刚老师群发的新闻IRD shelves project after spending $21 million

苏新

Inland Revenue has shelved a new student loan software system after spending $21 million on it.

The move has blotted the department's good reputation for managing information technology work and raised questions over a bigger plan to end its reliance on expensive mainframe technology.

Labour's revenue spokesman Stuart Nash called for a report. "This is a period of fiscal restraint. The taxpayer deserves to know what went wrong, and why it went wrong."

But Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said the project could still be revived at a later date as part of a wider attempt to redesign Inland Revenue's computer systems and there was no question of an inquiry.

"I am not looking at it in terms of any individuals to blame."

Inland Revenue had planned to switch administration of the loans system to software provided by United States company Oracle last month, but shelved the delayed project because it was concerned it would not have time to finish the work before new rules for student loans take effect in April next year.

Deputy commissioner Peter Mersi said the project had not been abandoned but had proved more complex and time-consuming than expected.

It would reprogramme its ageing mainframes to accommodate the required changes to its student loans system, which he believed it would be able to do without blowing its original $35m budget, before deciding on its next step.

Mr Dunne said: "You could argue if we knew then what we knew now, we might have approached things differently."

Inland Revenue has been trying to wean itself off its mainframe system, First, which was built at a cost of $201m in 1990, and on to modern software and systems that are cheaper to run and can more easily be reprogrammed when governments change tax policies.

The student loans system was to have been the first cab off the rank, to be followed by the wider adoption of Oracle software.

Commissioner Robert Russell told a select committee last year that Inland Revenue envisaged "breaking new ground" by becoming the first tax authority in the world to deploy Oracle's Enterprise Tax Management software suite "across all our array of responsibilities over the next several years".

Oracle would not comment yesterday, saying it had been asked to refer inquiries back to the department.

Ironically, the setback came just weeks after Inland Revenue issued controversial tax guidance that said businesses should no longer be able to immediately depreciate abandoned software projects and deduct that spending against tax.

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