I concur. What I'm hearing is that the Canadian Federal payroll is extremely complex (like all government payrolls, I suppose). The Harper gov't justified the system by laying off everyone who knew the old payroll system.
The software developed by IBM was so complex, that it required the expertise of the people who got laid off to operate it. The novices who took over didn't know how to make the software work, and chaos ensued.
The Canadian government is as much at fault as the developers on this one. (I speak as one who is paying for this fiasco :o).
IBM has failed to build these state level systems successfully around the world (Canada, Australia, Pennsylvania, Slovenia, New Zealand). IBM should know how to go about building them right or IBM should not be in this business.
The first $200 million of cost overruns I'm willing to pin on the Government of Canada. The subsequent billion dollars and the failure of the system to work at all is the vendor's fault.
If the Government of Canada is entirely impossible to work with, the vendor should have shut the project down at 200% of budget rather than run it to six times budget and still fail.
The software developed by IBM was so complex, that it required the expertise of the people who got laid off to operate it. The novices who took over didn't know how to make the software work, and chaos ensued.
The Canadian government is as much at fault as the developers on this one. (I speak as one who is paying for this fiasco :o).