Queensland bureaucrat steps down after IT glitch blocked school abuse reports
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Version 0 of 1. A senior Queensland bureaucrat has stood down amid the discovery that more cases of suspected child abuse were not relayed to authorities because of an education department IT failure. The education minister, Kate Jones, has confirmed that 27 cases where principals suspected students were at risk of neglect or sexual abuse in the home did not reach child safety officials because of a fault in a schools reporting system. More cases of suspected abuse may yet emerge after an independent probe by Deloitte on Thursday found the reports had been blocked by an IT firewall in place since late 2013. Related: IT failure blocks Queensland schools' reports of suspected child sex abuse It follows the revelation last week that 644 cases of suspected sexual abuse that principals attempted to report to police never went through because of a separate IT glitch. Jones, who has ordered the education department to broaden the scope of its investigation, said in a statement that its acting deputy director general for corporate services had voluntarily stood aside. The senior bureaucrat is the third person, along with another departmental staffer and a contractor, to stand aside over the IT failure, which first emerged as a result of a botched upgrade to the department’s student protection reporting system in January. The firewall that blocked the reporting of 27 suspected cases of children at risk of neglect or sexual abuse was picked up only after Jones ordered a manual check of 3,822 reports to the department of child safety. Jones said all 27 reports were now with child safety. “The safety and wellbeing of Queensland’s students is my number one priority and I am committed to ensuring the systems we have in place to report suspected child abuse protect our children,” she said. Police continue to investigate an earlier 644 unreported cases of suspected sexual abuse, in which principals judged students were not at immediate risk because of the support of parents or guardians. The IT fault was discovered last month after a principal who followed up on a report he made through the OneSchool online portal discovered it was not received by police. |