What would your boss say if you were responsible for a project at work and it went $13 million over budget?

Think you would get laid off? Get a pay cut? Demotion?

Most people would answer “yes” to any of those penalties. Oddly enough, the provincial government’s Workers Compensation Board (WCB) is saying “no.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), a donation-based taxpayers watchdog organization, heard from a whistleblower about some significant cost overruns at the WCB – a crown corporation that handles workplace injury insurance for businesses.

The whistleblower described how a software upgrade project had gone way over budget. No one appeared to be talking about it outside the organization so we decided to poke around a bit and see if there was any truth to the rumor.

After investigating we discovered that the WCB did indeed go ahead with a software upgrade to their claims system back in 2009. They put out a tender and a company named FINEOS won the contract.

According to documents obtained by the CTF, the original budget for the upgrade was $20.3 million. However, when all was said and done, the project came in around $33.2 million; a whopping 64% higher than expected.

This was no rounding error.

We asked the WCB for details on what other companies bid for the original tender, but were told such information would cost $120. The crown corporation claims it would take someone six hours to respond to the request.

The WCB also wants $90 for all documents that went to their board on the matter and another $90 if you want to see the board’s minutes on this issue. Incredibly, they refuse to provide any audit documents or reviews on the upgrade and cost overruns.

When we asked for the budget details to confirm the whistleblower’s cost overrun tip, we also asked for details on who was held accountable.

After all, far too often government bodies just simply shrug their shoulders and move along as cost overruns pile up. This frequently occurs in government as those spending the funds are using other peoples’ money. Conversely, when a business blows through a project’s budget the owners and shareholders seldom just shrug their shoulders and move along; after all, it’s their money on the line.

The WCB informed us “no staff were demoted, suspended, received pay cuts or were dismissed.” However, the whistleblower claims there have been some departures since the debacle unfolded…but that the wrong people were let go.

Whatever the case, perhaps more important than the accountability angle is the prevention angle; as in, what is the WCB doing to prevent cost overruns like this from occurring again?

We also asked for information on internal audit documents or analysis since the FINEOS upgrade was complete, but those haven’t materialized yet.

As the CTF continues to probe this issue, why not consider asking your MLA about the matter as well? The more people that start asking questions, the more likely we can get to the bottom of what happened and learn what the WCB is doing to prevent such a debacle again in the future.

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