from the nice-work,-if-you-can-get-it dept
It always amazes us when we hear about big software systems that organizations pay millions (or sometimes hundreds of millions) for end up making life a lot worse. Remember when the Federal Technology Service (irony alert) spent a ton on a system that required 15 steps to save a document. Or the system that turned processes that used to take minutes into ones that took weeks. Then there was the city of Tacoma, where the city spent $51 million of taxpayer money on a new budgeting system that couldn't create a budget. It looks like we can add the Los Angeles Unified School District to the batch. They're in the middle of a big ERP project that apparently has been screwing up how much teachers are paid for months with no clear end in sight. The district claims that most of the problems are with teachers getting overpaid, but some were underpaid and others not paid at all apparently.
There certainly are many such installations that work just fine, so you have to wonder what the folks doing the installation and integration work did wrong when you hear about these stories -- and whether or not they're still getting paid the full amount (apparently $55 million to systems integrators Deloitte Consulting in this case). The real kicker, though is how long the problem has been going on and how much longer it's expected to continue. There have been errors at least as far back as June and potentially earlier (the article isn't clear). While the district keeps saying it'll get better "next month" prior to the latest payroll, the district also issued the following statement: "Tomorrow is payday for certified employees. We will have payroll errors tomorrow and the majority of those problems will be overpayments. I urge anyone who thinks they may have been overpaid to not spend the money, as overpayment errors will need to be corrected by the end of the year." By the end of the year? Ouch.
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