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

[David Collier-Brown]

On 12/08/16 12:34 PM, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
> 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.

I have a former boss who now works for federal purchasing, specializing 
in software. If the old grey heads would listen to the middle-aged 
females (or even the males, of the era) they would not be looking at 
career-threatening mistakes.

Alas, listening to one's subordinates in an organization with more than 
100 members is a career *ending* mistake.

--dave

-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
davecb at spamcop.net           |                      -- Mark Twain

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