The Department of Human Services (DHS), Australia, is completely overhauling the IT system underlying the department’s child support services.

Announced in May this year, the AU$102.2 million (US$94.5 million) overhaul will take place over five years, replacing the current outdated IT system with an SAP commercial off-the-shelf product. DHS released a tender last week looking for a systems integrator to assist with the implementation of the new system.

DHS currently provides child support services benefiting 1.2 million children every year. Separated parents can make child support payments to each other through the department – more than AU$250 million (US$230.4 million) in child support is distributed around the country every month.

Child support delivery is currently supported by DHS’ Cuba system, which was deployed in 2002. This system contains all electronic customer records and supports assessment, payment, and data exchange transactions. More than 3000 staff working with families rely on Cuba to deliver services.

The upgrade is planned in order to deploy an agile, responsive infrastructure that can support the transformation of services to families. The system must be able to facilitate efficient customer management, help workforce and workload decision-making, and accommodate customer and third party preferences.

The lender was published on 18 July. The deployment of the system is supposed to be completed by December 2015, with additional upgrades completed in June 2018.