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Euthanasia bill: $75k spent to find 700 submissions
A bug in an IT system used to count submissions to the controversial euthanasia bill ended up costing $75,000 to find 700 missing forms.
More than half of the 37,000 submissions to the End of Life Bill were hard copies and had to be manually scanned in. Photo: Kerem Yucel / Freeimages.com
There were an un-precedented 37,000 submissions to the End of Life Bill and more than half were hard copies and had to be manually scanned in.
During that process 700 went missing and a consultant was brought in to find them and make sure no more got lost.
William Devos from the Office of the Clerk said it was a massive task involving multiple searches on different databases.
The $75,000 cost included a $10,000 audit, $45,000 for the consultant and $20,000 for two temporary staff.
Mr Devos said the bug itself took only $3500 to fix.
The IT system was developed by Parliamentary Service and has only been in use since late last year.
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