Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss and speak to the issue of the PeopleSoft system. During the recent committee of the whole review of the Financial Management Board Secretariat, I started to ask questions about the PeopleSoft project. With each answer I was given, the whole situation looked worse.
Mr. Speaker, during the 1990s, the government used a home-grown human resource system to track people and positions, which also had the ability to track competitions. This was not a perfect system, mostly because departments did not keep up information. However, from what I have been told, the staff found it very easy to use and access information. It could be used without extensive training.
Someone decided we needed a better system. The Financial Management Board Secretariat came up with the pre-made PeopleSoft system. The project has been three years in the making so far and has cost millions of dollars and thousands of hours of time, at a time when we are trying to watch our costs and make the best use of our resources.
Based on the information we have received, Mr. Speaker, I have a concern that we may have bought a white elephant. The system was supposed to be up and running early in 1999. Health and social services boards are still not all on board. The project is $2 million over budget so far. Although the Minister indicated otherwise, when you look in the GNWT's phone book, it shows more than a dozen people still working full time in the Financial Management Board Secretariat on implementing this system.
I also understand it does not have the ability to track competition information. If it does, this information is not available to departments. The users complain, Mr. Speaker. I have been approached countless times about how complicated the system is and how non-user-friendly it is. The training alone is five days, with imported PeopleSoft trainers. This is even more money, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we also discovered the system runs a payroll, which the old system did not. However, when it does run a payroll, three days out of every ten, the system is unavailable for any other use. So for 70 percent of the time, no information on employees or positions can be checked, added or revised. If you have a problem with your benefits during that time period, you have to wait. It would seem we have a system that costs millions but can only do one thing at a time.