Fines Enforcement and Recovery Unit

In reply to the Hon. F. PANGALLO (31 July 2018).

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing): The Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services has been advised:

On 16 June 2018, the Fines Enforcement Recovery Unit (FERU) implemented their new Debtrack system. This replaced a previous system that was hosted by the Courts Administration Authority (CAA).

Prior to the changes in systems, the South Australia Police (SAPOL) Expiation Notice Branch received information regarding driver's licence suspensions every 15 minutes (during business hours) via the CAA's Justice Data Interchange, which was shut down on 16 June 2018.

The cessation of this 15-minute data transfer from the previous system has required SAPOL to rely on a daily data transfer from the Department of Planning Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI), which was not previously used for this purpose.

The change in process identified a previously unknown problem with the data transfer regarding the lifting of the fines enforced licence suspensions (FES) by DPTI, whereby the notification to SAPOL, is not functioning as designed. Currently, the FERU is unable to replicate the 15-minute notification of the lifting of a FES as previously supplied by the CAA.

The FERU has supplied SAPOL with a download of all the fines enforced licence suspensions that have been processed by them since 18 June 2018. SAPOL has manually uploaded this data and as at 15 August 2018 SAPOL's Vehicle and Licensing System is up to date, however will need to be continually updated manually to ensure the information remains accurate.

SAPOL is working with DPTI to rectify the problems with their data transfer, once this is completed the data will be provided electronically once a day.

As unpaid fines are managed by the FERU and originate from a number of different sources, SAPOL is unable to identify how many people have been impacted by fines related to licence suspensions. SAPOL has put measures in place to ensure that the status of a person's driver's licence is confirmed directly with DPTI via their TRUMPS database prior to any enforcement action taking place.