VICTORIA

By any standard of judgment, the Panorama computer system for management of infectious diseases constitutes a landmark failure on the part of the B.C. Liberal government.

Five years behind schedule and more than 400-per-cent over budget. Taxpayers on the hook for $115 million to date and $14 million a year going forward. The developer, IBM, let off the hook for thousands of defects. Provincial health authorities ignored when they pointed out the shortcomings in the system, threatened when they balked at accepting it.

It’s all there in a scathing report from auditor general Carol Bellringer, released in August and revisited earlier this month in hearings by the public accounts committee of the B.C. legislature.

Still, for all the outrages associated with Panorama, this particular fiasco is also part of a more generic failure to manage informational technology in the public sector.

That broader aspect was acknowledged by veteran Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan, even as he underscored the uniquely “damning” and clearly “astonishing” failures documented in the auditor general’s report.

“This is only one in a whole series of very large-scale information technology projects,” noted Sultan in his remarks to the committee on Nov. 2. “If they have any common characteristic, they are always overly ambitious, perhaps under-resourced, based on dreams as much as reality, and there are lots of tears at the end and lots of finger-pointing.

“Perhaps it’s part of the process of growing up, as we come to grips with what, in fact, computers and large-scale IT systems can actually do, realistically,” he continued, turning philosophical. “It’s easy to get carried away, and I think this is one example of that.”

Speaking for the government during the committee proceedings, deputy health minister Stephen Brown conceded that the auditor general’s report raised concerns that went beyond the specifics of the Panorama case.

“Do we have the kind of expertise that is required? I think a fundamental issue that the auditor is raising is not just about contract management in the sense of procurement and general contract management but, in fact, the capacity of the ministry to manage very complex contracts and interface effectively with the vendors.”

Brown, as noted here yesterday, was not especially forthcoming in many of his responses to concerns raised by the committee.

He displayed a tendency to let himself off the hook for the specifics of the Panorama fiasco because he’d only rejoined the health portfolio as deputy minister in 2013, after the project was well advanced.

But I’m indebted to one who shall remain nameless for pointing out that Brown occupied senior positions in the health ministry (assistant deputy, associate deputy, chief administrative officer) through the years 2006-2011 when all of the key decisions were made on Panorama, making it highly unlikely that he was as in the dark as he sometimes made out to the committee.

Brown did take it upon himself, in his presentation to the committee, to reject the auditor general’s advice that it was time to seek out cost-effective alternatives to the troubled system.

On the contrary, he maintained, public health experts here and elsewhere in Canada (B.C. spearheaded development of the system for other provinces as well) agree there is no practical alternative to Panorama, “a solid platform” worth building upon.