Having written, designed and implemented many projects, I understand that time-tables and costs at the beginning rarely match up with the same values at the end.
This, however, seems quite excessive.
A payroll system isn’t rocket-science so I don’t understand the absolute failure of this system.
I would bet, if I had to guess the same thing happen here as as what an acquaintance went through many, many years ago.
So, this guy that I talked to worked for a contracting/consulting house in Canada. They did a project for the government of Canada ONCE, and would never do it again. Here was the requirements flow
1) Upper management/politicians created a requirement
2) mid-layer management changed it to reflect what they need
3) people who would use the software got a chance to change spec so it would work
4) work started on project
5) review happened from mid-layer management and fixed spec again, spin on software designed and refactor exiting code
6) Upper management/politicians, had to sign off, and once again fixed it, rework again
7) go to step 1, rinse repeat.
I am simplifying the story a bit. But there was a constant struggle between what the upper level management want to have happen, and the people who will have to use the software want. The contractor gets caught in the middle. The management wins, but the software does not work, and is already over budget from all the design/requirement cycles.
Payroll systems are as close to “off the shelf” as enterprise software gets. Governments at all levels seem completely incapable of managing large scale projects whether they are IT, construction or otherwise. Where I live, the provincial government is going in to year 3 of 1-year train station building project. A 20-story condo high rise right beside the station was started well after the station project and it looks like it will be finished first.
20% of all software projects are completely abandoned before full implementation.
“We will make every investment possible in the recruitment, onboarding, and training of public servants to help solve this problem.,”
Anyone else see the irony there?
Investment??? An investment is normally expected to pay a dividend, not lose money.
Remember, the first 50% of the time spent on development addresses 90% of the requirements, and the second 50% addressed the remaining 90%.
yes, these projects are way to big for any level of Government.
CRA website is down for maintenance for 4 hours, every day!
Can you imagine amazon or netflix having to shutdown for 4 hours everyday for maintenance?
That’s insane.
Meh. No big deal. The State of CA DMV … WASTED … $$$$ hundreds of $$$$ millions in cost overruns for software improvements. And then … ditched the whole thing. Just to start all over again.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/dj-vu-all-over-again-californias-dmv-it-project-cancelled
When one “works” on a government project … one “knows” that you can simply $$$$$ BILL the Taxpayers for WAYYYYYYYYYY more $$$$$, and threaten to withhold all future services till the government PAY UP.
This is how Oracle has gotten so filthy fkcuing $$$$$ RICH,000,000,000.00 $$$$$
Phoenix is Harper’s Parthian shot for Justine Liberals; payback/revenge on the ‘rats.
“Locals in the region would be recruited and trained to work at the centre.”
“… to consolidate the payroll system for civil servants, which would be centralized at a new centre in Miramichi.”
…-
“550 new jobs for Miramichi
Any lost jobs from possible abolishment of long-gun registry will be replaced: PM”
““I said the first time I was here that any jobs that were lost in the firearms centre, we would make sure there was federal employment for them here,” Harper said. “Today we have done what we promised.” Locals in the region would be recruited and trained to work at the centre.”
http://www.macleans.ca/general/550-new-jobs-for-miramichi/
I know it’s fun here to take potshots at the public service but the real story about the Pheonix disaster appears to get no real traction at all: all the worker-bee-level public servants whose pay has been screwed up and the toll this has taken on them and their families. Unpaid civil servants is the stuff of third-rate African countries.
And yet – as far as I can tell – no sense of outrage ANYWHERE in the federal government at the gross mismanagement which has led to its own employees going without pay for months on end, and no comprehensive firings and/or reprimands ofr any EX or director or director general or ADM (pour encourager les autres).
In my view, every Liberal MP from the PM down ought to have their pay and benefits withheld until such time as the Pheonix system is fixed. That might focus their self-satisfied little minds…
Having spent years in manufacturing, some of which was spent trying to win bids on government procurement, I can tell you what the biggest piece of the problem is, and it leads to massive cost over-runs on virtually everything the government buys.
Almost everything they ask for, they ask for “custom”. I pored over reams of documents for machined hardware, and talked to other people in the business, and we all saw a common thread- unnecessary customization leading to dramatic cost increases. I saw scores of bid sheets asking for a product that closely matched off-the-shelf hardware, but with some esoteric detail added that had no bearing on the functionality of the part or assembly. That little detail always magnified the cost, often doubling or tripling it. Multiply this across literally hundreds of supply chains, and you begin to see the scope of the problem.
Over 20 years ago, when I was selling cars, the feds bought 3 Plymouth Acclaims through our dealership. By ordering spec, bid units, they ended up paying more for 4 cyl, non A/C cars than if they had purchased more fuel efficient V6 cars with A/C right off the lot. Dumb.
