Get to root cause of pay fiasco

Re: Start over on Phoenix, Feb. 24.

Following the excellent article by Jim Bagnall on the Phoenix fiasco, your editorial called for a total rewrite. Before going down that path, I think it imperative someone gets to the root cause.

Typically when something goes wrong on such an epic scale, there are multiple points of failure.

With much finger-pointing, not all points of failure have been identified. Treasury Board hired Goss Gilroy, who developed a report, Lessons Learned from the Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative. I am not sure that any lessons have been learned.

There were more than a dozen committees overseeing the project. Most executives went along to get along, accepting information, hoping for the best, always trusting.

With so much oversight, where were the canaries in the coal mine? The Treasury Board submission had failed multiple times; were unrealistic promises made? Why was IBM the one bidder for the contract? Was IBM hired as a systems integrator or on a time-and-material basis, with no responsibility other than best effort? Did IBM bring any learned lessons from other projects? How was the decision made to use a version of PeopleSoft that will be unsupported shortly?

What many know who have been involved with the project is that developing a common solution for 101 departments, with more than 80,000 business rules and more than 100 collective agreements, serving more than 300,000 employees, is not for the faint of heart. Moreover, as a business transformation project, it should start with changing the business rules, making them simpler. IT will then follow.

Experience tells me that a simple reboot will not work; no one wants to see a repeat. Figure out what really went wrong. Redesign the business. Then make sure that there is strong oversight. Alex Beraskow, Ottawa