**5. Timeline of events**

The Queensland Health Payroll Project had its foundations in another project by the Queensland State Government - the creation of a shared service initiative (SSI). The SSI was a business unit of Queensland Treasury and was named CorpTech. The idea behind the SSI was that all of the administration and back-office services required by each Department could be more efficiently undertaken by a single agency.

With this as the foundation, it was the charter of the shared services to deliver a human resources and payroll capability to several government departments, including the Departments of Education and Health.

In about 2005, the SSI commenced work on implementing a universal payroll solution for all Queensland Government Departments and agencies, starting with the largest two, the Department of Education and the Department of Health.

'After the whole-of-government decision around 2005 to implement (software from) SAP (corporation), Queensland Treasury decided that they were going to be the systems implementation lead' [27]. Accenture, as an external party, were engaged on a time and materials basis to provide resources to this SSI project [27].

By mid-2007, there were multiple parties involved in providing resources to the whole-ofgovernment project, including Accenture, IBM and Logica. By March of 2007, it had become apparent to senior Department officers that the SSI was facing significant challenges. The Service Delivery and Performance Commission had reported [28] that organisational change was necessary as the project was behind schedule and over budget. The under-Treasurer' of the Department commissioned a review to identify potential courses of action' [28]. The report was delivered to the Department on the 18th of April 2007. What evolved from this was the idea of engaging a 'Prime Contractor' that would take responsibility for the ongoing project. Subsequently a Request for Information (RFI) was issued on the 2nd of July 2007, with initial responses received by the 12th of July 2007. Of the ten companies invited to respond only four did so: IBM, Logica, Accenture and SAP.

A more detailed Request for Proposal (RFP) was sent to these four companies on the 25th of July 2007. An Invitation to Offer (ITO) was issued on 12th of September 2007. Responses were received from IBM, Logica and Accenture. SAP had withdrawn from the procurement process.

IBM was the successful tenderer and a contract was entered into on the 5th of December 2007. The Queensland Health payroll project was seen as the priority, and the 5th of December contract between IBM and the State Government included a 'fixed contract' to be completed by 31st of July 2008 at a cost of A\$6.194 million.

By October 2008 it was reported that 'IBM had not achieved any of the contracted performance criteria' [27]. By this stage IBM had been paid A\$32 million of a revised A\$98 million contract and was forecasting completion would cost A\$181 million [28]. The A\$6.194 million dollar contract that had been entered into less than 1 year previously had now grown in magnitude to an estimated A\$181 million.

On the 14th of March 2010 'after ten aborted attempts to deliver the new payroll system it went live' [28]. The project, originally scheduled for completion on the 31st of July 2008, was now 2 years late.

The 'go-live' was 'catastrophic' [28], requiring 1000 additional manual staff to enter pay adjustments. The project costs by this time had been estimated at \$1.2 billion over the next 8 years of operation.
