New defects found in Novopay system

File photo / NZ Herald

Another 172 new defects have been found with the Novopay school payroll system since the Government began fixing original bugs at the end of February.

In data released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers on the latest errors with school staff pay it was revealed that while 363 defects had been fixed since the end of February, another 172 had emerged.

Minister in charge of Novopay Steven Joyce said a full reconciliation of all bugs would be carried out and the numbers would be released with an updated schedule for when they would be resolved.

One of the major bugs mistakenly resulted in 8500 staff having their end of employment date logged in the Novopay system as April 21 this year, the end of term one.

"Employment information regarding 102 staff in 51 schools is yet to be completed. I am advised that all the schools have been contacted via email and phone and the Ministry is waiting for correct dates to be provided ... Some of the remaining 102 staff will be genuinely supposed to finish on 21 April," Mr Joyce said.

He said Talent2, the company behind Novopay, had undertaken its third software release as part of the Novopay remediation plan.

A total of 123 bugs were resolved in this release including nine very serious bugs and 88 serious bugs.

Despite ongoing bugs in the system the number of mistakes with the plagued Novopay school payroll system have dropped, according to the latest PwC data.

In the previous pay cycle, 1600 school staff were overpaid.

In the second pay cycle of the new financial year, 391 staff from 264 schools were either not paid, underpaid or overpaid.

That amounted to only 0.44 per cent of staff across New Zealand public schools.

Mr Joyce said this was an encouraging result.

"It's one of the better performances we have seen since PwC began tracking complaints for each Novopay pay period in February.

Previous pay periods:

* pay period 1 - pay complaints received from 2.14 per cent of staff and 386 schools.

* Pay period 26 - pay complaints received from 0.43 per cent of staff and 232 schools.

* Pay period 25 - pay complaints received from 1 per cent of staff and 406 schools.

* Pay period 24 - pay complaints received from 1.9 per cent of staff and 447 schools.

* Pay period 23 - pay complaints received from 2.2 per cent of staff and 628 schools.