Lawmakers, SAP pointing fingers over failed payroll project

The failure of a massive payroll project involving SAP software has California lawmakers, state officials and the vendor pointing fingers of blame at each other. California fired SAP from the project in February and suspended work on it, saying that despite the expenditure of more than $200 million, the system was error-prone and far behind schedule. Officials have been weighing what to do next. Controversy is now mounting anew over who is responsible for the project's woes. The system "suffered from a failure to resolve core issues raised early and often, chronic leadership turnover and lapses in due diligence," states a report released this week by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. State Controller John Chiang's office, which sponsored the project, "was not always candid about the difficulties" being faced and "delivered upbeat reports to the Legislature and others that often only hinted at the turmoil churning within the project," the report adds. The Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee 4 was expected to discuss the report during a hearing on Thursday. Chiang's office and SAP "blame each other for the project's collapse, with the dispute expected to be settled in court," with as much as $190 million at stake between the $135 million the state wants to recover, and another $55 million SAP believes it is entitled to, the report adds. Dubbed MyCalPays, the system was supposed to modernize the state's payroll for 240,000 workers across 160 departments. An initial pilot was rolled out last year in Chiang's office, covering 1,300 workers, but rampant errors persisted until Chiang halted the project in February. The Senate report cited "frequent turnover at the top" of the Controller's office as a possible contributor to the project's issues. Three different controllers have been in charge of it during the past 10 years, although Chiang accounts for seven of those, it states. "In addition, the Controller's team had at least five different project directors and four different project managers, with half of those leadership changes in the last 18 months alone." A Chiang spokesman fired back at the report, saying it "demonstrates a misunderstanding or oversimplification for some of the key issues involved in MyCalPays." For one, Chiang's office "was forthcoming and had great communication with the legislature" about the project, said spokesman Jacob Roper, via email. "We held nine formal legislative briefings in 2011 and 2012, alone. The report only mentions some PowerPoints used in those briefings, which don't reflect all the information offered to legislative staff." "We have also issued our own, internal, preliminary report on the project's history: what went wrong, what worked, and what lessons can be learned," Roper added. download a star is born download recordpad sound recorder crack download simpo pdf creator pro download usaa 2012 tax documents download mac os x lion theme for windows xp 32 bit download the carpal tunnel of love video download gericom ati mobility radeon 9000 treiber download apple quicktime 64 bit for window 7 download android market flash player 10 1 download epson lq-300+ii printer driver