Registration backlog chokes PPSR

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 21 February 2012 08:50

Business IT - Technology

A registration backlog is still choking the performance of the $33 million Personal Property Security Register, with the Government admitting that it had not made as much progress as had been hoped over the weekend and delays were still occurring.

The PPSR was built by Fujitsu for the Attorney General's department and was launched at the end of January. Data from 23 Commonwealth, State and Territory registers was transferred before the national PPSR started operations on 30 January.

After a fraught first fortnight the system's operation has improved, but users are still plagued by sluggish performance and workarounds.

An update posted late yesterday on the PPSR website indicated there were still delays as a result of the backlogs, which would take a few more days at least to clear.

Users have also been hampered by the transition of the ASIC property registers across to the PPSR. The PPSR was designed to use a single identifier - the Australian Company Number - for search purposes.

ASIC's data however used Australian Business Numbers as well as ACNs which has led to confusion, and required people to search by company name as well as ABN and ACN. Each separate search costs $3.70.

Despite this impost the Attorney General's department, noted that; 'Searches need only be conducted on the one register, rather than multiple registers in multiple jurisdictions levying different fees.'

According to the statement published on the PPSR website yesterday; 'The Registrar proposes to publish a verification statement under section 158 of the PPS Act in respect of the registration events which occur as a result of the aforementioned process to register the grantor identified by ACN and remove the grantor identified by ABN.'

In terms of the overall performance of the 6.5 terabyte (and growing) PPSR database a spokesperson from the Attorney General's department said: 'As we foreshadowed, there was very strong initial demand for the PPSR in the opening weeks, which did impact its overall performance.  While there is still room for improvement specifically in relation to bulk-uploads to the Register, users are now consistently reporting very good response times.'