ACT gov committed to working with NEC to fix transport ticketing

The ACT government says it is committed to working with technology supplier NEC to fix problems with its $64 million MyWay+ cashless public transport ticketing upgrade despite withholding a payment from the company. 

Under the contract for the ticketing system, the ACT government required NEC to reach 30 milestones to finish the project.

However, Transport Canberra reportedly withheld payment after the technology supplier missed the 29th milestone of the ticketing upgrade. 

Transport Canberra said that it remained committed to working with NEC to resolve the issues. 

“Transport Canberra remains committed to working with NEC to improve usability and reliability of validators across the public transport network,” the spokesperson said. 

NEC said that it would continue to work on the project for Transport Canberra.

“Our focus remains on supporting Transport Canberra to complete the rollout and ongoing enhancements to the system, including improvements to accessibility, reliability, and customer experience,” the company said in a statement to iTnews.

A Transport Canberra spokesperson iTnews declined to reveal how much it had paid NEC to date, citing commercial confidentiality.

The ACT Government brought NEC on board in 2023 to roll out MyWay+.  

NEC was scheduled to pass the 30th milestone and complete the project by January 1, 2026.

The ACT government's standing committee on environment and planning published a review of the troubled ticketing system replacement project late last month.

The committee's report contained a lengthy list of problems and management failures associated with the project, ranging from data breaches to complexity issues and testing flaws and other risk management failures.

One community tester told the committee that it was as if the system “was brought out too early to keep to a promised timeline rather than giving the product the oversight it deserves”. 

“The level of community engagement, and the almost unanimously negative feedback, received by the committee is a clear sign of the deep public impact that MyWay+ had in the ACT,” the report concluded.