To me, there is fault by both parties.
In the early 1990’s, I worked on an implementation team for a software package for the Cdn military. A internationally well-known private software development company had been hired well-prior to my being posted into the project. They were to take one of their existing commercial packages and tweak it for military use. 4 years into the project (about the time I was posted in) and after collecting over $3,500,000, they had yet to deliver anything but a bare-bones package we could use to enter data, but was of no use for anything else. They promised that the data could be transferred easily to the complete program.
Shortly after I joined, they made their first ‘deliverable’ portion of the package, which was full of errors and bugs, and would freeze our computers. They left, promising a quick fix. 2 months later, 3 different reps from the company showed up with the fix – and it sort-of worked. But still what they had was less than 10% of what was required.
2 months later, another 2 reps from the company arrived, with another portion. We asked what happened to the other 3 who had been there previously. They had been ‘reassigned’ to other projects. This new portion worked, but did not meet even half of what was required for that portion.
Since they were already a couple years behind schedule, and had delivered unusable software, the Project Manager went to the Director-General of the branch, recommending the contract be closed. Which it was, without penalty to DND.
One of the Air Force Captains in the office, who was a self-trained software geek, said that he and a civilian buddy could write the program complete in 6 months – but since his buddy was a civilian, he would have to be paid. They brought in a proof-of-concept package in two weeks – and his buddy was hired as a ‘consultant’. 5 months after that, a fully functional program was delivered, and implemented to bases across the country. Total cost for hiring this consultant was under $70,000. (During that 5 months, those of us who weren’t geeks, were sent on various computer courses and loaned to another project in the same branch that needed extra staff for implementation. Also, I was tasked to use the proof-of-concept package to create a training database, which transferred without a hitch to the finalized program).
The point of my story is that within the departments, whether DND or otherwise, there may be talent already in place that can develop and deliver what is needed without going to commercial companies. And the commercial company, by constantly changing software development staff, would lose time as the new staff would have to get up to speed on what had already been written, resulting in increased costs.
(On a side note – it was a DOS based program that was completed just a few months after the first Windows based programs were coming out. The consultant was brought back after two years to make it Windows compatible).
“‘We have a capacity problem. It’s very simple,’ said [Steve MacKinnon, parliamentary secretary to the minister of Public Services and Procurement]. ‘We are trying to rebuild that capacity, step by step.'”
MacKinnon should get the chop and heave-ho on principle for those supercilious nd condescending remarks alone. I’ll bet his pay account is working just fine, thank you (and it seems it is because he’s a Liberal MP).
Oh, and whoever the non-entity of a Minister is (some MP named Judy Foote it would appear), she should lose her portfolio and be sent to the wilderness of the backbenches.
“I don’t understand this.”
You can find all the explanation you need here:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corruption
I hope this helps.
Remember the LONG GUN registry?
Can we go back to CASH?
Why can’t ADP do this?
Not entirely unrelated:
The clock at the Nexus line at the Peace Arch border crossing in BC shows the correct time but the wrong date. When I crossed a week ago it showed December 26, 2016
Evidently they can’t find the “date guy”.
It has been this way for a year or more.
So, their inability to solve their payroll problem should not surprise.
And repairs costing more than the initial cost is SOP.
Looking on the bright side, the development of government payment systems now provides more jobs than renewable energy programs.
What’s not to understand? If I may paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith: “You will find that [the Government] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.”
The problem is that governments don’t want “off the shelf” they want something tailored specifically to their needs.
As Steve and Lance have both said – this should have been an off the shelf solution with some setup. If public “servants” were actually required to work with the software that’s available instead of getting the bright idea to waste money on developing something, then there would be a lot less to complain about.
What I heard was that the system was actually ok. The biggest problem was that the union flunkies were pissed that the system would replace other union flunkies, so they were instructed to botch the data entry to the point where the system became totally unusable….
Captcha “Locust porto”…
Half were underpaid, half overpaid and some not paid at all. Whats so wrong with that? Doesn’t it all even itself out? Seems like a wash to me. Lol
There’s an underlying problem that this fiasco is illustrating- the overly high pay of the public sector. Most people would go a couple weeks without a paycheque, then tell the boss to fix it by this afternoon at quitting time, or sayonara. We keep hearing stories of people going months without their cheques, cashing in RRSP’s, etc., just to stay afloat until the system is fixed. That tells you that the pay is high enough to warrant enduring months of financial hardship in order to stay in that job.
This was also illustrated by a story about people working as part-timers for over a decade in order to gain full-time employment at the Toronto Public Library System. When people are willing to put so much of their lives on hold for what should be a middling job at best, you know that the system has been gamed. There’s no reason to put up with foregoing thousands and thousands of dollars in present income in order to gain a position somewhere, unless that position pays an exceedingly high salary, one far and above what that person might be capable of making in other employment.
