Issuing ASICs was never CASAs core business. It was probably lumped on them by the then DOTARS becuase CASA was seen as the organisation best able to service the pilot fraternity. The legendary farcical initial round of ASICs issued by them with the assistance of Chubb Security clearly showed they were not up to it and probably haven't been since.
For the sake of simplicity, CASA should just say - we are no longer an issuing authority and refer all pilots who would normally use them on to AviationID Australia. Remaining as a "middle man" in the applicaton process is only going to cause more delays, be more expensive and make things much more complicated than they really have to be.
The cost could be brought down significantly if Auscheck would, as previously suggested, make the clearances valid for 3 or even 5 years. They tend to waste a lot of time and money generating unnecessary paperwork and their much touted online system is still not up and running after it was hacked into about a week before launch date last August.