Project background

The Department for Energy and Mining (DEM) is building a new Mining and Exploration Regulation System (MERS) to replace the existing Tenement Management System (TMS) and selected supporting systems. MERS will create a modern, consolidated mineral resources regulatory digital platform to better meet the needs of community, industry, potential investors, and the department.

MERS will manage the entire lifecycle of regulation for the resources sector within South Australia, from exploration, quarrying and mining licensing and lease impact assessment and management, through to regulated compliance and royalties.

MERS will deliver effective, efficient, and transparent regulation through a customer experience portal integrated with a digital business process management solution. This will reduce red tape for industry and deliver more consistent and improved regulatory assessment timeframes for exploration and mining applications and assessments.

MERS will benefit our stakeholders by:

  • improving the user experience through predicative and simplified online services
  • providing industry with the ability to monitor assessment timeframes
  • allowing industry to manage and track critical regulatory dates and reporting requirements
  • enabling easier access for community to publicly available information.

Project summary

DEM has partnered with DXC Technology to deliver the MERS project. Phase 1 commenced in January 2023 and is expected to be deployed in the second half of 2024. Phase 1 will:

  • establish the core system
  • deliver customer and staff portals
  • enable highly automated regulatory processes
  • introduce data and analytics capabilities.

Project diary

The MERS Project has reached the milestones of finalising the functional requirements for the processes included in Phase 1, and the building of an end-to-end process for Exploration Licence Applications. Final design and build for other processes continues.

The Project is working with DXC Technology to confirm the deployment timelines for Phase 1. Rigorous testing and training will be undertaken as the processes are finalised and built, in preparation for a smooth deployment of MERS later in 2024.

Project highlights

The Exploration Licence Application process is an example of the functionality and user experience that stakeholders can expect once MERS is delivered. The screenshots below provide an early view of MERS.

Commencing an application process:

ELA

Creating an application area:

Identify Application

Application information:

Exploration Expenditure

Contact

For more information, contact Tony Halls – DEM.MERSsupportteam@sa.gov.au