Finishing ACT HR upgrade project would have cost more than $140m, changing course cheaper, Chris Steel says

The project was dropped after $76 million had been spent and "less than a million dollars" will still need to be paid to shut down the project.

The actual cost of upgrades to the current human resources management system is estimated to be $15 million, with more than $17 million budgeted for the total project.

Special Minister of State Chris Steel defended his handling of human resource information management solution project in budget estimates on Monday and outlined what he said would have been a $140 million added cost to complete it.

Improved software meant the government could now upgrade its existing systems, an option that was not viable when the original decision was made to launch the HRIMS project, he said.

A review found the original project had been beset with problems from the start, and there was no single person accountable for delivering the new system and overall governance was "deficient" at all levels.

The program began in 2017 to introduce SAP SuccessFactors to serve as a new human resources and payroll system for ACT government employees, which would replace an older system first introduced in 2005.

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ACT chief digital officer Bettina Konti told budget estimates customised pieces of software, known as raters, used with the territory's existing human resources systems - CHRIS21 and HR21 - had made it difficult to upgrade the system in 2017.

The decision to move to a SAP SuccessFactors-based system in 2017 was based on the technology that was available at the time, she said.

But the territory's shared services payroll team, for example, had reduced its reliance on the software customisations.

"The analysis that we've done suggests that the current version of CHRIS21 and HR21 available from the vendor will actually incorporate the functions that those [customisations] are there to perform," Ms Konti said.

"So we need to confirm that through the design phase that all of the [customisations] are able to be decommissioned."

Ms Konti said it would cost "less than a million dollars" to close the HRIMS project, including payments that would need to be negotiated with SAP, while the new upgrade project would cost about $15 million in total.

The government estimates it would need to spend about $1.2 million to design a new whole-of-government time-and-attendance system, she said.

Mr Steel said the government still expected an upgrade to its human resources systems would deliver savings through efficiencies as a result of fewer manual processes and handling required.

"Certainly in the original HRIMS program, there were savings that were identified through efficiencies in the system, and so it's our intention to also look for efficiencies in the new system," he said.

The Liberals' Peter Cain pressed Mr Steel on which ministers were responsible for the project at various stages and why he had not resigned over the handling of the project.

Mr Steel said Chief Minister Andrew Barr, Suzanne Orr and Rachel Stephen-Smith had been responsible for the project at different stages, and defended his own record on taking responsibility for delays to the project and working to first to "reset" it and then cancel it.

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