Reader comment: Vince Garrett of Barrie, Ontario, on March 15 wrote:
Thank you for your article and an opportunity to comment.
I'm sure that many Canadian tax payers are wondering how one of the most mission critical information systems in our country could possibly be so poorly designed and maintained that it is down for such a long period. Equally frustrating is the issue of no conclusive answers on when it will be restored and what the impact will be on those who have already eFiled.
As an IT professional of 25 years, it just floors me. Tax payers put billions of dollars into our government's coffers and this is the level of effort we get in return. What an insult that the government would expect tax payers to pay interest if we file late and owe them money.
There is really no excuse for such incompetence when they have virtually unlimited financial resources to do the job right. A completely redundant date centre should be maintained along with data archival practices that would allow them to roll back any errors that might occur or to recover from a hardware failure in a matter of hours or, at worst, a day.
Having filed my return this year in record time (for me), I was quite proud. Needless to say I'm quite dissapointed at this point, since the government's inconpetence is now going to cost me additional time and money.
I'd say I'm amazed, but actually that wouldn't be true. My experience is that our governmet has little idea as to what time and investment is required to properly provision and support information technology.
I sincerely hope they pull it together soon and are smart enough to admit to the root cause of the failure and then take the steps needed deal with it appropriately.
Respectfully submitted,
V. Garrett
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