VicRoads says almost all online services are back up and running after a week-long IT outage left motorists unable to register or transfer vehicles, renew licences or sit driving tests, a bungle that sparked accusations the agency’s $7.9 billion privatisation has failed Victorians.
As of Friday afternoon, a portal used by second-hand car dealerships for new registrations and transfers was still down, but VicRoads said it hoped to have it back online shortly.
“We’re incredibly sorry for the impact this has had on customers,” the organisation’s chief corporate affairs officer, Carly Dixon, said.
“We are here to provide seamless and good services for our customers, and we haven’t been able to deliver that this week, which is incredibly disappointing.”
VicRoads’ website started to fail last Friday night as the agency switched over its main database during the long weekend, transitioning details of about 7 million vehicle registrations, 5 million driver licences and 40 years of vehicle transactions to a new cloud-based system.
Services were intended to return on Tuesday morning, but VicRoads experienced “performance issues” that stopped them coming back on online.
Automated telephone service were also down, but customers could complete transactions with customer service representatives over the phone and in person at VicRoads offices, and make payments via BPAY.
Seventy-three people had to cancel driving tests because they could not complete a required online hazard perception. Car dealers have been unable to obtain roadworthy certificates or process registration transfers.
Dixon said about 300 groups such as police and local councils relied on the database. The new system was not deleting information queries from users as they came in, she said, creating a backlog that jammed up its capacity until it failed.
VicRoads spent three years planning for the switch, but Dixon said certain bugs could only be identified after it went live, given its complexity.
However, she denied the failure was a symptom of VicRoads being privatised. The state Labor government sold off the agency’s licensing and registration services to a private consortium for $7.9 billion in 2022.
“There’s no question that these ripples have taken us longer than we would have liked to iron out,” Dixon said.
A consortium of Aware Super, Australian Retirement Trust and Macquarie Asset Management will run VicRoads for 40 years under the joint venture agreement signed by former treasurer Tim Palace in 2022. Dixon said the database upgrade was part of a $300 million pipeline of investments under way at VicRoads under the new private management.
Australian Services Union Victoria branch secretary Tash Wark said the outage was the type of mishap the union had warned about when the privatisation was announced.
“This is what happens when you treat essential public services like a commercial product,” Wark said.
“We were promised a major upgrade that would deliver faster, more modern services, but instead we’ve got a website that doesn’t work, a phone line that’s down and a business owner in Ferntree Gully who can’t even get roadworthy certificates issued for cars he’s trying to sell.”
Jeff Zaninelli, the owner of second-hand dealership JZ Motors in Ferntree Gully, said many customer transactions had been affected by the outage.
Wark said VicRoads’ refusal to issue an explanation for the outage during the week, other than a Facebook post saying “some services are temporarily unavailable”, was almost as bad as the outage itself.
Asked on Thursday if the VicRoads privatisation was delivering the improvements Victorians were promised, Premier Jacinta Allan said it was “not correct to characterise it in those terms”.
“The arrangements are a joint venture,” Allan said. “I get that it’s frustrating. VicRoads are working hard to restore the service.”
VicRoads declined a request to interview its chief executive, former online bookmaker Betfair and Racing Victoria boss Giles Thompson.
Victoria Police experienced intermittent issues accessing the VicRoads database during the outage, but that did not prevent officers checking registration and license details, Dixon said.
This masthead reported in 2024 that VicRoads had its key customer service performance targets relaxed after the privatisation, but they have since been raised to previous levels.
The auditor-general has been examining how the VicRoads joint venture is performing and whether it is delivering its intended benefits.
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