ATO reporting smooth sailing on IT system upgrade

Two weeks ago the ATO, after weeks of speculation, announced at the last minute of its 22 January, 2010 deadline that it would go ahead with changes to the National Taxpayer System, which has been used since the 1970s.

"We have moved the data from our current system into the new system ahead of schedule and all other aspects of the deployment are on track," an ATO spokesperson said. "This has been a significant undertaking where we converted approximately 27 million taxpayer records, 331 million accounts and 282 million forms.

"We plan to have the new system fully available for our staff to begin using from the week commencing 15 February."

The ATO would not provide any further information on the upgrade, which has been described as a "watershed" undertaking. In place of the old system will be a new income tax processing system, which extends the ATO's "integrated core processing (ICP) system to income tax and higher education loan accounts (HELA)".

The upgrade is part of the agency's broader Change Program, which aims to migrate it away from more than 180 legacy and paper-based systems to a single, integrated core IT system.