Wikipedia
Novopay is a web-based payroll system for state and state integrated schools in New Zealand, processing the pay of 110,000 teaching and support staff at 2,457 schools. It was purchased by the New Zealand Ministry of Education for $182 million over ten years, and was implemented in August 2012 after seven years of planning and development by Australian human resources company Talent2. From the outset, the system led to widespread problems with over 8,000 teachers receiving the wrong pay and in some cases no pay at all; within a few months, 90% of schools were affected.
The 'Novopay debacle' as it was called received almost daily media attention, causing embarrassment for the new Minister of Education Hekia Parata, and contributed to the resignation of newly recruited Education secretary Leslie Longstone.
In October 2014, Novopay transitioned to be 100% operated by the New Zealand Ministry of Education under current Minister Responsible for Novopay, Steven Joyce. Talent2 continues to provide the software but services and the accuracy of payroll is now the responsibility of the Ministry of Education through the government owned company, Education Payroll Ltd. Under the new arrangement the government assumes full responsibility for the provision of the education payroll service. They have since spent millions ($45M by 2015) in taxpayer funds fixing problems with the system.
The error rate for payments is now less than 0.2 per cent, less than half the 0.5 per cent acceptable error rate as defined by the Novopay technical review.1