Dear Minister of Education,

When Steven Joyce announced that there would be a Technical
Review of the Novopay system, the public were told who
would lead the review (Murray Jack of Deloitte) but we were
not told anything at all about anyone else involved.

When the Technical Review Final Report was released, it
was completely anonymous. This is extremely regrettable,
because the report is optimistic about the prospects of
the system but very short on technical details that might
warrant such optimism.

I have no wish to see any individual publicly embarrassed
by their role in creating the Novopay Technical Review Final
Report, but I do believe that public confidence in the
report might be restored by providing such information as
would tend to create trust in their judgement.

Specifically, I want to know
1. How many people were engaged in the actual process
of technical review?
2. What experience did these people have in
software development and maintenance, actual
hands-on-the-code experience, as opposed to
management?
3. What experience did these people have in
user interface design and testing for end users?
Again, actual hands-on work experience rather
than management is what I'm asking about.
4. Did any of the reviewers have hands-on programming
experience with Alesco?
5. Were the reviewers all normally employed by
Deloitte, and if not, in what areas of the IT
industry were they normally employed?

6. Was the final report submitted to all the review
team for approval or should it be taken as one
person's summary of their work?
7. Scope point 8 "The effectiveness of data entry into
the system, including system validation and quality
assurance" is not clearly covered in the Final Report.
What did the review team actually do to judge this
effectiveness?
8. Were the review team allowed to inspect the actual
source code of the Novopay system (at least the
part specifically developed for Novopay).
9. The Final Report refers repeatedly to Talent2 failing
to provide requested information. For example, on
page 31, "Solution architecture documentation."
Now "application architecture" was stability and
technical suitability point 2 on p3 of the terms of
reference. What reasons did Talent2 give for failing
to provide this information or the "formal process
documentation" also referred to on page 31? How
were the reviewers able to judge the architecture
or processes without this information?

I would be grateful for information on any of these points.
Points 1-5 should be readily answered by edited extracts
from the CVs of the review team. Point 9 might require
correspondence from Talent2 to be excerpted. The other
points should be answerable from the review team's logs.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Richard A. O'Keefe

Dear Steven Joyce (MIN),

On the 3rd of April this year I sent an official information request through the FYI.org.nz concerning the background of the Novopay technical review. I received (in PDF yet!) the following response:

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[email address]

Dear Dr O'Keefe

On behalf of Hon Steven Joyce, Minister responsible for Novopay.
thank you for your email of 3 April 2013, received by this office
on 5 April 2013, requesting under the Official Information Act:

information relating to the Technical Review of Novopay.

The Minister will consider your request and respond appropriately
in due course.

Yours sincerely, Lesley Hoskin, Private Secretary.

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I expected that "in due course" would mean "within the statutory
20 working day period". But it has now been 40 working days
since that acknowledgement was sent, and I have heard nothing
further whatsoever.

If there is some unexpected difficulty in finding or releasing
this information, I would appreciate being told so.
I would have been, and remain, happy to clarify or revise the
request. It is not my intention to cause embarrassment to any
person, office, or party, and never was.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Richard A. O'Keefe

Dear S Joyce (MIN),

Thank you for re-sending that reply, which had failed to reach me.

I find it extremely disquieting that the government do not know the
answer to my questions. "Do not buy a pig in a poke" is an old proverb,
and it seems to me that trusting a bunch of unknown people with
unknown skills to advise the government fits it only too well. I am
unhappily reminded of page 11 of the Ministerial Inquiry report:
"Ministers, Secretaries and central agencies at varying times assumed that PwC was providing Independent Quality Assurance across aspects of the project." when in fact it wasn't.

I can find no evidence in any of the published documents that any
person connected with either the Technical Review or the Ministerial
Inquiry ever saw ANY of the Novopay source code or would have
been competent to judge it had they done so. Now I find that the
Government chose to manage the Technical Review so that they
were unable to assess ITS quality. I trusted a National government
to at least be BUSINESSLIKE, and leaving yourselves with no alternative
to blind trust really does not seem in the least businesslike.
You don't know who did it, and you know nothing about their
skills, and you don't know what they did?

I repeat that I did not set out to embarrass anybody. But I really
cannot imagine any answer to my questions that would have been
more embarrassing to the Government than the one I have received.

Yours sincerely and regretfully,

Dr Richard A. O'Keefe