ATO national director for the office of the chief of knowledge Toni Rolls said it was meticulous in outlining initial problems and requirements and described the outcomes in terms of business benefits.

"It took us 18 months to sell the project to the executives which we achieved by commissioning an [internal body] to create an in-depth and business-orientated risk assessment to prove the business benefits," Rolls said.

"There's only so much you can do with some legacy systems, but what we are after is conformance and assurance of all our systems."

"The project is going to be a huge success because we took a risk; you can't gain much if you don't take some educated risks by trying something new."

The project conforms to Australian ISO Standard 15489 which has been modified to support new and legacy systems.