Sustaining a resilient and secure Water Register for Victoria

DELWP is responsible for the stewardship of Victoria’s scarce water resources which it achieves, in part, through the oversight and management of water entitlements and the water market. The Victorian Water Register (VWR) is a critical enabler through the provision of a public register of all water related entitlements in Victoria. Its purpose is to record water entitlements with integrity, and provide the information required to effectively manage Victoria’s water resources.

The VWR 10-Year Strategy identifies partners and beneficiaries of the VWR as its key stakeholders. These stakeholders use and interact with the VWR, who each perform different roles in the market and have varying needs and expectations. Importantly, these needs and expectations are also evolving over time due to changes in the water market, such as the need to adapt to external factors such as population growth and climate change. These expectations are likely to increase in times of water scarcity; stakeholders will be particularly watchful for errors or omissions so the ongoing availability and integrity of the VWR is essential.

The ongoing operation of the VWR includes business critical water accounting. State water accountants are delegated to the Minister’s legislative responsibilities to issue water allocation against entitlements in accordance with the respective resource managers’ seasonal determinations and apply carryover rules for unused water allocation and licence volumes.

This initiative will fund:

1. Designing and building a new platform to deliver reliable, secure and user friendly VWR services. This is the scope of the VWR Transform project.
2. Maintain ongoing operation of the current VWR to deliver action 9.4 of Water for Victoria whilst new VWR are services are built and rolled out, including water accounting functions.

This initiative will deliver three key benefits:

1. A more cost effective and reliable VWR.
2. New online and user-friendly services.
3. Enablement of more efficient and effective water markets.

EC5 Expenditure to date

Summary of progress to date

The following milestones have commenced, been completed or are ongoing:

• Recruited the VWR Transform project team comprising the following roles, project manager, solution architect, change lead, product owner, business analyst and project support officer.
• Finalised an EOI procurement scope that included:
  • application support services for the current VWR.
  • project services to design and build a new VWR.
  • maintenance and support services for the new VWR.
• Executed a RFT procurement for a VWR Implementation Partner to provide services to the Victorian Water Register based upon the EOI scope and responses.
• Commenced on boarding a new VWR implementation partner (Deloitte) in May 2022.
• Continued operating and supporting the VWR, enabling customers and users to apply for licenses, change ownership of water shares and water allocations and manage their water usage.
• All seasonal determinations completed in the Victorian Water Register in target deadlines – within 3 hours of public announcements, an improvement on previous years – providing earlier access to water allocation for the public.
• 2020-21 (July 2021) EOY process completed on 30 June, with all accounts opened with correct carryover balances, allowing water register to open at midnight on 1 July – 10 hours earlier than previous years.
• Supporting implementation of new Place of Take legislation through business requirements and process definition, progress through to solution design and implementation.