Issues And Failure Of Queensland Health Payroll Project

Background of the Project

Discuss about the Queensland Health payroll.

This assignment deals with the issues related to the Queensland health payroll project. This project was introduced in order to change the payroll system for the employees. It covers the different frameworks used for the project. The frameworks discussed are the COBIT and COSO frameworks. The implementation of these frameworks by different levels of employees is discussed. This project posed a huge amount of expenditure on the government of Queensland and still was a failure. The government spent about 200% extra in this project. The government banned any further evolvement of such projects in the nation. In late 2012, the government of Queensland set up a survey to find the reason behind the failure of the project and the commission found out that the failure of this project was “the worst failure in public administration in Australian history”.

This assignment consists of the description of the Queensland Health payroll project. it also contains the background of the project and the frameworks which are responsible for the effective financial survey. The two initial phases of the work have also been discussed in the assignment to show the growth process of the project.

A payroll system was introduced in Queensland, which was supposed to be implemented in the year 2006, on the 80,000 employees of Queensland health (Eden and Sedera 2014). IBM Australia was chosen as the main contractor for this project and the results of all the system was based on the payroll system. The expected time for the completion of this project was six months and it was supposed that an approximate of HK$46.5 million would be spent for the completion of this project (Duffield and Whitty 2015). It was expected that the introduction of this new system would bring revolution in the payroll system of Queensland. Slowly, the government realized that nothing was straightforward in this project and this project did not go live till 2010. It was considered as worst project failure all over Australia. This system’s entire cost was HK$192.5 million and with this heavy cost as well, the system did not go live. The administration of Queensland health had to hire more than 1000 employees to fix this problem and it resulted in expenditure of even more money to the administration. This project posed a huge amount of expenditure on the government of Queensland and still was a failure. The government spent about 200% extra in this project. The government banned any further evolvement of such projects in the nation. In late 2012, the government of Queensland set up a survey to find the reason behind the failure of the project and the commission found out that the failure of this project was “the worst failure in public administration in Australian history” (Thite and Sandhu 2014).

Discussion of COBIT and COSO Frameworks and Controls in Queensland Health Payroll System

Queensland payroll project was a huge project as it involved different levels of employees and it indulged the government of Queensland as well. With regard to COSO, internal control is a process, which is designed to assurance for effectiveness and efficiency in order to achieve the objectives of a company, to confirm the reliability of reporting of the company’s financial reporting and inline relevance along with the laws and regulations (Tursunbayeva et al. 2016). According to the COSO framework, the control is defined as the proactive measure which is used by the management to achieve any objective. According to this framework, the control can take three forms, which are automated, partially automated and manual. A tool kit is comprised in the COBIT framework in order to compliance with other regulatory services and SOX. The elements of the toolkit are an executive summary, which gives an explanation of the founding principles of COBIT, the compliance framework which provides detailed explanation for the high level IT projects, the objectives for control (Malkin and Pearson 2014).

Both of these frameworks are important for effective evolvement of financial sector of any department. These frameworks must have been used in the payroll project at Queensland as both the COBIT and COSO are effective for the finding of reason for the financial terms in any organization. The guidelines required for assigning and passing audits, which include the explanation of step-by-step guides for each of the control objectives. The primers used for management and the reference materials, which indulge the IT control practice statement, which means the assessment of the risks, involved in the IT field and the ways of handling those risks. With regard to the payroll project, these frameworks would have been very effective for the proper survey of financial issues. The frameworks could help the managers for the proper and exact survey of the issue. The COBIT and COSO frameworks would have helped the government as well to keep account of the money spent on the project in various forms. In addition to these, the COBIT helps the IT industry to know the cores and requirements of the business (Wilkin et al. 2015). The failure of this project was a huge loss for the government of Queensland.

Health department of Queensland

The health department of the state of Queensland did not use the frameworks for the financial survey of the case. If the organization would have used COBIT for various objectives the results found would have been of great help. First of all, COBIT enables the management to make a link to the requirements of the business, secondly, it helps the organization to organize various IT activities to generally accepted process models, it also enabled the organization to identify the main IT resources which are to leveraged (Brown 2014). It also enabled to define the control objectives of the management, which are to be considered.

Discussion of the Frameworks and Controls in relation to Queensland Health Payroll Project

IBM technology did not use the COBIT and COSO frameworks for the evaluation of Queensland Health Payroll failure. If the organization would have used COBIT and COSO to find the reason behind the failure of the Queensland payroll failure, it would hve been more effective. Both of these are very useful because of the implementation features provided by them. After the failure of Queensland project, IBM used both COBIT and COSO to find out the reason behind the failure of the project. use of such frameworks helped the organization ot find the faults in the project which lead to the failure of the project. The use of these helped the organization to organize various IT activities to generally accepted process models, it also enabled the organization to identify the main IT resources which are to leveraged. It also enabled to define the control objectives of the management, which are to be considered.

The other contractors did not use the frameworks for the survey. If they would have used the frameworks for the finding faults in the project it would have been easy and efficient. In COSO, internal control is a process, which is designed to assurance for effectiveness and efficiency in order to achieve the objectives of a company, to confirm the reliability of reporting of the company’s financial reporting and inline relevance along with the laws and regulations. According to the COSO framework, the control is defined as the proactive measure, which is used by the management to achieve any objective. According to this framework, the control can take three forms, which are automated, partially automated and manual. A tool kit is comprised in the COBIT framework in order to compliance with other regulatory services and SOX.

