The Novodump

This morning Ministry of Education dumped a pile of documents relating to Novopay onto its website. Apparently there are problems with the redaction - it can be removed in some documents, exposing what the government doesn't want you to see - but the material they don't redact is interesting enough. The Ministry considered dumping the system just five months before its release. They were aware of 147 defects with the system but didn't regard any as a "show-stopper". Given the nature of the errors, and the fact that teachers are now owed nearly $12 million, you'd have to wonder what they would consider a "show-stopper". And buried in this document [PDF, para 23] is an admission that they knew of Talent2's fuckup with NZPost's payroll, but pressed on regardless.

It is going to take days to go over all of this, but what's emerged just in the first few hours is bad enough. It shows that the government and Ministry of Education were utterly incompetent. They underestimated the seriousness of the problems, they allowed a buggy system to go live, and they have been unable to discipline Talent2 to make them deliver the service which they had contracted to deliver. Heads need to roll. As for Talent2, they need to start delivering on their contract, otherwise they should be out. It is that simple.