Guernsey minister says SAP payment system 'will be corrected'

Deputy St Pier dismissed suggestions the report into the system had been suppressed

Problems with the States electronic payments system are being dealt with, Guernsey's treasury minister has said.

The SAP system, which was introduced in January, has been dogged by complaints of delays in paying suppliers and staff not getting overtime payments.

The system is part of a move to centralise services such as HR and IT, saving £1.2m by the loss of 50 posts.

Deputy Gavin St Pier said changes were being made following an independent report into the system.

'Serious allegation'

The report found there was a lack of leadership in the project, the team behind the project had been broken up before issues had been resolved, and there were problems with connecting to the system.

Deputy St Pier said his department agreed with the 13 recommendations and was working to implement them.

He said the independent report was standard practice when the States rolls out a new system.

Deputy St Pier said it was released following a "serious allegation" made by Deputy Garry Collins about secret reports being considered by the department's political board.

Deputy Collins, a former member of the department who stood down for personal reasons, spoke out about "a culture of secrecy" in the department and suggested six months' of personal data had been lost from one of the States computer systems.

Hundreds of decisions

He said the data had been lost from the Cadastre system, which is a digital record of land management in Guernsey used to tax islanders.

Deputy Collins said a back-up system failed in October and the main computers followed in March, causing the data, which included details of appeals and correspondence, to be lost.

Deputy St Pier admitted the loss of some data, but said it was confined to outgoing correspondence and that it should cause few ongoing problems.

He said there had been a delay in his board hearing about the data loss and staff had been told this should have been brought to the attention of politicians.

Deputy St Pier said civil servants made hundreds of operational decisions a day and "clearly I can not be aware of every decision".