SafeWork NSW's 20-year-old IT system constrains data-based decisions

NSW’s health and safety regulator SafeWork NSW is so hamstrung by a 20-year-old IT system, it took eight years to respond to the emerging health and safety risk posed by manufactured stone, the state’s auditor-general has found.

In a newly published audit report [pdf], the auditor-general said while SafeWork NSW holds “extensive and detailed data”, its work health and safety management system (WSMS) is over 20 years old, near end-of-life, suffers data quality issues, and “does not have the functionality required to efficiently extract and analyse data.”

“Furthermore, a lack of data governance and corporate knowledge about the system means that there are risks that data may be misinterpreted”, the report added.

“This has restricted SafeWork NSW’s ability to use data strategically to inform decision-making.”

The audit report also found the system produces unreliable reports, and that individual directorates have had to develop their own reporting capabilities, “resulting in disparate, duplicative and fragmented use of data to inform decision-making.”

SafeWork NSW also lacks a single data custodian, has no centralised quality assurance for WSMS, and the agency only recently created a data governance committee.

Airborne silica response slow

These problems flowed on to SafeWork NSW’s response to the health risks posed by airborne silica created while people worked on manufactured stone products, the auditor said.

“The WSMS information system is limited and imprecise in its ability to identify all silica-related complaints,” the report said.

Identifying cases in the system relied on keyword searches, so a search for ‘silica’ might miss reports in WSMS that referred to ‘benchtops’.

And there’s no plan to replace WSMS: the auditor heard from SafeWork NSW a planned upgrade, as part of the Department of Customer Services’ single digital platform for the state’s 28 business regulators is “uncertain”: there’s no funding to move the agency from WSMS to the new platform.

The auditor also noted: “SafeWork NSW has started to use artificial intelligence to interrogate historical compliance data to rate the risk of different employers.

“However, this is used inconsistently across SafeWork NSW and there is limited evidence about its effectiveness.”

Air XS sparked ICAC referrals

While examining SafeWork NSW’s response to manufactured stone risks, the auditor also turned up a project that’s justified referrals to the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption.

The auditor looked at how SafeWork NSW went about choosing a UK-headquartered company called Trolex to develop a real-time airborne silica monitoring device called Air XS, in a procurement originally expected to cost $200,000 but eventually contracted for more than $1.3 million.

While not critical of Trolex’s actions, the auditor found a litany of flaws in the procurement process, including poor record keeping, conflicts of interest during tender evaluations, errors in tender scoring, and poor record-keeping.

Most concerning: the auditor found SafeWork NSW failed to resolve or escalate “risks raised regarding the accuracy of the device”.

While staff raised pre-launch concerns about Air XS devices’ accuracy, that wasn’t escalated to executive-level staff, the auditor said.

“The department and the Audit Office have made separate referrals to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption regarding the procurement process for the Air XS”, the report stated.