These are evidence that the public sector is increasingly weaponized against the taxpaying sector.
20 years agoq or so I was involved with a non profit organization that wanted a membership program for mailing lists etc. They decided to spend 35 hundred dollars for a custom program( a lot of money for that organization at the time) when they could have gone to Staples and got one for less that $50 that would have done the job.something about ” other people’s money” I guess.
The problem is that politicians and government management staff are not spending their own money. Deficit spending is second nature to them. Budgeting and controlling expenses is a meaningless concept to them. In fact, year end spending is the norm so that the next year’s budget is not reduced. Until the financial controls of government change nothing will change.
The problem is that politicians and government management staff are not spending their own money. Deficit spending is second nature to them. Budgeting and controlling expenses is a meaningless concept to them. In fact, year end spending is the norm so that the next year’s budget is not reduced. Until the financial controls of government change nothing will change.
OOPS. Sorry for the double post.
Don’t you want money, in brown paper bags, to be handed out to build infrastructure? If a Liberal does it, that means that it is not illegal. What a hater Lance is.
Welcome to the club
http://www.couriermail.com.au/extras/qweekend/fff/features/pdfs/338.pdf
As a former director of payroll and Payroll systems analyst for a large national company I had written the payroll system. We moved up to a Payroll system from Integral Systems and implemented it in-house. It was time to move to an online HR and Payroll system. We put the HR system in using PeopleSoft with minimal changes on time and within the budget. When it became time to implement the Payroll side the new Payroll director, as I was now in systems again, wanted major changes to the PeopleSoft payroll though it was a really rich enhanced package. I warned the director and her proponents that unless they used a close to vanilla package it would fail.
Of course after a year of rewrites and endless modifications the company pulled the plug and we lost millions on it.
In my experience with IT systems, ALL government development projects are entirely POLITICAL, both in their initiation and their implementation.
Government IT departments have absolutely no motivation to save money – a primary driver in the private sector – because they never have to worry about going out of business.
I can speak from experience inside the system. I’m a conservative-libertarian public servant (yes, there are some of us, although I am usually outnumbered about 5 to 1).
Most of the problem, from what I see, is that the out-of-the-box solution for which they paid $300M wasn’t out-of-the-box ready. For instance, our unit works 12.25 hour shifts around the clock, 365 days a year. The system, at its implementation, had no capacity to deal with a) shifts that weren’t 7.5 or 8.0 hours long, b) night shifts, c) weekends, d) holidays, e) promotions, and I’m sure I’m missing some.
In theory, I think the Phoenix implementation was a good idea–software that could replace bodies, saving a bunch of money over time. But since it was suck a colossal fail on the software’s part, it’s going to end up costing way more.
As to why the software wasn’t ready for these relatively simple things out of the box, I don’t know. Someone’s head ought to roll for it but of course they won’t.
Reminds me of what my football coach used to tell our team…
“we may be small … but we’re slow”
100% of all government projects are make work projects for bureaucrats, the more wrenches that can be thrown in to delay, obscure the more time wasted and more money spent. It is a bit like making boxes, make it too small, oh oh, that won’t work burn them, make them too big, oh oh, that won’t work, burn them, make them out of too soft a material, oh oh, that won’t work, in the meantime people keep getting paid but the box problem never gets solved until enough has been fleeced from those who require the boxes. the article on stupid applies here.
Major Fortune 100 companies have implemented entire new financial backends, like SAP, to do payroll, AP/AR, and all other financial information for less money and less time. Further, they had to implemented for many more jurisdictions (tax systems in dozens of different countries), wider time zones, etc. From my understanding, the government decided they were so special that they had to hire IBM and a bunch of programmers to start from scratch. Just the like long gun registry. It’s make work, nothing more.
Cui bono?
What’s not to get? IBM was hired to do the job. Problem is that IBM is still trading on its older, earned reputation of GID while being nothing more than a body shop hiring the cheapest subcontractors. I work for a largish Canadian city (1 million or more residents) and we dread putting out RFPs cause IBM is great at providing responses and then pooches the execution.
Throw in some poorly defined requirements, never-ending change requests and you have a perfect storm. Now they are busy hacking and slashing the system to generate positive headlines. We will be reading about this for years to come. Years.
Lance said: “A payroll system isn’t rocket-science so I don’t understand the absolute failure of this system.”
Once you understand that they are actually stealing the money and laundering it through these IT contracts, it all makes perfect sense.
Remember the long gun registry? Two BILLION spent to implement a database that a kid could write in DBase III, that would run on a laptop.