Bungled child safety program set for audit after ‘critical IT failure’

Queensland Child Safety Minister Amanda Camm will launch an audit into what she described as a “critical IT failure” potentially affecting the ability of staff to act on time-sensitive risks to vulnerable children.

At a media conference in Brisbane on Saturday morning, Camm revealed issues with a long-awaited IT system upgrade, dubbed Unify, which her department transitioned to in April.

“This bungled IT program has resulted in frontline staff not being able to access timely and accurate information,” she said, adding that this had affected information sharing with other agencies, as well as reporting functions.

“My major concern, as the minister for child safety, is a system failure of this type could result in the death of a child,” she said.

The department told Camm about the issues on Wednesday, before director-general Belinda Drew briefed the minister again on Friday on how to address the problems.

Camm said the department would order an external audit of the $183 million system – initiated by the former government – by Monday. The work is expected to take up to two months.

In a statement released later on Saturday morning, the minister described the system as the “former Labor government’s bungled IT program”.

An opposition spokesperson criticised Camm for waiting three days before speaking publicly about the concerns and not launching the audit “immediately”.

The department began work on an overhaul of its IT system in 2015 to give other agencies and service providers access to relevant information about a child, and to enable them to contribute to it.

This came after a Queensland Audit Office report found issues with the patchwork processes put in place after the 2012 Carmody report that had not balanced access with data security.

In 2019, then-minister Di Farmer announced funding for the Unify overhaul – slated for completion by 2023 – after a follow-up audit found many of the problems persisted.

The audit office has already planned a further report on the implementation of the new system, to be released in the 2027-28 financial year.

For now, a team of nine departmental staff have also been tasked with addressing what Camm described as “failings in the regional intake system” and increased workload.

She said issues included the system’s functionality “hindering, not helping” staff, and the transfer of data from the old system.

“It could result in child safety not having the information that they need to bring forward an investigation, to be able to respond to a notification,” she said.

“We have very clear time frames that child safety officers have to respond if there’s a report of harm [or] neglect.”

That means vulnerable children who are in harm’s way are not being detected in the time frame that they should be and are not being investigated.

“So in the worst-case scenario, what we are potentially dealing with is the risk of life for a child.”

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