Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#71

Post by walrus01 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

beamatronic wrote: post #66

endorphone wrote: post #63

The Canadian government attempted to build a gun registry, originally predicting it to cost $12M, then $85M, then $1000M, then $2000M, and then it was scrapped. While it's easy to blame vendors like IBM, I have to imagine feature-creep and "what about"-isms lead to such monstrosities.

How many long guns are there in Canada anyway. Could you not use sheets.google.com? I'm serious.

There are quite a lot, actually, though canada has a greater proportion of traditional type long guns like bird hunting shotguns, bolt action rifles, etc. Less people who want to buy a consumer-legal version of a HK416.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#72

Post by jandrese » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #37

jandrese wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These large government software projects end up costing way more than they should pretty much every time. The process is just broken. There's way too much design by committee and tying the hands of the people who are doing the actual work, preventing them from implementing the correct solution and instead making them implement the one the disconnected-from-reality specification writers decided on. Then they have to g…

This is completely wrong. The CA government engaged the vendor, IBM, after they had decided on a list of requirements from what they wanted from a solution. In your argument you say that the hands of the people doing the actual work were tied. Well that's the vendor, and so no, their hands weren't tied. And not sure if you've ever worked at a project like this but the committee meetings aren't expensive. They are bas…

Committee meeting take the time of multiple people. They are absolutely not free. People's time is by far the biggest expense in a development project like this.

In the long run they can save money (getting everybody on the same page to avoid conflicts in the future), but you're paying up front for that. In practice the value of the meetings decreases with frequency (in the reducto ad absurdum case 100% of your time is spent in committee meetings and nothing gets done).

Only engaging with the vendor after the requirements were drawn up is what I'm talking about. They contract with IBM and hand over a 2,000 page document describing their requirements, then discover that it's impossible to implement and end up spending many years and millions of dollars on trying to fix it.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#73

Post by rcurry » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

bloomingfractal wrote: post #5

and that's why governments should hire software engineers that can be in the loop and understand not only the technical but the policy side. Hiring an army of contractors earning 300k/year to deliver "something" in the waterfall model is a recipe for disaster.

If you're not part of the solution, there's good money in prolonging the problem.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#74

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#75

Post by jorblumesea » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:05 PM UTC

Demoneeri wrote: post #61

jorblumesea wrote: post #49

The whole big 4 IT consulting industry needs to die a swift death. It's basically institutionalized corruption. Overbill the client, under deliver with shoddy products made overseas, get that vendor lock in and watch the money flow in. The cost savings are largely an illusion sold by false promises of a better world.

You are mistaken, I work for one of these. I have 12 years experience and I have only one failure to deliver and it was stopped in the design phase because it was too complex and the client wasn't ready.

I worked for one too and I can't say the same thing. Entire projects were poorly thought out, designed and improperly executed. The people working for the company were incompetent and their "hiring bar" was if you had a pulse. And this was a big well known firm.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#76

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

ismail wrote: post #21

I am guessing one of the reasons is probably the software selected... oracle

I'm certain one of the reasons is that all kinds of things were selected, before getting to the meet of the requirements. Which is typical of large government IT projects, where the order is often: choose some of the technology stack, write an contract opportunity (RFO, etc.) around the chosen technology and a vague (even if stated in terms that seem precise) concept of the requirements, select a contractor, who then pre-determines more of the tech stack based on their own offerings, business relationships, or competencies, then starts gathering real implementable requirements and building the customer-specific elements of the software (and even the last two are sometimes in the reverse order.)

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#77

Post by goodroot » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

As a Canadian who has worked at IBM, I'm not surprised that this didn't find success. In IBMs defense, I don't believe our public sector has the experience or aptitude required to act as a supporting interface for a job of this scale.

With that being said, IBM isn't a successful technology company with a proven record building good software products. They were an unwise choice from the get-go. IBM is a successful financial engineering and sales firm that sells things, then scrambles to hire/acquires to get things done to an ever-evolving, always justifiably rough spec. They quack and then start the hack-show.

What do you expect from the organization that invented "FUD" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt) as a way to emotionally manipulate perspective clients into making a purchasing decision?

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#78

Post by hueving » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

Quinner wrote: post #64

walrus01 wrote: post #53

Canadian here. This has become a huge political football. People are blaming the current Liberal government, when the project was started by the Harper Conservatives. The full extent of just how fucked up it is has just now become public knowledge. It is also a political pork barrel project. > The project was meant to save costs by firing 1,200 employees handling payroll at various departments around the country and…

The way this article was written was really weasely. > The Phoenix project was originally chosen by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Conservative predecessors This is assigning blame to Trudeau in the weirdest way.

It sounds like it's blaming his predecessors?

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#79

Post by bsiemon » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #78

Quinner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way this article was written was really weasely. > The Phoenix project was originally chosen by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Conservative predecessors This is assigning blame to Trudeau in the weirdest way.

It sounds like it's blaming his predecessors?

Still mentions his full name and title front and center. I think that is what gp was referencing.

Re: Canada to Scrap IBM Payroll Plan Gone Awry Costing $1B

#80

Post by CivBase » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

Does anyone know what the real problem was here?

> Some people were paid too much, others not at all. Those issues snowballed with the deluge of requests to fix incorrect paychecks.

> IBM said it’s “fulfilling its obligations on the Phoenix contract, and the software is functioning as intended.”

Okay, so the cost is coming from incorrect paycheck values, but the software is working correctly?

Does that mean it's human error? Can these issues be traced back to one or a few major instances of human error? Is this a widespread issue caused by a confusing or misleading UX design?

The article is quick to talk about the projects costs and failures as well as the politicians involved, but I can't learn anything or blame anyone until I understand what went wrong.