A computer glitch dating back to 2009 has been fixed at last, allowing the federal government to resume chasing down thousands of Canadians who owe the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) about $66 million due to erroneous overpayments.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) reinstated the collection of these old debts last November, going after 15,000 individuals or their estates after almost a decade of inaction.

Source: CBC News

Date: March 15th, 2019

Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cpp-oas-debt-collection-cra-esdc-duclos-it-glitch-1.5047349

Discussion

1) “After 2009, the CRA was unable to collect anything — and could no longer accurately calculate the amounts owed — because the department had migrated its CPP system to a new IT platform.”  Why is it completely unacceptable to blame the issue on a “new IT platform”?

2) How would standard development procedures for new systems have avoided this issue?