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$21 million student loan software on hold

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Sat, 14 May 2011 7:15a.m.

Inland Revenue's planned student loan software system is on hold, despite $21 million being spent on it (file)

Inland Revenue's planned student loan software system is on hold, despite $21 million being spent on it (file)

Inland Revenue's (IRD) planned student loan software system is on hold, despite $21 million being spent on it.

The system, provided by United States company Oracle, was to have gone live last month but IRD shelved it because it feared it would not be finished the work by the time new student loan rules were implemented next April, The Dominion Post reported.

IRD deputy commissioner Peter Mersi says its ageing mainframes would be reprogrammed to deal with the changes and he believes that can be done without going over the original $35m budget.

Revenue Minister Peter Dunne says he is not looking for "any individuals to blame" and the project could be revived eventually.

"You could argue if we knew then what we knew now, we might have approached things differently," he says.

NZPA

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Comments

19 May 2011 01:55p.m.

LM wrote:

Mike, are you a smaller contractor by any chance? I've worked for Oracle in NZ and they work very hard to stick to the budget as customers (especially government) don't like change requests and fight like hell not to sign them. The Vendor has to stand behind the product - they can't 'bag the product' or 'ambulance chase' like the smaller contractor. 'Those in the know' usually have a mate or two that they can contract the work to and cover it up when the project takes twice as long...

15 May 2011 08:46p.m.

yaasiin wrote:

i want to give a job

15 May 2011 03:47p.m.

Mike wrote:

Lets be honest, software development is complex and 99/100 times that a client asks for someting they dont know what they want, they only know after they get what they asked for if its something they dont want.

"if we knew then what we knew now, we might have approached things differently"

ie there were changes to it. Changes cost money. Patching old systems together is always expensive and at best you get a mess. At worst you get a project terminated.

Generally if you get IBM/Oracle to do large projects you get a mess result. This is why those in the know dont use them. Yes they can handle large jobs, but when we have idiotic requirements, they will happily charge to make idiotic systems while smaller contractors often work harder to improve the requirements to what the client should be looking for, vs what the client actually asked for.

We have had student loans almost 20 years, this is nothing new that has crept up on IRD.

14 May 2011 05:54p.m.

Ruz wrote:

Although he has tried to brush it aside Peter Dunne, as the Minister in charge of the Inland Revenue Department, must take some responsibility for this. Unfortunately in NZ Minister tend to duck for cover when it comes to balls ups.

14 May 2011 01:13p.m.

Blackbob wrote:

Tell the truth there is absolutely no chance this project will be revived. Once stopped the critical base knowledge of a development project of this magnitude will dissapate along with the development staff to other projects. Who takes responsibility for this total write off?