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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lino... who wrote (8624)	2/27/2006 10:09:35 AM
From: Lino...	Respond to of 37905

The dam has burst..... Get ready for a steady string of audits that show the true depths of liberal mismanagement, theft and corruption. Like I say, make them responsible. Come to think of it, they still have the money they admit to stealing from me but say they are entitled to........... Tories inherit troubled GST computer project Dean Beeby Canadian Press Monday, February 27, 2006 OTTAWA -- The new Tory government is inheriting a troubled computer project that's driving up the cost of collecting the GST, just as it prepares to cut the tax. A Canada Revenue Agency system to speed processing of GST revenue is significantly over budget and at least two years overdue, a new audit shows. The project was launched in 2000 to replace an archaic computer system that had been cobbled together in just 18 months to meet the Jan. 1, 1991, start of the new seven per cent goods-services tax. Still in use today to collect about $60 billion of annual GST revenue, the aging system is riddled with "numerous fundamental deficiencies" that often force tax collectors to make key calculations manually. The software can't communicate with other agency tax systems, and does not calculate interest and penalties correctly, requiring staff to reach for hand calculators and pencils. Canada's auditor general has also complained that the primitive system makes it hard to nab tax cheats. The replacement was to cost $98.5 million and be running by 2004. But costs have soared and schedules have slipped: the latest official estimate is $145 million, with a new start date of next October. A newly released audit, however, says even this number is too low. Additional testing, training and compensation to Quebec, which must upgrade its own GST computers in tandem, will push the total cost to about $200 million, more than double original projections. The auditors, in a December 2005 report obtained by The Canadian Press, give mixed reviews to the new project. Some aspects were well-managed, they found, and some cost overruns were unavoidable. But high-level supervision of this major government project was inadequate, the report says. "It was evident that there was a lack of skill sets in certain business areas," says the document. "Formal senior level oversight . . . on a regular basis . . . was not evident." Project teams "did not have a clear understanding" of aspects of the system, and there were no detailed plans for training or testing, which have helped drive up costs. Supervisors also failed to deal properly with the problem of corrupt data, which has to be repaired before it can be inputted into the new system. An estimated 740,000 to two million records will require electronic fixes. GST processing has evolved over the years. In 1992, a deal was signed with Quebec allowing the province to collect the federal tax on Ottawa's behalf. In 1997, further deals were signed with New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador, harmonizing the GST with provincial taxes and giving Ottawa responsibility of collecting for both. Ensuring the new system can communicate with Quebec's computer will be expensive. A spokeswoman for the Canada Revenue Agency says Ottawa may have to cut the province a cheque for as much as $40 million by 2007. "They will receive a maximum of $40 million over two years, and that's based on actual audited costs," Jacqueline Couture said in an interview. "It is to compensate them for the extraordinary one-time costs to upgrade and modify their systems to align with the Canada Revenue Agency system." Another $15 million is being set aside for testing and transition costs over the next three years, $1.6 million of that to test the Quebec system, Couture said. The additional costs now have pushed the budget to about $200 million. Couture said the start-up date remains October. Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised during the recent election campaign to immediately cut the GST to six per cent, with enacting legislation expected when the Commons sits in April. A further cut to five per cent is promised later. The rate cuts will have no impact on the cost of the computer redesign project, Couture said. There are about 2.9 million businesses registered to collect GST from customers, and the agency handles about eight million GST returns each year. Although about $60 billion in GST revenue is collected each year, only about half of that winds up in government coffers as the rest is credited back to businesses. The federal government has a badly tarnished record when it comes to implementing new computer systems: -In 2003, National Defence discovered it had been defrauded of $146 million through bogus invoices related to computer systems. -A 2003 audit found the Canadian Coast Guard had mismanaged a project to link its ships and shore stations by computer. The original budget of $7.9 million soared to $13.3 million and would likely climb even higher, the audit said. -An internal audit last year of the military's MASIS computer project, designed to track inventory, estimated the true cost at about $325 million - far in excess of the $147 million planned in 1997. © The Canadian Press 2006