73,000 payments lost or delayed; SW is sorry

M

mathepac

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Are we not owed a better explanation than this? Who messed up? Why? What measures are being put in place to prevent this happening again?

Was it "our" banks fault or "our" public servants fault? Who got fired and who won't get a performance bonus next Christmas? 73,000 payments went astray, how many citizens were left without money? If each payment was for €100 that'd be a cool €7.3m they lost or mis-directed. Who'll get the chop one wonders?

Statement from the Department of Social Protection - Wednesday 02 March

Statement from the Department of Social Protection - Payment Delay
WELFARE.IE
 
No idea @Leo but I had to get it off my chest. The level of incompetence is staggering at times. I was a HSE employee when PPARS was introduced, one of many thousands who got no pay. These are just the SNAFUs we hear about publicly.
 
It's probably an IT glitch somewhere that resulted in either a file not running or not completing properly or not being transmitted properly. Could be 1001 reasons as to what happened and why. Nothing is 100% perfect and no supplier with any brain cells will sign up for a 100% SLA without significant mitigation. a lot of the reasons could be outside the Social Welfare control. For example. I know of a bank that once had to transmit files a day late due to someone with a Kango Hammer making sugar of their comms line 50 yards up the road and it took the bank a number of hours to fire up their DR solution to get the files out from their DR location
 
Speculate all you like, idly, but what happened and who is being held to account? Having a "system" that works in everyday conditions is merely efficiency; having one that works in exceptional circumstances is called managing. SW, the civil service, failed to manage, again. The latest reports I saw say 20,600 of the original 73,000 payments were still outstanding with payees depending on ad hoc arrangements with banks and other personal contingencies.
 
Why don't the Department do a Root Cause Analysis as part of a Corrective and Preventative Action and then publish the results?
In fact why aren't KPI's (and how they are calculated) and CAPA's with their RCA's published for all State bodies?
 
On the scheme of things (and not dismissing trouble caused) I think SW are largely efficient on payments.
Things occasionally happen.
By the same process, all Bankers should be sacked!
{now theres a thought}
 
They have said it is under investigation. Depending on the circumstances, and in particular if a supplier was the cause of the issue, they may be contractually prevented from publishing too much information.

Having said that, my own experience of dealing with public sector bodies on issues is that 9 times out of 10 it is their own fault because they failed to do something simple like renew a licence but will they ever admit it?, of course not. Having said that, the same applies for plenty of private sector companies as well. Failure to admit fault is a culture of it's own in Ireland
 
I'm sure we'l find that it was a 'Systems failure' and an Enquiry team will be set up to look into it. After 6 months they will issue a report which will then gather dust somewhere.
 
Delboy said:
I'm sure we'l find that it was a 'Systems failure' and an Enquiry team will be set up to look into it. After 6 months they will issue a report which will then gather dust somewhere.
Click to expand...

Now now Delboy !

The only reason they will call for a (duff) report, is because too many twits will get in a lather over what is probably a rare event.
On tone of your quote, I am inclined to agree, and would think , too many managers don,t take responsibility and form (enquiry teams) to put time twix error V responsibility..
 
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