A shame
I agree with you, I have been waiting for my driver’s license to be incorrectly suspended for medical reasons for three months. For a former director of road safety at the SAAQ, as well as vice-president of the Highway Safety Code and finally president and director of the organization a few years ago, I am ashamed of what has become the SAAQ!
Georges Lalande
The bad culprit
Madam Grammond, you have it all wrong! Éric Caire is not responsible for the SAAQ’s computer drift. The minister’s only responsibility is for the homepage…not all the software. This new system is a responsibility of the SAAQ and the project group responsible for IT migration. The public wants a culprit and you serve them Minister Cairo on a gibbet when he is not responsible for this fiasco. It would be good to repeat the adage: “We should not imprison a Minister of Justice when a convenience store is robbed!” »
Norman Briand
Liability issue
Where is the accountability? I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life in the workforce fixing broken IT departments. This is what happens when no one is accountable.
Serge Paulk
Replace Minister
Faced with a minister who is not in his first feats of arms and who, in the context, has found nothing better than to slip away, would it not be reasonable for the Prime Minister to act, as he done for health? That he replaces the current minister with someone with computer skills? The prank has gone on long enough!
Claude Gelinas
A costly shift
Éric Caire demonstrates by his actions and words that he is not the right man for the essential digital shift of the Quebec state. He has neither the competence nor the stature to do so, and Premier Legault must show leadership and remove him from office without further delay, because Mr. Caire is costing a fortune to the citizens of Quebec who will have to pay the bill for his carelessness.
Pierre-Louis Rivest, Joliette
An unattractive employer
With salaries that top out at nearly $60,000 at the technical level and $96,000 at the professional level, the government is simply not competitive and attractive in information technology compared to the private sector. It is high time that it adopt a specific salary scale that would enable it to attract the talent necessary to constitute a competent and, above all, permanent entity in the development and maintenance of computer systems.
Sylvain Richard, Montreal
Still IBM
“At the federal level, the implementation of the Phoenix pay system, a real national disgrace, made an impression,” writes M.me Grammond. Who knows that IBM was behind this project? Who knows that IBM is still the designer of the SAAQ project?
André C. Gauthier, Mount Royal
A matter of listening
Easy to wash your hands of! But when leaders stop relying on peddlers of computer systems, that they will listen to the employees of their organization and that they will involve them in the transformations, the chances of success will be better.
Germain Package
Advice ignored
Reading your editorial is like reliving my life as an IT consultant. After having worked for a large IT firm for 25 years, I formed my business in management and IT consulting services. We were 15 consultants specializing in a variety of disciplines and all had experienced one or more IT implementations. It’s always the same story: we don’t believe those we hire to advise us. Our small consulting firm was targeting SMEs because government projects are often too big and don’t incorporate any change management. It is unfortunate that all citizens are paying the price.
Pierre G. Pouliot
Signals Ignored
I worked for 15 years at the SAAQ. I was there in the years when we were planning the transition, we knew that the systems were reaching the end of their life and that it was necessary, even imperative, to plan the migration to other systems. At the time, my specialized colleagues were consulted, committees were in place to think about this possible migration intelligently. One day, with the appointment of a new vice president of information technology, we were informed that everything that had previously been started as work had suddenly been put aside to implement from a software package.
Over the years of working at CASA, my colleagues knew that this choice of SAS software was absolutely not suited to the specifics of the SAAQ. All programming for registration and driver’s license resulting directly from the Highway Safety Code, its regulations, its policies.
The SAAQ was rigorous and concerned about both users and its employees. Privacy and customer service were at the heart of our mission. We gave the best of ourselves and we were proud of it.
Today, I cannot understand how this fiasco could have come about. That we have simply ignored the warning signs over the years of work. Everyone knew that we were hitting a wall and that the mise en place would “crash”.
It is useless to knock on Minister Cairo. He couldn’t have done anything about it. Rather, we must question the decisions of the SAAQ authorities at the time.
Lisette Savard