minimum, the data to be published on the digital project dashboard

   improves transparency of major ICT projects by requiring all departments to publish data on the digital projects dashboard, and a more detailed report to the Office of Assurance and Investment, for projects that end prematurely.
   
   
   
   At a minimum, the data to be published on the digital project dashboard should include the following information about the project:

   • project and department name
   • investment objectives
   • date the project started, key milestones, and significant project journey events such as scope change, cost re-evaluation and delivery delay events
   • reasons explaining why the project ended prematurely.

   The report to the Office of Assurance and Investment should also include at a minimum:

   • lessons learned
   • the impact of not achieving the intended investment objectives within the originally stated time frames
   • total costs incurred, broken down by sunk, capitalised and operational costs
   • benefits achieved while the project was in-flight and whether the department will use some of the project deliverables (Chapter 2).

6. QAO's text Addressed to: Queensland Treasury

   updates its Audit Committee Guidelines—Improving Accountability and Performance for departments and statutory bodies to ensure audit committees are required to monitor and receive reports from management on risks for major ICT projects (Chapter 2)

7. QAO's text Addressed to: Queensland Treasury

   updates its own audit and risk management committee charter to ensure the committee monitors risks on Queensland Treasury’s ICT projects, and reports its monitoring activities to Queensland Treasury’s Executive Leadership Team (Chapter 2)

8. QAO's text Addressed to: Queensland Treasury

   reviews its governance structure to:

   • avoid conflicts of interest through duplicate memberships
   • clarify the difference for its statutory officers between their legislative and management responsibilities
   • ensure it has an appropriate mix of skills on its governance committees (Chapter 2).

Authoritative report — Queensland Audit Office

Report PDF on QAO