Services Australia is gearing up to commence a comprehensive review of its architectural framework this year. The review aims to chart out a future trajectory for various critical yet outdated applications.
Charles McHardie.
During a recent senate estimates hearing, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Charles McHardie, shared that the agency had poured “substantial” resources into enhancing its foundational infrastructure in recent years. However, the focus had not been on the maintenance or modernization of the applications and database software operating on it.
McHardie stated, “In the past few years, we have heavily invested in our infrastructure including mainframe, mid-range, or x86 servers, gateways, all of which are of top quality. However, we are facing challenges in maintaining and securing older applications, as well as ensuring ongoing vendor support.”
He mentioned that the upcoming architecture review would tackle these issues, outlining a plan and estimating the costs of upgrading these applications.
“This year, we are embarking on a comprehensive architecture review, with a primary focus on our major systems,” he explained.
“Among our systems are both new and legacy ones, and the insights from this review will guide our future investments,” he added.
“We aim to present our proposed plans to the government for consideration.”
Responding to recent queries, Services Australia identified four systems as “legacy”: the child support system, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, income security integrated system, and the Medicare and pharmaceutical benefits system.
Based on McHardie’s assertions, all these systems could emerge from the review with documented upgrade paths, forming the basis for funding proposals.
Past attempts have been made to replace existing systems.
The child support system currently runs on a backend system named Cuba dating back to 2002, built on Cool:Gen (now CA Gen).
While a replacement initiative for the child support system commenced in 2013, the project exceeded its budget and delivered only a new frontend.
As reported by iTnews at the time, the backend system, Cuba, remained untouched, and decisions related to its replacement were postponed.
McHardie remarked that despite the obstacles, Services Australia continued to enhance the functionality of Cuba.
“There is still a global community working with CA Gen. The platform remains resilient, patchable, and is supported by a modern operating system,” he noted.
“We have introduced improvements to enhance customer visibility into payment details, enable secure document submission via the document lodgement service, and empower customers to update information through their authorized representative.”
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