Queensland Education director stands down over OneSchool IT glitch

The Queensland government has announced that the Department of Education and Training's acting deputy director-general of corporate services has voluntarily stood down as investigations into the failure of an update to its OneSchool system continues.

Education Minister Kate Jones did not identify the person involved, but according to Department of Education and Training organisation structure (PDF) as at August 2015, the person in the position was David O'Hagan.

The OneSchool System was updated in January intending to allow school principals to report on suspected child abuse directly and simultaneously to Child Safety Services and QPS. However, when reports were filed by principals intended to be delivered to the QPS only, an "IT error" prevented the reports from ever being delivered to the agency. It is believed that some 644 suspected child abuse cases were not reported to police.

Jones had blamed the glitch on the department not carrying out proper tests when the update was implemented.

"Since the error was discovered, departmental officers have been working with QPS to assess the 644 cases," she said. "Action was immediately taken to fix OneSchool and the technical problem has been resolved."

In an update, Jones confirmed the investigation has so far discovered that of all 3,822 OneSchools reports that were made to Child Safety Services and Queensland Police (QPS), 27 reports of suspected child abuse were not received by Child Safety Services due to an IT failure.

"All 27 reports are now with Child Safety," she reassured.

Deloitte Australia was appointed on Monday to commence an independent investigation into the decisions, procedures, and accountability systems that led up to the failed implementations of the OneSchool update.

"I have directed the Director-General of the Department to broaden Deloitte's independent investigation to examine all issues relating to the online student protection reporting system since its introduction in September 2013," Jones said.

The review by Deloitte is expected to be completed within the next eight weeks.

Earlier this year, former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh admitted the Queensland government bought the wrong IBM product which resulted in the "catastrophic disaster" in the state's AU$1.2 billion health payroll system in 2010. The IT malfunction resulted in 74,000 health staff overpaid, underpaid, or not paid at all.

"We basically got the product we bought, but we bought the wrong one, or we bought one that was not fit for purpose," Bligh said earlier this year.