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The Ottawa data center housing Phoenix – the Canadian government's bungled payroll system for federal workers – was shut down on Wednesday after smoke was detected inside.
The Shared Services Canada server warehouse also housed computers handling government email, as well as some government websites, which were switched off, too. No fire was reported at the facility.
This embarrassing failure happened just before Canada's parliament was set to probe the botched rollout of the Phoenix pay system that has left tens of thousands of public servants unable to properly collect their wages. This has left employees unable to pay their bills.
Launched in February after a joint development project with IBM, the Phoenix system has been beset by a number of technical issues. By late July, the total number of backlogged payments had reached nearly 80,000.
The government of Canada is still working through claims of missing money filed by workers, but warns that the pay mess may not be sorted out in full until the end of October of this year.
Two separate IT security errors with Phoenix have already been reported. Hearings are to be held in Parliament in Ottawa this week.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @08:45PM
This embarrassing failure happened just before Canada's parliament was set to probe the botched rollout of the Phoenix pay system that has left tens of thousands of public servants unable to properly collect their wages. This has left employees unable to pay their bills.
Launched in February after a joint development project with IBM, the Phoenix system has been beset by a number of technical issues. By late July, the total number of backlogged payments had reached nearly 80,000.
That sounds mighty familiar [smh.com.au]:
IBM won the contract to design and deliver a whole-of-government payroll system in 2007 but its rollout was plagued by delays and budget blowouts.
When it did go live, the system failed spectacularly, resulting in thousands of health workers being underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all.
The cost to taxpayers has been estimated at $1.2 billion and the debacle has been described as possibly the worst public administration failure in Australia.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday July 31 2016, @11:18PM
Yeah, mighty familiar [nzherald.co.nz]
Although to be fair, IBM were not entirely at fault for the INCIS debacle, the minister in charge was a Microsoft fanboi [nzherald.co.nz] it turns out.
From memory the NZ Government were not a good customer and changed the specs on the project every chance they had, and IBM were not smart enough to stop them. Fault on all sides, and the taxpayer (me) coughed up.