Last bundle of NSW's troubled LMBR up for grabs

NSW's Department of Education is asking systems integrators to apply for a spot on a panel of suppliers that will complete the final bundle of work in its infamous LMBR overhaul, migrating the department’s legacy payroll and HR systems to its new SAP platform.

The learning management and business reform (LMBR) project is forecast to span nine years and $752 million by the time it is finished late next year -  almost double its original budget and three years late.

The project was launched in 2006 in an attempt to replace legacy finance, human resources, payroll and student administration systems across the department, TAFEs, and 2230 public schools. The TAFE rollout was completed in 2014, but the organisation dumped the SALM component last month following widespread problems with the software.

However, since the schools rollout began in 2013, only 229 pilot sites have successfully stood up the finance and student administration and learning management (SALM) platforms, as a result of resourcing, training and scope headaches.

NSW Education last year decided to split the effort into two for high schools and primary schools, and stagger both rollouts, to address some of the pain points. As of last month, an extra 197 schools had moved onto the finance and SALM platforms.

The payroll/HR solutions form the last leg of the project, and will be installed once the finance and SALM rollouts are complete.

To prepare for this final hurdle, Education is asking suppliers to bid for data migration and integration work on the payroll component of the project.

The HR/payroll stream has 2151 business functional requirements as the basis of the new SAP configuration. Around 100,000 staff will be eventually migrated across to the new system.

The department needs systems integrators to “design, specify and build the extraction and transformation of DoE’s HR payroll data".

It has asked for panel candidates with a delivery track record in “data migration, data architecture, and integration” to apply for membership.

However, the department stressed it would not be in a position to hand out specific work contracts until it had built up a pool of "specialised resources” it can lean on “without impacting the timeline set for stage three of the LMBR program”, and further setting back the massive overhaul effort.

“A panel contract of suppliers with the background and expertise ... will help LMBR achieve its outcomes,” the department said.

It said it would terminate the panel arrangement should it not receive enough interest and move instead to a restricted tender process.

The NSW government recently hired an IT spending cop to police problematic IT projects like the LMBR and make sure they stay within their budget and scope.