A troubled re-platforming of the expenses system used by parliamentarians and their staff is undergoing two years of functional and UI changes to bring it more in line with expectations.
The $74 million SAP-based parliamentary expense management system, or PEMS, was delivered late, over budget, lacking functionality and without achieving benefits laid out in the business case for it.
At a senate estimates hearing late last night, Finance officials said that a “benefits realisation review” for PEMS had now been completed; the review was recommended by a federal audit.
Assistant secretary of business enabling services Alex McKellar said the “overall benefit realisation result was that of realised partially, which we think was a fair representation of how PEMS went in the context.”
Asked what that meant, McKellar replied bluntly that “it’s certainly not a glowing review or glowing result”, but noted it had been expected given the circumstances under which the review was recommended.
It’s not clear if the review will be made public or made available to senators. It has so far been shared with the Finance minister.
McKellar did, however, go on to reveal that a two-year program of enhancements had kicked off in July last year, comprising “17 grouped work packages of a number of enhancements to deliver over [a] two-year period” through to June 2026.
Six packages of this work had been delivered as of January this year.
“Examples of what we’ve delivered so far include improvements to the bulk certification of claims, which enables the ability for parliamentarians to certify multiple office claims at one time, with their office managers then able to progress those claims in PEMS,” McKellar said.
“We’ve [also] introduced the automatic removal of staff authorisations when staff cease employment, so that reduces the risk of security issues there; and we’ve made improvements to the processing of overseas travel.”
It is anticipated that another seven work packages will be completed between now and December.
“Looking forward, for example, we’ve got efficiencies particularly for office managers and parliamentarians in accessing information and processing claims, so a lot of frontend changes that will be visible to office managers to help support them more efficiently and effectively process their claims,” McKellar said.
“In the reporting space and the reporting tool for budgets, [there will be] additional information and fields within the office budget usage report to support the identification and reconciliation of office expenses.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback around making that capability more user-friendly. That’s due to be deployed this month.”
McKellar said that another package of work involved “improvements to office claims processing, including the ability to make amendments more easily to reduce the number of returned claims that are seeking corrections.”
“So, instead of just returning a claim and bouncing it back, there’ll be better capability to amend that claim,” he said.