Education Department’s white elephant Ultranet got $1.4m party

SEE THE VIDEO: THE Education Department’s failed Ultranet project - expected to cost Victorian taxpayers $240 million - was touted as cutting edge. The $1.4m spent celebrating it certainly wasn’t.

THE cost blowout of the Education Department’s failed Ultranet computer project is likely to be $60 million more than previously thought, as details emerge of a $1.4 million promotional party held for the white elephant system.

Previous estimates put the project costs at $180 million, but in his opening address on the first day of an IBAC hearing into the failed project, counsel assisting Ian Hill QC said evidence would show the costs to be as high $240 million.

Ultranet was touted as a cutting edge computerised system that would give Victorian parents and teachers live updates on student progress, but it was scrapped in 2012 after repeated technical problems and a massive cost blowout.

PREVIOUSLY: IBAC TO PROBE FAILED ULTRANET

Mr Hill played a video of the 2010 “Big Day Out” held at Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre to showcase Ultranet to principals and assistant principals.

During the event, featuring a floor show with professional singers and dancers performing “We are living in a virtual world, and I am an Ultranet girl”, and an “Ultranet bus”, teachers in schools throughout Victoria sat at their desks trying to login to Ultranet, which had crashed for the second day running.

Ultranet was spearheaded by Glen Waverley Secondary Principal and Education Department deputy secretary Darrell Fraser.

The video showed Mr Fraser addressing the audience saying the project brought a “dramatic and irrevocable lurch into the future”.

The hearing will look into possible suspect CSG share-purchases by senior Education Department personnel before the company won the contract.

Other areas of concern, Mr Hill said, were the conduct of officials, including Mr Fraser, around awarding the tender and delivery of the contract.

When the department signed a contract with CSG in 2009, Ultranet was to cost $71 million.

Mr Hill said 35 witnesses would appear over the next three weeks, although he expected more people with knowledge of Ultranet to come forward to share information as the hearings rolled out.

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