[GTALUG] better than average article on why the federal payroll system is a mess

[Christopher Browne]

On 12 August 2016 at 11:49, o1bigtenor via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 10:41 AM, Alvin Starr via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>> On 08/12/2016 11:13 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
>>
>> There have been a bunch of headlines about the new federal payroll
>> system "Phoenix" is screwing up a lot.  This article does a reasonable
>> job of describing how the problems happened.
>>
>> <http://www.itworldcanada.com/blog/phoenix-payroll-report-by-michael-wernick-the-clerk-of-the-privy-council/385370>
>> Interesting.
>>
>> I have a slightly different take.
>>
>> Through my wife's work I have had a chance to see lots of government
>> projects (mostly Ontario) and I have come to the conclusion that the
>> insistance of project managers to go with safe products like Oracle and
>> Microsoft and Cisco are the reason lots of projects are off the rails.
>> Big companies know how to bill and charge for changes but the products and
>> services seldom come close to the sales pitch.
>>
>> But nobody will get fired for buying IBM/Cisco/Oracle/Microsoft.....
>
> My suggestion is that management get paid on effectiveness - - ie poor outcomes
> first wage reductions (starting at 25% and growing quickly) and termination for
> outcomes that just don't work (that's with an independent review to make sure
> that something wasn't torpedoed because of an even goofier more senior exec!).
>
> How would that work you think?

That leads to cancelling the project throughly and regularly, and continuing to
run the old software until it falls prey of some equivalent to the 2038 problem,
and they have nobody that comprehends anything deep about the old system
because those people all retired in the 1990's.

Ordering a government bureaucracy to not behave the way a government
bureaucracy behaves is as foolish as trying to feed cats a vegetarian diet.
Cats are carnivores, and we know to call those that have the delusion that
it is a good idea to make them into vegetarians delusional fools.

It seems to me that the government had few real options in the matter; the
Payroll Problem is big enough that it properly requires the business help of
an organization like IBM.  (Other plausible options would include CGI,
Accenture, PWC, Deloitte Consulting, KPMG, but those don't have
the selections of hardware and software that IBM would offer, so I'm
completely unsurprised at IBM falling to the top of the list.)

They can't contract it all out to Ceridian/ADP, which is what a whole lot of
business do, because there's a large enough set of people doing
Actually Secret Stuff, between payroll of:
 - Prison staff
 - Diplomatic staff
 - RCMP staff
 - CSIS staff (honest-to-goodness spies among them)
 - Betcha paid informants need to get, um, paid...

Actually, my straight response to "be more business like" is pretty much
pointing at this set of secret squirrels...  Businesses don't have these
bits, and are not allowed to, pretty much.  Government isn't a business,
which is a good reason NOT to put a "businessman" in charge.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"