Despite spending more than $3 million dollars on new case management software, the Fair Work Commission has reverted back to its old system after it was online for just 10 days, with no word on when the new system will be useable.
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The Fair Work Commission launched its new eCase management system, where people could lodge documents related to cases they were taking to the commission, on August 20, two weeks after the launch originally planned on August 6.
After a litany of issues, it was taken offline on August 30, and on Monday this week the old system was reinstated.
The new system would allow people to lodge an application, respond to an application, upload documents and track the progress of their case. Under the old system which is back in place, cases can still be lodged online by downloading a form and emailing it to the commission.
Michael Holland from the Fair Work Commission confirmed in the days after the launch the new program "experienced an unexpectedly large number of issues".
"On 30 August 2018 the general manager decided to pause implementation of the new system, and resume using the previous system until the issues are resolved satisfactorily," Mr Holland said.
"Based on the work undertaken to date, the Commission anticipates that the necessary remediation work will be completed in a reasonable timeframe. However, until the root causes of the issues have been confirmed and addressed, no timeframe for resuming eCase has been set."
Mr Holland confirmed more than 200 issues with the system were logged as critical.
"As multiple users experienced and separately logged the same problem; the critical issues have been grouped into approximately 20 common themes," he said.
Reverting to the old system this week would provide users with certainty, Mr Holland said. The existing system had been in place for many years would be familiar to many parties.
"We returned to ‘business as usual’ operations yesterday morning, with the only residual issue for our users being the publication and search of decisions and other documents from the past two weeks," Mr Holland said. That issue would be fixed within days, he said.
The eCase management system was provided by Appian, a provider of case management software. According to Austender, the Fair Work Commission commissioned a software development pilot from the Swiss company in August last year costing $244,005.
Following the pilot, the commission went ahead with a $2.03 million contract with Appian to provide the software over three years, but that was updated in January to bring the contract value up to $2.99 million.
A new contract worth $14,000 between the commission and Appian for software or hardware engineering was published on Austender on August 3 this year.
The Fair Work Commission said it was working closely with Appian to address the issues with the eCase system.
