AS8015 was made public in January last year. Toomey says some initial feedback complained that it didn't tell organizations how to deal with the fine detail, but the standard is not intended to do that. It is now being widely picked up, he says. The Queensland government is about to mandate it for all state government departments.

Not so custom-made

Late last year Australian Customs services all but ground to a halt when a new system to handle imports was brought into production. That has led to two parallel inquiries: by an independent consultant and by the Audit Office.

Mark Toomey uses this as an example of poor governance. 'The project began in the 1990s with a budget of A$23 million (US$16.4 million). It is now A$230 million and climbing. When it went into production, it was the busiest month of the year and industry had said it was not ready and introduction of the new system would cause chaos. By the end of the week, Australian ports were choked and no imports were being cleared.

'Questions would have been raised by an astute board of directors, such as 'Do we have to change all the systems at once or should we be incremental?''