The Health Services Executive's (HSE) troubled computer PPARS payroll system has not been properly managed since the HSE decided in October 2005 to halt its further introduction, consultants warned in September.
An Astron experts' report was given to HSE top management just days before they decided to delay further its roll-out until another consultants' report is produced by the middle of next year.
So far PPARS has cost €186 million, and pays salaries to just 30,000 of the health service's 100,000-strong staff, although it stores personnel records for 70,000.
The report revealed the "lack of confidence" in the computer system has led staff in some areas to continue keeping manual records long after they were supposed to stop doing so.
In the report, disclosed by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny yesterday, the consultants warned that management of PPARS was weakened by the October 2005 decision not to extend its use. "It appears that the project governance from the start has not been strong. Since the pause, overall project governance appears to have gone. At present there is no active overall steering committee."
Local hospital managements have continued to submit proposals for changes to PPARS software, "but it is unclear on whose authority these changes are being requested".
"There is also a risk that this will result in a never-ending project. There is an urgent requirement to implement a rigorous and active management. Clear governance should be established."
Responding to the recommendations, the HSE board appointed a new project team led by Laverne McGuinness, the national director of the HSE's national shared services.
This group will have nine months to recommend "long-term options" to the HSE board once it has defined the HSE's future IT needs. It will also ensure its existing parts are "operating at its optimum".
In its 28-page report, Astron said: "The objectives and scope for PPARS have not been sufficiently clear from the start, and this lack of clarity is still an issue."
In some hospitals, line managers are not able to get access to personnel records because of security difficulties, while in other hospitals managers get very little information from it.
Because managers feel they are getting little from PPARS they have little incentive to ensure its smooth introduction, which cannot happen without "the active participation" of senior executives.
While PPARS started before the HSE was created, Astron said there "is no evidence of a concerted process by the HSE" to reduce many rules on pay.
"Because there has been no evidence of a concerted effort to standardise or try to reduce variances there is a high level of frustration directed at the programme," said the report.
The replacement of health boards by the HSE has not led to simplification of the rules, while the scope of PPARS for the future should be "reconsidered".
Staff still complain that they have to manually record absences, leave and time-off in lieu, and "in some areas the staff said that they had to undertake continuous monitoring and checking of the system".
Mr Kenny said he had been told a year ago that PPARS had been "frozen" and that "the waste of money would stop" only now to find that taxpayers' money "is still being poured down the PPARS drain".
The HSE accused Fine Gael of quoting the report out of context because its findings that PPARS was "badly-conceived, poorly-implemented, not stable" all covered the time before the HSE was created. "It was because of these historical issues that the HSE decided to pause the roll-out of PPARS project in the first place pending the completion of the current planning and analysis," said a spokesman.
