i always estimate high with any job my team take on.

im sure its just that (times 10)

LNP Accountancy, everything has to make a profit.

Oh and don't forget that Newman claimed that 22% of Brisbane roads were flood damaged........

IBM + Accenture = lots of meetings, documentation, fancy diagrams, and little quality code.

Stuff isn't rocket science and yet they royally screwed it up. They're an embarrassment to IT professionals and, yet, guess who large corporations and governments will run to when they need stuff in the future? You guessed it, the same posers in suits.

*not bitter at all :P

I came in here to say Assventure too.

They could easily make anything cost that much. And then you'd need to hire internal staff to fix it, but that wouldn't be included in the 1.2 billion.

I don't get how a company can sell you something that doesn't work then charge you to fix it?

It's not going to an army of 12K software developers, the bulk of it is the ongoing costs associated with processing payroll using a piss poor system delivered by IBM and Corptech (QSS). I remember reading in a report from the Auditor-General in 2010 that blame lay with all parties involved (Qld Health, IBM & subcontractor) due to communications problems during the implementation. The inadequacies of the system involve a significant amount of manual processes and is compounded by the obscene complexity involved in all the QH awards and entitlements.
They knew the system was broken when they pushed the big red GO button but reports are they were forced to because they were getting desperate - the previous system wasn't going to be able to handle the next FY cutover.

The breakdown is as follows:
A tad over 1 billion dollars in payroll processing costs over 8 years (FY10-FY17)
220 million in fixing the broken system
25 million set aside to decide whether to keep plugging away or scrap the whole lot and start again.

It's ludicrous that IBM gets to charge around $250M to fix something that was initially quoted as a $7M contract, but that's a simple project oversight & incompetence issue on QH's behalf.

Read the KPMG audit report from 2012 & the QAO report from 2010:

I'd get it done for 1.1 billion

QFT, toss me a cool billion and you'll get a s*** hot payroll system for sure.

I believe it's due to global warming.

Nerf, sheerobesity, fpot, infi, and loutl should be able to confirm/deny this however they may have differing opinions.

Come on, fpot and I never start conversations on these topics - we just call out bulls*** and misinformation. I'll accept my forum award at the next ceremony.

As for the accenture thing, I know a guy who worked there for years in Brisbane, I may investigate if he knows anything about this apparent mess one day...

Any SAP programmers/functional ppl on here?

They probably can explain why it costs so much.

Labor's lasting legacy of building a better state....

More likely there were heaps of guys getting paid $500k to do nothing but ponce around going "I reckon that menu should look sharper".

lol, so true.

It's appalling how much waste there is in IT. Too many poser and wannabes have inserted themselves into the process. I've seen trivial tasks (less than an hour's work) outsourced to companies for almost $100k for delivery in weeks rather than the hours it should be, all because the senior IT manager used to work (or is on the board of) said outsource company.

And pro tip for senior IT management success: massively over-quote any project so that when you come in under that (but still much higher than it would have taken if done by pros), you'll get a pat on the back for genius cost saving! Huzzah!

the reason is because the outsourced indian programers are very hard on keyboards, 1bil of that is purely keyboard

It's all starting to come together.......

thermites mate is on the IBM fix it team on the side, while reading posts here on global warming and carbon tax!

No wonder he's smashing that keyboard.

IBM + Accenture = lots of meetings, documentation, fancy diagrams, and little quality code. Stuff isn't rocket science and yet they royally screwed it up. They're an embarrassment to IT professionals and, yet, guess who large corporations and governments will run to when they need stuff in the future? You guessed it, the same posers in suits. *not bitter at all :P

Well IT projects fail for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that you don't know what you don't know. Problem is, when you're tendering for jobs this size you have little understanding of the actual situation on the ground until you start digging around, and therein lies the issue. When companies ask you to tender they, of course, want some idea of cost and an idea of how you're going to do it so the price you submit then becomes the line in the sand but when you get the gig you get in there and realise things are way worse than what you imagined and it's going to cost more. This, and the fact IBM charge out their "senior" guys at $2600/day, doesn't take long to add up.

As an independent IT consultant myself, here's a slide I like to refer to when things go to s***;

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Y7WUZOahSbI/UV-DCnu-VjI/AAAAAAAABOI/WZPSkXa93q8/s617/consultingdemotivator.jpg

IBM + Accenture = lots of meetings, documentation, fancy diagrams, and little quality code.Stuff isn't rocket science and yet they royally screwed it up. They're an embarrassment to IT professionals and, yet, guess who large corporations and governments will run to when they need stuff in the future? You guessed it, the same posers in suits.*not bitter at all :P

Exactly. All the meetings consultations, 7 people to do 1 persons job etc. It all racks up.

^ To be fair, IBM has negotiated a special deal - if you bought those patch cables directly from Monster they'd have cost 10 grand.

Crikey, I hope you proposed a few ducks so at least they could pretend to add value.

Consultants charging hundreds of dollars an hour and expensive licensing...

We get SAP consultants that cost 2-3k per day...

I work at Melbourne Uni on one of their most important systems, and here is a list of people who sat around in a meeting for the project I was responsible for recently, as the sole developer:
- 1x Software Engineer
- 1x Business Analyst
- 1x Project Manager
- 1x Development Manager
- 1x Area manager
- 2x Business Stakeholders
- 2x Support staff
And one or two others.

I highly doubt you can get away with that small of a team for a huge HR/payroll implementation such as this. I assume this would a huge amount of users (all of QLD health staff ranging from janitors/security to Nurses/DR's) So say 250,000+ users?

Previous workplace Department of education for a certain state where we upgraded (basically reimplemented due to such an old version) cost around $90mil - which blew out by 3 years so i guess triple that. Their requirements would have been alot less though due to everything being already standardised from a business point of view.

We had subcontracted oracle
- 10 developers oracle + 4-5 from original consultancy group
- 5 functional team from oracle 4 from original consultancy group
- 3 dba's/infrustructure dudes from oracle 3 from consultancy company.

At least 10 ppl from the business which formed the test team/UAT.

3-4 project managers/stake holders etc.

I was there during my junior days and i was being contracted out for $1500 per day.
I imagine the seniors tech/func were 3-5k per day at least (seeing as they themselves pocket $1k of that).

Also all this being done in peoplesoft the cheaper(? Definitely less popular) competitor product to SAP.

So i can see how it would blow out to the billions over time...



Just to add to crazy blown out projects............ HOW does a friggen public
transport system blow out to 1.3 billion?

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/100m-added-to-cost-of-myki-20110328-1cdht.html