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 first half of 2025. Phase 1 will:

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

Project diary

Rigorous testing and training will be undertaken as the processes are finalised and built, in preparation for deployment of MERS in 2025.

Build progress for the Portal:

  • Exploration licence application
  • Exploration release area
  • Mining lease application (MLA) for TOR and DIT applications
  • Miscellaneous purposes licence (MPL)
  • Mineral claim (MC)
  • Annual technical report
  • Annual activity summary
  • MPEPR (DIT)
  • MPEPR (TOR)
  • EPEPR (Ongoing, 12-month, program notification)
  • Notices

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 Brad Manton, Change Manager, MERS project via DEM.MERSsupportteam@sa.gov.au