The Education Department has reportedly not consulted with the Federal Fovernment’s digital services agency after its online NAPLAN program experienced technical glitches this year.
Fairfax Media reported that Digital Transformation Agency representatives told senators in an estimates hearing on Tuesday their agency weren’t contacted about fixing the project to shift student literacy and numeracy tests online after the states and territories pulled out of it in April.
Recently, Victorian, Western Australian and ACT governments announced they would withdraw from a trial of the online NAPLAN technology, after South Australia and Queensland withdrew it earlier in the year.
DTA official Nerida O’Loughlin said the program was an Education Department matter and that responsibility for IT projects remained with government agencies implementing them.
Labor senator Jenny McAllister said Education’s failure to involve the agency raised questions about its role.
“We’ve been talking about this for successive estimates and it has struck me that the role clarity about what the organisation is trying to accomplish has been a little deficient,” she said.
Power failures, freezing, browser issues and broken internet connections were just of the issues in the initial trials of the online NAPLAN tests, according to a report by principals.
The online test will be gradually introduced over a three-year period.
