After weeks of
denials from the agency, Customs chief information officer
Murray Harrison also admitted yesterday that system design flaws
caused chaos on the wharves.
The admission puts pressure on Customs Minister Chris
Ellison, with Labor calling for his resignation.
Customs has in the past blamed users for delays when the
system for processing declarations for imports failed.
But Mr Harrison yesterday told The Australian that
Customs brokers trying to communicate with officers on the
ground "didn't get a response" - so they switched en masse to a
web-based system, which could not cope with the influx.
"More people needed to use the Customs interactive web-based
approach than had been predicted and consequently the response
times were not up to scratch initially," he said.
"The pressure on the web-based system was only a few days.
It's the sort of thing you could only discover on experience."
Customs brokers were left stranded when the system - a
computer package that processes Customs declarations for imports
- crashed on October 12.
Only following the disaster did Customs boost the system's
capacity.
In a further development which could leave the agency
vulnerable to claims for compensation from Customs brokers, Mr
Harrison conceded the agency was warned of a major capacity
problem in a report before the system was launched.
As
revealed in The Australian yesterday, an August "mainframe
capacity review" report to Customs officials warned there was "a
major capacity problem imminent".
Mr Harrison yesterday downplayed the warning, saying the
study was a "70-page highly technical report which has a line
about capacity".
He said all recommendations in the report were carried out
before the due date but admitted Customs did not give the system
more power.
"You've got a house that's potentially full, you can choose
to add more rooms to the house or you can clean it up," Mr
Harrison said. "We thought that (approach) was sufficient."
Some importers are still using paper to lodge their
declarations with Customs six weeks after the launch of the
system.
Mr Harrison also admitted the third party company used by the
agency was worried at a meeting before the project launch that
the software would not be ready.
Labor's Justice and Customs spokesman, Joe Ludwig, said
Senator Ellison should have known about the progress of the
project.
"This should have been delivered as a turn-key system, fully
tested and ready to go. Instead the minister delivered a
semi-operational lemon at a cost of $250 million. An inquiry
into this whole debacle should be held."
Senator Ellison yesterday said he was told the system was
ready for its October 12 launch.
"The advice I always had from Customs was that it was ready
to switch over to the new system in October," he said.
