Victoria Police Department

The following entry is a record in the “Catalogue of Catastrophe” – a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world.


Victoria Police Department – Australia
Project : LINK
Project type : Law enforcement assistance program
Date : Apr 2011 Cost :$100M AUD

Synopsis :
Project aimed at implementing a new Law Enforcement Assistance Program to replace an 18 year old system are suspended for 6 months due to technical and cost related issues.  The implementation of a package system from a Canadian company ran into difficulty due to the complexity of integrating it with other existing systems.  Victoria Police IT director Michael Vanderheide issued a statement saying “A detailed analysis has indicated that, based on the current approach and utilising existing resources, integrating the 20-plus systems that need to be joined with LINK will be a more technically challenging and costly process than was envisioned in the original business case”.  Details of costs are not officially released, but reports indicate costs to be in the order of $100M

Contributing factors as reported in the press:
Underestimation of complexity.  Difficulty integrating new system with existing systems.

See also (Failed Justice system project) :

  1. Criminal Justice Enhancements Program (CJEP)

Reference links :

  1. Ombudsman slams government project management
  2. Police database ‘would have cut crime’