I am guessing one of the reasons is probably the software selected... oracle
Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
21–30 of 333 posts
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#22So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? On the face of it, there are salary employees and there are hourly employees. How many taxing bodies does Canada have? Federal, provincial, and municipal? Is that a few dozen or a few hundred? Is Canadian tax code crazy complicated that doesn't allow for a rules based system?
I'm honestly curious as to how a "simple" payroll system can go so far off the rails.
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#23Not having ever worked on anything like this, the death knell for these projects must be the inability to ever reduce functionality into a reasonable core set. Basically the 80/20 rule but where there are practically an infinite number of edge cases that stretch the project on indefinitely?
You could serve 80% of the payroll burden with software that cost $10m. 90% coverage costs $100m. 98% costs $1,000m. And 100% costs $∞
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#24So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? On the face of it, there are salary employees and there are hourly employees. How many taxing bodies does Canada have? Federal, provincial, and municipal? Is that a few dozen or a few hundred? Is Canadian tax code crazy complicated that doesn't allow for a rules based system? I'm honestly curious as to how a "simple" payroll system can go so far off the rail…
FTA: ".. had yet to be encoded with many of the payroll complexities faced by a massive and diverse public service, such as unique shift rules for Coast Guard officers or prison guards."
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#25So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? On the face of it, there are salary employees and there are hourly employees. How many taxing bodies does Canada have? Federal, provincial, and municipal? Is that a few dozen or a few hundred? Is Canadian tax code crazy complicated that doesn't allow for a rules based system? I'm honestly curious as to how a "simple" payroll system can go so far off the rail…
I remember thinking “Why does this simple state Jury Duty site need to be down from 9PM to 9AM”
“I could write a site that did this job with 99.9% reliability in a weekend”
Turns out disability laws require a real person be available to assist with the site. Imagine bidding on a website project and accidentally promising 24/7 live support.
That’s government tech in a nutshell.
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#26So, what makes a payroll system at this scale so difficult? On the face of it, there are salary employees and there are hourly employees. How many taxing bodies does Canada have? Federal, provincial, and municipal? Is that a few dozen or a few hundred? Is Canadian tax code crazy complicated that doesn't allow for a rules based system? I'm honestly curious as to how a "simple" payroll system can go so far off the rail…
There are multiple rules based on collective bargaining (union).
"The software platform itself, a heavily modified version of Oracle’s PeopleSoft program, had yet to be encoded with many of the payroll complexities faced by a massive and diverse public service, such as unique shift rules for Coast Guard officers or prison guards."
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#27I hope to someday read a comprehensive post-mortem but I doubt there's anyone involved who can/would write one without a lot of bias against the other parties involved. This will go down in an annals of massive software project failures.
I poked around to read more about this and the gov't did commission a report to look at what went wrong:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-federal-governm...
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#28Was not surprised to see Oracle and PeopleSoft involved.
I hope they get the crap sued out of them. That stuff is toxic, and I pity any organization that Oracle got its claws into using that junk.
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#29I am guessing one of the reasons is probably the software selected... oracle
Oracle Peoplesoft is used successfully at a number of organisations so blanket statements aren't helpful.
But I would question whether it is better/cheaper in these cases to just write bespoke software from scratch rather than trying to modify a vendor's existing product.
Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B
#30The comments made about the government about excluding IBM from making future systems for the government stood out. The reality is payroll should be executed by payroll specialists. I recently had to research payroll providers and there are players who service 20-30% of the Canadian population already. This is another sign of folks not knowing how to source, design, oversee or implement software implementations.
This is also why Ceridian is still around in spite of all of their faults (or so I hear from any small/mid-size business practitioners I know). I take it that's who you're referring to?
ADP too.