Queensland’s $5 million business grant program reopens applications following technical issues

The Queensland Business Basics Grant is set to reopen next week. Technical issues prevented the third round of applications from opening on the original planned date of May 4, as reported in The Mandarin.

The new dates are planned for 9am May 16 for regional Queensland and 9am May 17 for southeast Queensland.

Minister for Employment and Small Business Di Farmer said the issue, which had stemmed from a technical issue with Our Community’s application software, SmartyGrants, had been resolved. The issue affected users both domestically and internationally.

Farmer acknowledged the stress the issue caused small businesses.

According to Farmer, $5 million is available in this round of grants, with $1.5 million earmarked for regional Queensland.

“The portal has been extensively tested by the external provider, Our Community, who has given an assurance that the portal is safe and stable and the grants program can proceed,” Farmer said.

Our Community CEO Denis Moriarty issued a statement over the outage, apologising to those affected.

“SmartyGrants is mission critical to DESBT [Department of Employment, Small Business and Training], as it is to our many other customers. We do not take that responsibility lightly. The problem that occurred on 4 May was ours, and ours alone. We apologise for the issues that this outage caused to DESBT, and to the small business community that relies on DESBT for assistance,” Moriarty said.

Moriarty thanked his staff, and stated lessons would be learned from the incident.

This article was first published by The Mandarin.