Summary

The Office of the Auditor-General of the Republic of Fiji, at the request of the Ministry of Lands and Mineral Resources, conducted an IT audit of the Crown Land Lease System (CLLS) to assess its efficiency and effectiveness in managing Crown land leases and State land records. The audit covered the period from January 2020 to October 2023. The CLLS was implemented in the 1990s as a Disk Operating System (DOS-Aven) and upgraded to the Oracle system in 2007. Audit found the CLLS to be obsolete and inefficient as it could not accurately maintain the Crown land lease and State land records. Auditors noted inaccurate calculation of interests charged annually against the lessees overdue premium balances (including charging of interest to lessees with expired leases during the renewal period), as well as the non-reflection of revenues received on expired leases in the Government Financial Management Information System, understating revenue collected annually. SAI Fiji's general recommendation was to urgently upgrade the CLLS to ensure the accuracy of data input, processing, and storage, and to provide reliable information to the Ministry. SAI Fiji also recommended that the Ministry establish an IT Steering Committee to oversee major IT initiatives, develop a comprehensive IT Strategic Plan and IT Risk Management Policy, allocate adequate resources, necessary hardware and software to the Application Support Team, and provide relevant personnel with professional training.