Various plannings were done for the successful development and implementation of the project. Payroll is a complex situation and here in the Queensland payroll project, thousands of the employee and the government was involved. So, the complexity for this payroll system was huge. It needed lot of preparation and considerations before the initialization of the work. It is very essential that proper planning must be done for the implementation of the system. There were three areas which had to be focused for the proper working and preparation of this project. the first area which needs to be focused are processes (Jarman 2013). The key processes for payroll, which were important for the organization were evaluated. The process was complex as the system has to keep the different stages of the employee in mind such as the hourly employees, vacations an sick leave policy and commissionable sales (Hmelak 2014). The compensation schemes and bonuses given to the employees made the system even more complex and thus these things were kept in mind. The another process which was kept in mind was the termination process. Usually this process is ignored in usual organizations but here it was very important to keep these in mind as there are regulatory and security and risk implications can cost the organization much money and time if these are not handled properly (Schefe and Timbrell 2013). Almost every aspect of payroll project is effected by the termination of employees in the organization. In addition to these there were security concerns which had to be kept in mind for the successful implementation of the payroll system. The different systems, which would cost harm to the payroll systems in any case were considered. Different types of employees have different payroll services.  The salaried employees in the organization might not have to enter the time of their entry in the organization but the hourly employees had to do so and thus these had to be kept in mind for the successful implementation of the project (Ainsworth 2013). The part time employees needed a different payroll method. Thus, different payroll methods had to be kept in mind for different level of employees. There were various things which were identified during this period such as the requirements, transactions, functions of the vendor system and the commercial softwares (Haes et al. 2013). Planning of the different levels of employees along with their payment systems were done.

IBM

There were different analyzing factors, which were important to be analyzed for the successful implementation of the project. For this payroll system, various things needed to be analyzed for the proper development of the system as it would great change in the payroll system at Queensland.. This payroll system was very huge and complex and thus it involved the analyzing of various things (Haes 2015). It was a computerized payroll so the thing that were analyzed are described in the context. The first thing, which was analyzed was the size of the business. The size of the business was analyzed and the complexity to which the payroll system was supposed to work was also analyzed by the team of the management which was responsible for the development of the system. An objective look was taken which means that the requirements were analyzed for the completion of the goals. The number and the type of the employees were analyzed for whom the system was supposed to be 1established (Degese et al. 2015). The total cost, which would arise in the creation and implementation of the system, was analyzed. According to the cost, the need of the organization was analyzed. The total number of hourly, part-time and the salaried employees were calculated. The total amount of growth of the number of employees in the organization was also analyzed. The reports of new hiring rules and the regulations of the company regarding to payment was evaluated and the payroll was supposed to meet all the requirements of the company (Martin 2014). The country’s economy was also analyzed critically for the formation of the payroll system. The ups and downs of the economy was taken into account because the salary of the employee could vary accordingly. The terms and conditions for the employee bonus was also analyzed by the management team as it was a must factor in the payroll to be introduced.

Thus, the first two stages were very critical for the development of the Queensland Health Payroll System, which was taken care by IBM.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that, the failure of the payroll project was great failure for not only Queensland but also whole Australia as the country’s economy was hugely affected by it. The government spent about 200% extra in this project. The government banned any further evolvement of such projects in the nation. In late 2012, the government of Queensland set up a survey to find the reason behind the failure of the project and the commission found out that the failure of this project was “the worst failure in public administration in Australian history”. According to the COSO framework, the control is defined as the proactive measure, which is used by the management to achieve any objective. Both of these were used to analyze the project. Payroll is a complex situation and here thousands of the employee and the government was involved. So, the complexity for this payroll system was huge. It needed lot of preparation and considerations before the initialization of the work. Analysis was done very critically for the payroll system as it would affect the entire economy of the state.

References

Ainsworth, H., 2013. Improving project management of IT enabled projects–lessons we can learn from.

Brown, D.R.B., 2014. An exploration of the role of ethics in leadership decision-making in change initiatives in Queensland government owned corporations (Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern Queensland).

De Haes, S., Van Grembergen, W. and Debreceny, R.S., 2013. COBIT 5 and enterprise governance of information technology: Building blocks and research opportunities. Journal of Information Systems, 27(1), pp.307-324.

Degese, M.S., Tanos, T., Naipauer, J., Gingerich, T., Chiappe, D., Echeverria, P., LaMarre, J., Gutkind, J.S. and Coso, O.A., 2015. An interplay between the p38 MAPK pathway and AUBPs regulates c-fos mRNA stability during mitogenic stimulation. Biochemical Journal, 467(1), pp.77-90.

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Eden, R. and Sedera, D., 2014. The largest admitted IT project failure in the Southern Hemisphere: a teaching case. In Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Information Systems: Building a Better World Through Information Systems. AISeL.

Glass, R.L., 2013. The Queensland Health Payroll Debacle. Information Systems Management, 30(1), pp.89-90.

Haes, S.D. and Grembergen, W.V., 2015. Enterprise Governance of Information Technology: Achieving Alignment and Value, Featuring COBIT 5.

Hmelak, M., 2014. The IT Audit of the Republic of Slovenia’s eHealth Project. International Journal of Government Auditing, 41(3), p.12.

Jarman, R., 2013. Psychopathy As A Phenomenon Of Interest In Information Systems Research. In ECIS (p. 84).

Malkin, B. and Pearson, M., 2014. The information technology industry needs to learn how to tackle complex projects from the building and construction industry (1054). In Mastering Complex Projects Conference 2014 (p. 87). Engineers Australia.

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