Australian Customs ICS shocker continues

Nov 22, 2005: Australian Customs Service (ACS) new chief Michael Carmody must be undergoing a real baptism of fire as the disaster that is ACS’s new integrated cargo system (ICS) falls down around its ears. According to in internal report however, all these problems could have been avoided if it just took some of its own advice.

The system has been plagued by problems since day one. Downtime, missing messages and extended delays in item clearance have been regular occurrences. Even before its implementation a leaked report shows that Customs knew the new system had errors, and worse the mainframe computer had only half the amount of processing power required to run it.

When any major process is migrated to a completely new system, there are bound to be teething problems. However, implementing a system that runs AU$200 million over budget and still doesn’t work, doesn’t have the computing power to support it, and comes with recommendations by your own people not to use it, looming catastrophe is perhaps a little more apt.

The leaked document shows that the ICS was already losing documents and running slowly in the lead up to its October 12 launch. These problems and more persist, proving to be vast departure from the first half of the successful system rolled out in 2004.

Custom had no comment on the issue this morning, but will be releasing a statement later on this afternoon. Check back for updates as they happen.

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