, after a review found the plan was on track to cost as much as $2.8 billion and run five years late.
Pursuing the program represented “a high-risk undertaking” for taxpayers and the government, the report said. Instead, it recommended about $515 million be spent moving registry functions from the Australian Taxation Office to a new division within ASIC and salvaging existing systems. The report found a series of failures behind the blowout in cost and delivery timeline, including a significant underestimation of the program’s complexity and greater than planned use of expensive external contractors.
Offering five options for the way forward, ranging from stopping the program to salvaging some of its scope and stabilising costs, Mr Rees recommended the return of registry functions from the ATO to ASIC, requiring about $105 million in new spending, along with $410 million to save some existing systems.Some of the report, released by Mr Jones on Monday, was redacted to protect information technology system security and commercially sensitive information.