Anna Bligh – Heads better Roll
The real facts are only now only emerging weeks after the story first broke.
However there is more to this story of bungling and incompetence and the more is important to look at because it is placing Queensland Tax Payers lives at risk every day we continue to use the WorkBrain application for Rostering Queensland Health staff.
It is not as simple as saying that SAP and WorkBrain do not work. It is not as simple as saying IBM is incompetent and should lose every State Government Contract on which they currently work though both of statements are fact and undisputed.
You need to look at what the combined consequences are of these applications not working properly, and IBM being involved, at this time in a Healthcare organisation such as Queensland Health.
The Minor Consequences:
These consequences have already been seen and experienced. Queensland Health staff will never be paid correctly whilst the WorkBrain application stays in use within Corptech for Queensland Health.
The current WorkBrain system is either not paying people at all, is not paying people for overtime or additional time they have worked, or worse still and highly illegal is the fact that more than twenty thousand of the seventy five thousand or so Queensland Health staff are very likely being “Skimmed” on a weekly basis without even knowing it.
The WorkBrain award interpreter is shaving small amounts from each pay of thousands of workers who cannot figure out how or why they have not been paid correctly.
Imagine trying to calculate your pay to see if it has been skimmed by $5, $10 or $20 when a $100 Million mega calculator payed for with your taxes cannot even work it out accurately.
Major Consequences:
Inaccurate Pay, though inconvenient for the employees of Queensland Health, and as illegal in corporate behavioural terms as this is for Queensland Health is only the tip of this dangerous iceberg in terms of what is actually going wrong with this critical and potentially life threatening application.
Imagine if you will a complex rostering application that is supposed to roster the right number and type of specialist care doctors and nurses to work at any given time in a given place throughout the great state of Queensland.
Now imagine it is not working correctly, partly because it was never designed to do this task for healthcare providers such as Queensland Health, partly because of its inherent coding glitches and finally because it has been modified so greatly by IBM beyond how it is supposed to be used that it has become inherently dangerous in the accuracy of the
Because of WorkBrain the type of medical care and skills that are available to taxpayers, in an emergency and god help them should they ever need it, at every Queensland Health facility cannot be guaranteed when this failing application is being used.
In short, Queensland Taxpayer’s lives have been at risk from the moment they turned it on.
The time to act is now:
Anna Bligh, I wonder what it will take. Will it take strike action, will it take a class action by the Queensland Health staff whose pays have been affected or will it take a class action by the people and the families of Queensland whose lives have been ruined or lost because when they needed critical medical attention most it simply was not available because the staff were not rostered to work where and when they should have been.
One of the most disturbing issues here is not the fact that a bad decision was made 5 years ago by a few well meaning public servants or the fact that the application as it exists today will never work properly, it is the fact that the current Premier Anna Bligh and Deputy Premier Paul Lucas does not have the wisdom or courage to change it now before someone loses their life.
In a statement today the Premier, Anna Bligh, said "If there has been any failure to implement this properly we won't hesitate to take the appropriate action.”
In a statement made by the Deputy Premier last week Mr Lucas said "I have made it clear I take this matter very seriously.”
Premier and Deputy Premier the time for your cheap talk is done.
We are now not only talking about stuffing up peoples pay, we are talking about Queensland Taxpayers lives.
It takes great courage and conviction to make the hard decisions and it is time for you to do what the Taxpayers of Queensland pay you to do.
Make the hard decision and turn this application off.