Ministerial Statement

Service SA

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:16): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: I rise to update the house on yesterday's computer system outage that affected the ability of Service SA to process licence and registration renewals. At the outset, I apologise to everyone who was affected by this disruption and assure the house that every single person adversely affected will be assisted to resolve their problem.

In the early hours of yesterday morning a major problem with the TRUMPS computer system arose while a contractor was undertaking some maintenance work. SAPOL, the Registrar of Motor Vehicles and relevant DPTI staff were made aware of the computer outage in order to allow for steps to be taken to avoid unduly affecting individuals as far as possible. The system came back online around 2pm yesterday and Service SA customer centres reopened at 9am today, with additional staff to help address any backlog in processing renewals.

I recognise that there will be some people who have been inconvenienced by not receiving sufficient notice that the system was down and centres were closed. The communications response was not adequate and is being reviewed so that we have an improved response should a similar event occur in the future. I am also aware that there will be some people who inadvertently paid more than once over the internet. TRUMPS completed reconciling transactions overnight and anyone who had more than one amount debited from their account had the overpaid amount refunded to their financial institution for processing by that bank or credit union.

There may be some customers who will require a personal intervention from staff. Staff, on both phone and face to face at customer service centres, are ready to assist those customers. I ask, if any members have constituents with ongoing problems, that they put them in contact with my office to address their issue in a timely manner.

Again, I apologise to customers affected by this problem and assure the house that my office and Service SA will do all we can to remedy individual problems. Computer systems will fail; our priority needs to be the customer. People need to be informed as soon as possible when these events occur so that they can make alternative arrangements and the inconvenience is minimised as much as possible. We will be learning lessons from this week's events and put in place plans to improve communications.