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labour intensive process (Bloomfield 2013). Hence, future SSI projects were to utilize SAP HR, SAP Finance and the “Workbrain” rostering system.

Whilst the government had formed the SSI prior to LATTICE notifying Queensland Health of the discontinuation of support; the unsupported LATTICE system was the predominant project driver as ongoing support was critical. Therefore to mitigate the risks inherent with an obsolete and unsupported system, Queensland Health undertook the SSI, thus alongside CorpTech and IBM replaced their system with SAP HR, SAP Finance, and the “Workbrain” rostering solution. Thus, the purpose of the WorkBrain system was to process the timesheets and transport them to the SAP system. SAP was then used to further process the timesheets into a format that was acceptable to the appropriate financial institutions, so that employees could be paid. The focus of this case narrative is on the SAP HR and WorkBrain rostering solution. The 85000 employees and the complex award structures within Queensland Health resulted in a complex and challenging implementation project.

Implementation Team

The project to standardize Payroll and Finance Systems was mandated for all government departments. Therefore a specialized unit of the government (referred to as CorpTech) was responsible for managing all Payroll and Finance implementation projects for the relevant government departments. As a result the implementation at Queensland Health involved three primary stakeholder teams: (1) Queensland Health staff members were the eventual end users of the system, and during the implementation project Queensland Health was responsible for defining and documenting the business requirements and ensuring that those requirements were fulfilled during the testing phase. (2) IBM was the prime contractor (also referred to as principal consultant) of the Queensland Health implementation project. They were initially contracted to manage and implement the government mandated standardized software solution across all government departments. However, by the conclusion of the project IBM was no longer responsible for the remaining government departments’ implementation projects due to the budget and time overruns experienced in the case of Queensland Heath. IBM was managed and selected by the third stakeholder group CorpTech. (3) CorpTech was responsible for managing the prime contractor’s role (IBM in the case of Queensland Health implementation project) not only in the Queensland Health department implementation project but for the entire implementation throughout all government departments. Figure 1 documents the responsibilities of each team.

Figure 1: Responsibilities of the Implementation Team: As Adapted from Poole, G. 2010. "Report to Parliament No. 7 for 2010: Information Systems Governance and Control, Including the Queensland Health Implementation of Continuity Project. Financial and Compliance Audits," Q.A. Office. Queensland: The State of Queensland. Queensland Audit Office, p. 2.

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Whilst IBM was ultimately selected as the prime contractor a number of individuals expressed their concerns pertaining to whether this was the appropriate choice and hinted that bias may be present (Chesterman 2013). In the tendering processes the government organization, CorpTech is required to remain neutral and provide all consultant firms vying for the position of the prime contractor the same information. However, the royal commission identified that the project director (Mr Terrence Burns) favored IBM ultimately providing them with a competitive advantage.

“Although nothing went to IBM as a result of Mr Burns’ encouragement during his May review, it would be naïve to think that his partiality for it did not continue”

The Honourable Richard N Chesterman (2013, p. 33), Commissioner

“The issue for consideration was whether IBM in the course of the RFP received or misused confidential information belonging to the State or Accenture, its main competitor in the bid process, which gave it a competitive advantage.”

The Honourable Richard N Chesterman (2013, p. 45), Commissioner

Additionally, whilst the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder team were briefly outlined at the commencement of the implementation, it became apparent throughout the project that the responsibilities were not clear (Poole 2010).

“The relationship difficulties with Queensland Health seemed to arise because there was confusion about roles and responsibilities”

Natalie MacDonald (2013, p. 2), Department of Public Works

Therefore there were two clear issues that arose in the formation of the implementation team: (1) unclear roles and responsibilities, and; (2) bias in the tendering process.

Implementation Approach

A total of $153 million AUD was allocated for the entire implementation of the SSI across all government departments (Poole 2010). Prior to Queensland Health commencing the implementation the Department of Housing had successfully implemented SAP HR, and the Department of Justice had implemented SAP Finance. The configuration structure used by the Department of Housing was to be utilized by Queensland Health in their implementation (Poole 2010). Queensland Health commenced the planning and scoping of the project in November 2007, with the implementation and testing documentation being approved in January 2008 (Poole 2010). Subsequently, IBM began the implementation project. Initially the plan was to complete the configuration with minimum customization by August 2008, however in June 2008, IBM decided to perform more planning in order to deliver the final complete solution (Poole 2010). The additional planning, which occurred in October 2008 revealed that the scope and complexity of the project had been greatly underestimated by IBM. This change in scope and the lack of defined business requirements ultimately resulted in substantial time and cost overruns (Poole 2010).

Payroll and user acceptance testing was performed in parallel over a series of stages between July 2009 and February 2010 (Poole 2010). The first test of the payroll compared the pays of only 10% of employees from all employee groups when performed in the SAP HR and WorkBrain rostering solution as opposed to the legacy LATTICE system, which resulted in a $1.2 million AUD discrepancy in the fortnightly payroll. A second payroll test occurred in February 2010, which only resulted in a $30,000 AUD discrepancy, however casuals and overtime claims were not tested. Queensland Health accepted the inherent risks and opted to Go-Live without full testing of all the functionalities of the system in March 2010 (Chesterman 2013; Poole 2010).

Upon completion of the standardized solution within Queensland Health, the project was 18 months behind schedule and 300% over budget (refer to figure 2). There are a myriad of factors that can be attributed to these cost and time overruns: (1) Firstly, a specific project management methodology was not followed; Furthermore (2) the approach and implementation structure followed the Department of Public Housing which has significantly less complexity in their pay structures when compared to Queensland Health; (3) The roles, responsibilities and ownership of each of the three key stakeholder groups weren’t clearly defined as an adequate governance structure was not established until June 2009,

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which was 10 months after the planned go-live date; and (4) business requirements were poorly defined, which subsequently negatively impacted the user testing phase.