The technology for catching overstaying parkers was also trialled and abandoned in Ashburton. PHOTO: ASHBURTON DISTRICT COUNCIL A $100,000 spend on the failed rollout of camera cars to issue Dunedin motorists with parking fines has been labelled a ‘‘fiasco’’. The Otago Daily Times was told by an insider that Dunedin City Council’s executive leadership team recently decided to shelve the licence plate recognition (LPR) project, which involved fitting a pair of cars with special cameras. Had it worked, the automated cameras would have identified drivers overstaying their time limit in carparks. The ODT has been told the decision by the council’s executive leadership team was not unanimous. ‘‘It’s a fiasco and a butt-covering exercise,’’ a city council employee told the ODT. They said council staff were considerably aggrieved about the whole process. ‘‘I know there’s a lot of really upset people. ‘‘It’s a lot of money that’s just been wasted, basically.’’ A council spokesman acknowledged the project had been ‘‘paused’’, but denied there had been ‘‘butt-covering’’, saying the mayor and other councillors had been informed of issues with the technology on June 12. The decision to pause the project was only confirmed on Friday last week and councillors were provided with a further update that afternoon, the spokesman said. ‘‘We’re still working to finalise costs, but at this stage they are estimated to total about $100,000.’’ This project was designed to deliver significant improvements to the health, safety and wellbeing of parking officers. ‘‘While LPR technology has been successfully implemented in some off-street council parking buildings, issues identified during the investigation phase for on-street enforcement have led us to pause that part of the project while we undertake a review.’’ ‘‘Our primary concern is that data inaccuracies could result in incorrect enforcement outcomes, and we are not prepared to proceed until we have confidence in the system.’’ The council was aware that other councils had similar issues while trialling the new approach, a council spokesman said. Executive dean of Bond Business School Prof Robin Gauld co-wrote a book on IT fiascos, Dangerous Enthusiasms. He said this council incident with the LPR technology followed a ‘‘fairly standard template of failure’’. ‘‘You should never try and work with bespoke solutions. ‘‘Chances are whatever you’re going to be doing, especially with something like parking, will have been tried and tested somewhere in the globe. ‘‘So to have picked up a product which hadn’t been thoroughly tried and tested would seem to me to be pretty unfortunate really, especially for the ratepayers of Dunedin.’’ Councils needed to be ensured of good governance around such projects, Prof Gauld said. ‘‘I would have thought having some council oversight would be pretty important. ‘‘I don’t know if there’s an IT subcommittee of the council, but there probably should be.’’ Councillors have been approached for comment. Cr Benedict Ong said he was not aware of the council spending money on this initiative. He said it was an ‘‘unnecessary’’ expense when the current line of sight technology did not stack up. Cr Ong suggested ‘‘putting it on hold for a few years until our council’s finances and the requisite general technology improves’’. matthew.littlewood@odt.co.nz
