[foliovision]

Freshbooks has built from scratch two SAAS which have handled over $60 billion worth of invoices and expenses for over 10 million users.

I'm suggesting that Mike McDerment could build and lead a team who would successfully build a payroll system for the Government of Canada for far less than a billion dollars.

IBM has not built a working payroll system (despite starting with Oracle's Peoplesoft for that money). I suspect my company (or some of our best competitors) could build a working payroll system for about $50 million based on our success on smaller projects. Our specialty however is in publishing systems and online video. I'm specifically recommending Freshbooks as McDerment has a background in creating accounting and billing systems and scaling them.

Additionally, as a Canadian, McDerment is already familiar with many of the variables to do with Canadian tax and employment legislation and geography. Any foreigner would need three to six months to assimilate Canada specific information.

I also don't suggest that IBM could not have built this payroll system satisfactorily. Based on failed projects in Canada, Australia, Pennsylvania and Slovenia, big promises, poor delivery, unlimited billing and zero liability on government projects appears to be strategic policy (links to each of those projects appear in a new preface to my article). Such behaviour has made Big Blue billions.

[linkmotif]

> Freshbooks has built from scratch two SAAS which have handled over $60 billion worth of invoices and expenses for over 10 million users.

Right but those transactions have all been more or less the same type of vanilla invoicing. Unless something has really changed in Freshbooks, that’s an app that handles very specific relatively simple needs. The government of Canada is a giant entity that is most seriously orders of mangnitude different and complex than any usecase for FreshBooks, and that’s just the reality.

> I'm suggesting that Mike McDerment could build and lead a team who would successfully build a payroll system for the Government of Canada for far less than a billion dollars.

Maybe, but probably not. The real problem is probably that the business needs of the government of Canada are not well defined and the bureaucrats cannot define them. The comparison to FreshBooks is just so off because it’s totally upside down. FreshBooks was built and provides certain functionality. Building a payroll system for The government of Canada is an exercise in reverse engineering the Government of Canada. It’s an exercise in squaring hundreds of not thousands of different circles and making them fit into a box.