Projects that left the portfolio

Digital projects are delivering enormous benefits for Australians - changing, improving and even saving lives. This section sets out recently completed and closed projects exploring how they performed and what benefits they delivered. It also reflects on how improvements to closure processes are ensuring that future projects systematically learn from past experience.

A range of projects across all investment tiers left the portfolio

Since February 2024, 25 projects have formally closed. These projects were delivered across 13 different agencies and had a combined value of $1.9 billion.

Projects that have closed
Tier	Projects	Total budget	Median total budget	Average duration
1 Flagship digital investments	3	$1.1 billion	$150.9 million	3.8 years
2 Strategically significant digital investments	10	$631.4 million	$40.3 million	3.2 years
3 Significant digital investments	12	$219.7 million	$17.6 million	1.6 years

The average duration of closed projects was 2.5 years. Closed Tier 1 projects had a longer average duration than Tier 2 and Tier 3 projects. This longer average duration is mainly due to the inclusion of a closed 7-year Tier 1 project to improve weather and climate data.

Delivering benefits for Australians

The projects that closed since February 2024 have delivered significant benefits in areas as diverse as aged care, weather and climate data, and protection from scams. For example, Australians are now benefiting from closed projects that focused on:

Bill relief – enabling the government to deliver targeted and temporary relief on power bills to eligible Australian households and small businesses
Scam protection – protecting Australian consumers from online scams by taking down investment scam and phishing websites through enhanced data sharing and analytics capabilities
Aged care – improving the quality of aged care by:
- providing more efficient and high-quality data exchange between aged care providers and government
- providing aged care providers with a more streamlined, secure and user-friendly financial reporting experience
Weather and climate data – improving public access to Australia’s weather and climate data to enable better hazard preparedness and responses for the Australian community and industry
Waste and resource recovery – improving national waste and resource recovery data to enable Australian consumers to make more informed choices
Digital trade – developing better digital trade services to enable the trade industry to interact with relevant government agencies.

Finishing up – how projects leaving the portfolio performed

Of the 13 Tier 1 and Tier 2 projects that closed, 10 (76.9%) reported a High or Medium-High delivery confidence. Just 2 projects had a rating of Medium or lower, while one project did not report a delivery confidence rating.

Between February 2024 and February 2025, and before closing, 4 of these projects improved their delivery confidence, and 3 projects stayed the same. Comparisons for the remaining projects are not possible as they did not report a delivery confidence in February 2024.

Graph showing the delivery confidence of closed projects. See the 'image description' accordion below for the data.

Diagram headline: 'delivery confidence of closed projects'.
The diagram notes that a total of 13 projects with a combined total budget of $1.7 billion left assurance oversight.
High delivery confidence – 5 projects with a total budget of $0.3.
Medium-High delivery confidence – 5 projects with a total budget of $1.0 billion.
Medium delivery confidence – 2 projects with a total budget of $0.3B.
Not reported delivery confidence – 1 project with a total budget of $0.1B.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC): National Anti-Scam Centre safeguards consumers from scams
At a glance
Tier 2
$80 million investment
nasc.gov.au
Benefits (to date)
Stronger anti-scam collaboration
5,000 scam websites taken down
$31 million in losses likely prevented
Summary
The National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) is uniting industry and government to make Australia a harder target for scammers.
Australians have lost billions of dollars to scams. In 2022, over 500,000 reported scams caused losses of $3.1 billion. In 2023, reported losses decreased to $2.74 billion but this amount, along with the emotional and psychological harms caused by scams, remains too high. The Australian Government established the National Anti-Scam Centre in mid-2023 to make Australia a harder target for scammers. The Centre combines global insights and domestic collaboration across government, law enforcement, consumer organisations and industry to promote stronger awareness and prevention of scams, and directly disrupt scam activity.
The Australian Government invested $80 million to set up the NASC to:
- facilitate sharing of actionable scam intelligence with government and industry partners
- directly disrupt scammers and scam attempts
- coordinate fusion cells (time-limited public-private taskforces) and scam disruption across government, law enforcement and industry
- alert, educate, and inform the public on scam trends and protection measures
- collate, identify and publish trends in scam data.
Data sharing partnership takes down scam websites
The NASC and Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) are partnering on automated data sharing through an Application Programming Interface (API). Consumers report scams to the NASC, which collates and identifies scam data to be shared directly with ASIC. Scam websites verified as malicious through this process are referred to a takedown service.

This partnership has already taken down more than 5,000 malicious scam websites. Based on the average financial loss per scam website, this prevented Australians potentially losing $31 million to scammers.
The NASC is building on this work by developing similar API- based and other data sharing partnerships with financial institutions, digital platforms, law enforcement agencies and telecommunications providers.
"Partnership between and across government and industry is at the heart of the NASC’s mission. We can only succeed in making Australia a harder target for scammers through effective collaboration. ASIC also recognised this, and together we have built a partnership that has already stopped Australians losing potentially millions of dollars to investment scams. It is precisely this kind of impactful work the NASC is progressing, to deliver the positive community outcomes Australians expect – and need – from us."

