Australia has had five Prime Ministers and four Treasurers while the Finance Department has been trying to build its new budget management system.
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And the project, which was supposed to make its debut 2013 budget won't be ready for this year's political showpiece either, and already carries a bill of $111 million, an 80 per cent blow-out on the original price of $62 million.
More than $90 million of the final bill will go to multinational tech giants SAP and CSC.
Taxpayers will pay another $19.6 million for contract staff, hardware, services from other providers and software.
The latest IT debacle to hit the Commonwealth comes from the department that claims the mantle of leadership for some of the government's key technology efforts including, its vast array of more than 1500 websites.
The Central Budget Management System is the platform used by Finance and other government agencies to put together the Commonwealth budget and track spending against the budget throughout the year.
But the technology is old clunky and needs a lot of manual work from Finance public servants to put the Budget together and then undertake all the subsequent financial reporting.
It was reaching the end of its useful life seven years ago when a replacement was ordered, in the 2010-2011 budget, to be up and running in time to be used for the 2013-2014 Budget.
But the project was off the rails by mid-2013 when it became clear the "off the shelf" finance software supplied by German IT giant SAP was not going to do the job.
After a "comprehensive review" delivered its report in early 2015, it was hoped that another 18 months work and $30 million would have the replacement system in place for the 2017-2018 budget cycle.
It didn't.
But the Finance Department remains upbeat, releasing a statement this week that the replacement CBMS would be working on time to help with some budget activities this year.
"The redeveloped Central Budget Management System will be available for a range of 2017-18 Budget cycle activities, including calculating the Final Budget Outcome for 2016-17, preparing the Consolidated Financial Statements for 2016-17 and the MYEFO for 2017-18," the statement said.
