The NSW government has transitioned 60,000 users to its new SAP system following a massive consolidation program costing almost $200 million.
The new enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform named MyWorkZone was implemented across 75 NSW agencies through the government’s shared services model as of October 2024.
Forming part of the Process and Technology Harmonisation (PaTH) program, the system consolidation is being carried out by Accenture under a seven-year contract that has now reached $196 million in value.
The project was originally conducted under the purview of the NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS), with the program’s sponsorship handed to the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) at the end of 2021.
The DCJ will now oversee the ERP system’s shared service agreement with the Department of Planning Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI).
However, according to an audit report [pdf], the two have yet to “articulat[e] each hub’s role, responsibility and cost recovery mechanism”.
A complex program
The PaTH was recently singled out by the Audit Office of NSW as highlighting “the challenges faced in delivering a complex program”.
The report noted project hurdles including only a 70 percent participation rate in new system training for “high impact” roles.
Since the DCJ began progressively onboarding agencies from April 2023, the rollout also hit issues relating to agencies’ access to the MyWorkZone platform.
According to the audit report, the “onboarding of a high number of agencies at the same time” led to both “excessive user access and inadequate enforcement of segregation of duties”.
The report also noted that the provision of “timely information and documentation to customer agencies” was hampered by DCJ’s role in the implementation.
A DCJ spokesperson told iTnews that the findings are from a “point in time when the PaTH program was in a period of transition and delivery.”
“In its delivery phase, the program matured, and early issues related to communication, governance and reporting were addressed,” the spokesperson said.
“The success of the program was reflected through multiple independent assurance sources.”