Posted on 07/04/2010 10:00:51 AM PDT by Enterprise
"A state appellate court ruled in Schwarzenegger's favor Friday, but the state controller, who issues state paychecks, says he can't comply. One reason given by Controller John Chiang, a Democrat elected in 2006: The state's computer system can't handle the technological challenge of restating paychecks to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Riiiight.. sure.
What a load. It’s not the technology. It’s the techno-geezers... who just happen to be Democrats.
Old technology is running Taxifornia. Old LIBERAL technology. What a crock. Arne should make this liberal stooge write all the checks by hand. Better yet, he should make him TYPE THEM out on a vintage typewriter.
Then this creep can get a taste of “old technology”.
Outsource the state paycheck work to ADP.
OUCH! If they're really dealing with thirty-plus year-old legacy code, that's ugly. Obama ugly.
If we were talking about a proposal to DOUBLE every state worker’s wages, imagine how quickly that could be done.
The states computer can’t handle resetting California to conservative principles.
There’s a ghost in the machine.
If he can’t comply, then by-pass him and find someone who can. Then put the comptroller on minimum wage.
“The state’s payroll system was designed more than 60 years ago and was last revamped in 1970, Hallye Jordan, state controller’s office spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.”
I actually do not find this too hard to believe. The stories of state (and federal) government run IT disasters are legion. The University of Wisconsin spent $26M trying to adapt PeopleSoft to their payroll needs before throwing in the towel. While the smoke has not yet cleared on that one - in many instances you find that the private sector software provider or consultant is, shall we say, “under-matched” by the counterpart IT folks on the state or federal government side of the deal. That we could be in the year 2010 with a system designed in 1970 running in CA, well - it speaks for itself.
Exactly. He needs to outsource this to people who have a can-do attitude.
John Chiang should be fired, on the spot, for incompetence.
He better break out the adding machine. Who ever spec’d out the technology failed (him).
They were given $130 Million in 2005 to upgrade.
They could pay me $1 Million and I’ll run the damned payroll for the entire state on an XT or one of my 386s I got laying around here.
Egad tho, that is just absurd! The company I work for has a better system than a state? Goodness...
For those not familiar with 1970’s mainframe code, this may seem hard to believe. Having worked in the IT department of a large retailer that had a payroll system written in the late 60’s early 70’s in legacy COBOL, seemingly simple changes like this can be a nightmare. With each new union contract — and at one time we dealt with five different unions — came massive projects with changes that often touched dozens of programs. When it came time to upgrade the old system, it was a multi-year project. I’ve worked in multiple IT departments over the years, and this was BY FAR the best skilled and organized of them all. After a little more than a year, it became obvious that both the time and funding estimated were woefully inadequate. This sort of change is much more than simply updating one field in a database.
I disagree that old code is easy to deal with. Old COBOL code, frequently patched by multiple programmers with varying coding styles, can make a root canal seem like a pleasure cruise.
1. Get a court order and put the controller in jail for contempt of court until he figures it out.
2. Take a basic dump of all state employee info and SSN and pay everybody a straight 80 hours pay period at $7.25 an hour and sort out the errors later.
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