The Ministry of Education has dumped a mass of documents which reveal there were problems with the payroll system Novopay from the start.
Bugs in the software, obligations not being met and accusations of contract breaches - it's all in there and the severely strained relationship between the Ministry and Novopay creator Talent2.
As teachers plan for the start of term they're already preparing for what's set to be the worst pay-run under Novopay yet.
A massive drop of documents by the Ministry of Education shows the flaws were glaring from the start. Two months before the system went live, 147 bugs remained in the system and nearly 6000 pay errors were made during a test run.
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Education and three Government Ministers signed it off.
Novopay was originally supposed to go live in May 2010 but was delayed three times because of problems with the system.
The documents show a severely strained relationship between the Ministry and Talent2.
In May 2011 Novopay demanded more money suggesting “if the Ministry wasn't willing to provide it, the project would be pared back”. The Ministry refused and six months later put Talent2 on notice saying it was “very disappointed” about the fact “services are not being performed in accordance with our contract”. In April 2012 the Ministry gave Talent2 an official warning it “continued to be in default on a number of contractual obligations”, which Talent2 denied.
Embarrassingly the Ministry's document dump was also fumbled - in its haste it put redacted documents online but the redactions could be removed.
Just two months after Novopay went live, the Ministry was already financially penalising Talent2 for failing to meet obligations. Steven Joyce says they're learning to work together - he's given them no choice.
3 News
source: newshub archive
