QUEENSLAND Health’s failed $1.2 billion payroll system was so disastrous because of the complexity of what was required in such a short amount of time, an inquiry has heard.
Former Logica general manager Michael Duke told an inquiry in Brisbane the company only submitted a partial bid during the tendering process in 2007 and was unsuccessful.
Mr Duke said Logica, which had already been operating financial systems for the government, only put in a partial bid because it saw the payroll system as a “large chunk of work” that was complex and “high risk”.
He said the company wouldn’t have been able to deliver government’s plan to roll financial systems into its shared services program along with rostering and payroll, which were all to be implemented and maintained by one prime contractor.
“The simple fact that a large number of decentralised systems were required to be centralised in a short space of time presented some seemingly insurmountable difficulties,” he said in his witness statement at the Queensland Health Payroll System Commission of Inquiry.
Mr Duke said he didn’t think it was possible to offer a bid that fell within the $80 million or so left in the government’s $300 million shared services budget.
IBM did eventually provide a bid for close to the budgeted amount, but it blew out to more than $100 million more and ultimately left thousands of workers incorrectly paid.
More than 50,000 staff are believed to have been overpaid more than $90 million.
The inquiry before Commissioner Richard Chesterman continues.
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