South Australia’s education management system (EMS) rollout has only reached half of the state’s 900 schools but spent 70 percent of its budget spent, meaning an additional $47 million will be needed to complete the project.
The project is anticipated to run three years behind the expected 2023 completion date, based on when the state’s auditor general last reported [pdf] on the rollout in 2019.
The final price is likely to top $169 million.
In an audit [pdf] released this week, the auditor general found weaknesses in project governance, scope creep in the form of requirements being added to the project during rollout, and the complexity of high school implementations, would collectively set delivery back by three years.
The report also said the Department for Education (DfE) didn’t originally specify “mandatory modules that sites must implement”, something that should be carried out for remaining sites in the rollout.
The audit also found that the project lacks documented change management and a strategy to “determine all agreed workflows, roles and responsibilities before site migration activities commence”.
“This lack of clear governance over the EMS implementation mandate and site requirements has been a key challenge impacting the progress of the EMS rollout.”
High schools have posed particular challenges, with that part of the rollout driving a rise in the number of reported defects in the project.
“When the rollout to high schools started in term 1 2023, issues were identified with some modules, most notably timetabling,” the auditor said.
“DfE advised us that larger sites have complex processes that were not analysed during the initial project requirements phase. These processes were only identified once EMS was rolled out into the live environments.”
High schools have reported poor system performance because of unexpectedly high transaction volumes; incorrect student attendance calculations; and the need to “continually save while inputting data to reduce the risk of data loss” – something DfE attributed to “additional security measures”.
The project was originally launched in 2018, with Civica agreeing to roll out its cloud-based Education Suite to the state’s 900 schools.