ASIC’s $1.5 billion business registry overhaul now under review after cost blowouts and major delays

A troubled project to consolidate the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC’s) technical hairball of business registries, including the Australian Business Register (ABR), has been sent back to the mechanic’s shed before the budget, with an independent review of the project called by Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones.

As recriminations fly over delays and cost blowouts for the undelivered project that’s now almost five years old — Labor flagged it as a $1 billion blowout in opposition and the current bill is around $1.5 billion — Jones has released the terms of reference for the review that appears to put most aspects into play.

Known as the Modernising Business Register program, the project was meant to fuse more than 30 ASIC-held registries onto a single, interoperable platform.

The project is part of a wider systems overhaul of ASIC’s platforms that Treasury had been hoping would give it far greater visibility over small and large businesses, not least to stamp out behaviour like phoenixing, asset stripping and general tax evasion.

Jones wasted no time pinning the project’s problems onto those who came before him.

“The previous government hid a $1 billion cost blowout to the Modernising Business Register program and left it to languish,” Jones said. “By contrast, the Albanese government is prioritising completion of this critical program, transparently and responsibly.”

The Financial Services Minister said the review would “deliver a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the program and provide recommendations for changes, improvements and strategies to best position it to achieve its intended objectives”.

But that could still take a lot of time and money, especially given ASIC registry projects have previously proven to be more difficult and complex than anticipated. There have also been internal wars, in both the public service and the previous government, over charges levied to access ASICs’ vast data holding, which is supposed to be shortly made free.

The fate of the project stands in contrast to other major projects like the Australian Taxation Office’s rollout of digital identities for directors that is now in force and will go some way to stamping out shonks and crooks hiding behind sham companies.

The irritation for the government is that despite having those identity credentials, not having ASIC’s registries in a similarly modernised state makes trawling the systems for lost revenue and shams much harder and slower, although not impossible.

It also makes estimating what can be clawed back harder, an issue that flows back into revenue estimates for the budget.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the review, which has no completion or commencement date in Jones’ announcement, is essentially putting all options on the table.

The rems of reference say that the review will “provide recommendations on how to best position the program to achieve its intended objectives”, which include “improvements or changes to information technology solutions” — code for the scrap heap — and “improvements or alternative approaches to design and delivery that will reduce cost, accelerate delivery and/or improve governance and management of the program”, language that leaves the door open to another platform.

The big question is whether the review’s recommendations will come in time for the current budget cycle for this May, or be kicked into touch for the next year.

This article was first published by The Mandarin.