Sarah Proudfoot, Senior Responsible Official
First fusion cell targets investment scams
In a complementary and important aspect of this partnership, the first NASC fusion cell focused on the profiles and practices of investment scams, and how best to disrupt them. This led to positive support and evidence for several measures, including pursuing website takedowns for investment scams.
Work to improve reporting and disruption
The NASC is also developing new tools and connecting reporting systems to make it easier for people to report scams. This will allow the NASC to quickly disrupt criminals and deter other scammers from using similar methods, so no other Australians fall victim to their practices.

Challenges and lessons learned

Projects that closed since February 2024 generally reported underspends. Those that went over budget reported issues including initial scoping not accounting for the full complexity of required work.

Some projects faced challenges in their ability to deliver against their original schedule due to delays getting bills introduced to Parliament, delays with equipment supply related to the COVID-19 pandemic, post-release issues that needed to be addressed, and additional enhancements that needed to be delivered to achieve expected outcomes.

Common lessons learned include:

allocating sufficient time to early planning pre- implementation (preparation) stages, including ensuring a deep understanding of current state processes
developing collaborative working relationships between stakeholders during scoping, delivery planning and decision-making – including efficient knowledge transfer and upskilling as needed
defining project scope in as much detail as possible, to avoid confusion in deliverables and align project outcomes with stakeholder expectations
enhancing financial management and budget control – including to enable tracking of earned value during implementation.

‘Lessons learned’ are often thought of as emerging from failures – but lessons from successful projects can be just as valuable. The DTA is systematically working to ensure project closure processes capture these lessons to ensure future projects have the best chance of success.

The importance of closure reports

Formal closure of a project is more than just the project finishing. Driving improved project performance over time requires careful consideration of how active projects have performed, and how what has been learned should change the way projects are designed and delivered in future. Strengthened central oversight has this ‘system learning’ at its centre with the DTA ensuring lessons aren’t just identified but rather systematically learned across all major digital projects through real change which makes the difference.

Project closure reports play a vital role in this ‘system learning’ and, as closure reports have varied in quality, a closure reporting standard has been developed to ensure consistency and maximise the value of these reports.

Reforms supporting success – improving project closure reports

To formally close a project, agencies must provide a project closure report to all key stakeholders. However, some reports have included extensive information, requiring more resources than necessary, while others have not included enough information to accurately assess the project’s performance.

As a result, the DTA developed the Closure Reporting Standard for Digital and ICT-enabled projects. The standard provides a minimum and consistent set of information for reports based on 7 criteria – scope, schedule, budget, assurance, benefits realisation, transition arrangements, and lessons learned. By standardising closure reporting, the DTA is promoting best practice and providing the necessary information to evaluate completed projects and inform future investments.

The DTA is drawing on expertise from across the APS and working with the Australian Taxation Office to develop templates to support implementation of the standard.

Department of Employment and Workplace Relations: Improving data management for apprenticeships
At a glance
Tier 2
adms.australianapprenticeships.gov.au
$39 million investment
Summary
The Apprenticeships Data Management System (ADMS) project streamlined apprenticeship programs, reduced the administrative burden for employers and apprentices, and improved data for decision-making.
The ADMS project was funded as part of the Skills Package in the October 2020 Budget. It aimed to replace an outdated system developed over 20 years ago that was no longer suitable for its intended purpose.
The old system created administrative burdens and operational inefficiencies that affected apprenticeship programs. Replacing it was necessary to make the program more efficient, provide better data for government decision-making, and reduce administrative tasks for employers and apprentices when claiming federal incentives.
This was achieved by implementing a modern ICT system that enhanced engagement with apprentices and employers and streamlined processes for providers to focus more on advisory services.
The project also improved cyber security, introduced consistent governance processes, and strengthened stakeholder relationships. These changes enable future projects to be set up faster and with lower delivery risk.
Overcoming challenges to delivery outcomes
The ADMS project encountered challenges due to pandemic-related adjustments, new subsidy schemes, policy changes, fragmented service delivery and integrating with 8 different state ICT systems. Nevertheless, ADMS was completed in 2024 on schedule and under budget, while exceeding the anticipated benefits.
ADMS enables governments to use better data to create sector-specific policies, improves experiences for apprentices and employers, and optimises services from support providers. This leads to more apprenticeship completions and greater visibility of the apprenticeship journey through data. In turn this benefits all Australians through financial savings, faster policy decisions and implementation, and flow-on benefits to areas like housing policy.
"The way that the system has been designed, I think it’s fantastic, it’s modern and it’s very easy to use. The way that’s been built is great."
"The speed of the system is really good. Lodging claims is just very quick and efficient, which is really nice."
"Moving forward, it will make our system, our processes a lot quicker."
ADMS providers

Disclaimer
“Certain numbers in this report have been rounded to one decimal place. Due to rounding, some totals may not correspond with the sum of the separate figures.”

Major Digital Projects Report