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Sydney water customer information & billing system
1. Prepared By –
Pranav Gulati
Neeralie Prajapati
Aditya Vaddaypalli
2. Table Of Contents
Introduction
Project specifications
Why the project was initiated
Issues with implementations
Key findings
Project costing
Add on’s
Conclusion
3. Introduction
Sydney water corporation owned by NSW government
Manage waste and storm water to provide drinking water to
Sydney residents
Served 4.7 million in Sydney, Illawarra, Blue Mountains
AU$13 billion assets and AU$1.4 billion annual revenue
3,000 employees
Capital expenditure AU$500 million per year
Auditor-General, N 2003, 'Review of Sydney water’s customer information
and billing system', New South Wales Auditor-General Vs Report to
Parliament, Volume One.
4. Project Specifications
Project Started – 27th March 2000
Contract was won by PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers)
In June 2000 it invested AU$61 million in a customer
relationship management and billing system
Project delayed by 18 months
Project abandoned - 30 October 2002
Total project costed AU$153.1 million (estimated initial project
cost AU$38.2 million) of public money
AVISON, D., GREGOR, S. & WILSON, D. 2006. Managerial IT unconsciousness.
Communications of the ACM, 49, 88-93.
5. Why was project initiated ?
To improve service towards customers
Upgrade existing information systems
To integrate 12 existing internal standalone systems with 60
external interfaces
It needed improvement in process
6. Issues with implementation
PwC team was inexperienced in system integration
Project team was working at too low a level
Delayed communication, increased costs
Numerous change requests/rescheduling
Assessment of Auditor General was misguiding
Lacked involvement and accountability of employees
Risk management was not effective at corporate and project
level
CHARETTE, R. N. 2005. Why software fails. IEEE spectrum, 42, 36.
7. Key Findings
Under-estimation of complexity
Increased system integration costs
Project planning and specifications were inadequate
Board did not ask the financial department to review the
project’s business case and act proactively in financial issues
Sydney Water in 2003 sued PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC)
who had been contracted to implement the CIBS. It had paid
PWC $29.4 million by the time the project was cancelled
External auditor was not appointed as per project governance
policy
8. Project Costing
The contract with PwC was varied eight times over the
life of project
9. Add On’s
Poor communication between project team and customer
service division
Project was approved and later found that CIBS computer
architecture was not compatible
During the project it reverted to only implementing a
computer system
Testing was neither timely nor comprehensive
Management did not always report important issues to
project board in clear, complete and timely manner
BANNERMAN, P. L. Toward an integrated framework of software project
threats. Software Engineering, 2008. ASWEC 2008. 19th Australian
Conference on, 2008. IEEE, 139-148.
10. Conclusion
Sydney Water Board is held
responsible for the failed project
Project lacked accountability and
transparency demonstrating how
important they both are
Contractual obligations were not
properly understood until after the
project had commenced
Acted as a watershed moment for
political accountability, as the
project misused millions of tax pay
dollars
THOROGOOD, A., YETTON, P., VLASIC, A. & SPILLER, J. 2004. Raise your
glasses–the water's magic! Strategic IT at SA Water: a case study in alignment,
outsourcing and governance. Journal of Information Technology, 19, 130-139.