Canadian Government’s Phoenix Pay System an “Incomprehensible Failure” | Apps & Software

Canadian Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s latest assessment of the country’s misbegotten attempt to develop a new government-wide payroll system was blunt: “The building and implementation of Phoenix was an incomprehensible failure of project management and oversight… Overall, we found that there was no oversight of the Phoenix project, which allowed Phoenix executives to implement the system even though they knew it had significant problems.”

As a result of world-class project mismanagement on the Phoenix project, the Canadian government now owns and operates a payroll system “that so far has been less efficient and more costly than the 40-year-old system it replaced,” Ferguson states.