‘This is what happens’: VicRoads privatisation blasted after IT outage

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 Pallas in 2022. Dixon said the database upgrade was part of a $300 million pipeline of investments