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, and 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 access publicly available information.

On this page

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 Autumn 2024. Phase 1 will:

  • establish the core system
  • deliver customer and staff portals
  • enable 22 highly automated regulatory processes
  • introduce data and analytics capabilities.

Implementation will occur over twelve 3-week 'delivery/build' sprints to deliver:

  • industry portal
  • core MERS solution
  • data and analytics
  • system integration with third-party systems
  • data migration.

Rigorous testing and training are scheduled for March/April 2024, before the scheduled go-live date in Autumn 2024.

Project diary

December 2023 through to January 2024

Sprints 8 to 10:

  • Commenced build of Public Mining Register
  • Commenced build of Expenditure Returns submission
  • Commenced build of Miscellaneous Purposes Licence application
  • Continued build of Mining PEPR submission
  • Continued build of Exploration PEPR submission (Ongoing / 12 month / Program Notification)
  • Finalising Exploration Licence application, Mining Lease Application, Mineral Claim Application forms
  • Finalising referral, spatial intersects and uploads

November 2023

Sprint 7:

  • Continued build of External Referrals functionality
  • Continued build of Mining and Exploration PEPR submission form
  • Continued build of Mining Lease Application form
  • Continued build of Mineral Claim Application form
  • Added spatial functionality to ELA and MLA process
  • Finalised document upload and payment functionality for ELA

October 2023

Sprint 6:

  • Finalising the Exploration Licence Application form
  • Finalising the Exploration Release Area (ERA) form
  • Finalising the Exploration Annual Activity Summary form
  • Finalising the Exploration Annual Technical Reports form
  • Commenced build of External Referrals functionality
  • Commenced build of Mining and Exploration PEPR submission form
  • Commenced build of Mining Lease Application form
  • Commenced build of Mineral Claim Application form

September 2023

Sprint 4 and 5:

  • Finalised the Exploration Licence Application form
  • Finalised submission of Exploration Annual Activity Summary
  • Finalised submission of Exploration Annual Technical Reports
  • Build of the Exploration Release Area (ERA) online form is in progress
  • Commenced build of Request for Information functionality
  • Commenced build of external referrals functionality
  • Commenced build of PEPR submission form
  • Commenced build of Mining Lease Application form.

August 2023

Sprint 3:

  • Build of the customer portal landing page and dashboard is in progress
  • Build of exploration data reports is in progress
  • Design of mining lease application.

July 2023

Sprint 2 – Design of exploration licence application process

June 2023

Sprint 1 – Design of customer portal landing page and dashboard

Stage 3 – Implementation begins with the building of the technical environments

May – June 2023

Stage 2 – Review and agreement

January – May 2023

Stage 1 - Design and planning

Contact

For more information, contact Tracie Mohr - tracie.mohr@sa.gov.au