Or in Queensland with the $1.5b health payroll failure.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-...

Ha, funny story about that.

My brother-in-law's uncle is a doctor (specialist) in Queensland. A couple of years ago he told us a story about this. Because of the massive screwups a bunch of private practitioners like himself weren't getting paid by the state government for work they did for the public health system.

It reached the point where a lot of doctors were simply not going to provide nonessential services if they continued to not get paid (this went on for a year or more). So some workers in the state health department intervened to help resolve the situation. I don't remember the specifics but they essentially approved an advancement that sort of looked like a loan as far as the government system was concerned.

So this guy did get paid. Almost a year later he started getting threatening letters from the government for defaulting on his loan and I think they were threatening court action.

The health department who organized this were sympathetic but said because of the system their hands were tied.

This actually reached the point of the government initiating an investigation and potentially having ramifications for his medical license with the health department seemingly powerless to stop these wheels that were put in motion and looked to be headed to court.

So this guy ended up sending a letter to the health minister threatening to not provide any medical services to the state government at all if this wasn't resolved. Now this would actually have left the state in a pickle as for some things he was the only provider in the state, basically.

Sure enough it was resolved within 2 weeks and the health minister apologized.

Anyway, from this one anecdote it certainly seemed like Queensland health was a disaster.

A similar thing happened in New Zealand when the Ministry of Education rolled out their new Novopay payroll software.

Teachers were getting overpaid, and then collection services would be sicked on them to recover the excess pay, often without contact first to simply ask for the money.

Meanwhile, there was no compensation for teachers who were underpaid.

I have known two people who worked in the Queensland Health payroll roll-out. Both actually blamed the government for constantly changing specs, and politicians making claims in parliament about deliverables and deadlines that they then had to meet. They also said IBM (or whatever actual contractor they had on the ground) should have managed things better.

I now work with someone who was at Main Roads Queensland who claims the whole of the Queensland government has an implicit ban on IBM for any new work, and are trying to replace all current IBM products and services.

Edit: My previous job used DB2 on an IBM server. During end of financial year time we had to ask them to turn on more server processors on the server. Jeeesus they charge like a wounded bull!

I thought the QLD Gov IBM ban was explicit. It certainly was as of 2016: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/queenslands-ibm-ban-lives-on-... (this is the same article linked by GP).

I'll bet there's plenty of IBM salespeople who hate that one guy who made bank on the QHealth deal...

Or the Australian Census

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-25/ibm-to-pay-over-$30m-i...

I didn't know about that issue. Although your story also include:

> Since then, Queensland has initiated - and > comprehensively lost - attempts to recoup damages > from the failed project. A judge has ordered the > government to pay all IBM’s legal costs in the > failed suit.

Ouch. I know nothing about the rights and wrongs of that case, but many of these agencies wounds are self-inflicted.

I heard informally of one case where a federal department demanded a "big bang" change introducing multiple new systems all in one go, even though it was obvious (and IBM advised) that the thing be done incrementally. Of course the budget and timeline ended up blowing out.

I expect that sort of thing is quite common, and companies like IBM will be perfectly happy to take advantage of the blowouts.

Also US Defence's DEAMS - Accenture and Oracle.

15 years, $2.2billion and not finished.

http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD1002341