e-Bench lemon needs explaining

The Government must come clean on its botched “e-Bench” project and spell out exactly how much it has cost and why it has failed, Labour’s Justice spokesperson Andrew Little says.

The Government today canned its massive IT project to digitise courtroom processes nationwide, after earlier saying its completion date had been delayed by up to a year.

“This was a significant project and many promises were made about what it would do for judges, lawyers and clients of the court system. Now we’ve been told almost by accident that it isn’t going ahead.

“This scheme has been under way for some years and there’s no doubt the cost to the taxpayer is in the millions. They need to know what’s gone wrong.

“The main cause of the failure of previous Government IT projects was poor governance stemming from a minister’s office.

“The reasons why this project got this far before it was decided it was a lemon need to be fully explained.

“e-Bench now joins INCIS and Novapay in the Government hall of IT horrors and we need to know whether the lessons of other failed projects were learned and applied in this case.

“I agree with calls for the Auditor General to investigate the management of the e-Bench project and I have written to that office myself requesting an investigation.”

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