Money items today
Finally the Provincial Government has canned the head of e-Health Ontario. This agency was established from the ashes of its predecessor agency that that was dismantled after spending over 600 million with no results, this came after another fiasco with computers a few years earlier with computerized land records and another with welfare systems. Anyway the Head of e-health presided over eight months of gravytraining and questionable contracts awarded to buddies and one alleged family member. So what does Sarah Kramer get for her supposed expertise? Nine months salary at $26,500 per month, a bonus of $114K after five months and a severance of $317K to go away and not sue them for breach of contract. A total of $700K for nine months work; nice if you can get it. No wonder the opposition and the news people are all over this, it is salacious. But the scandal here isn't the obscene wages being paid to civil servants to administer outrageous consultants fees but the inability of any government to understand how computers work and the cost of networking lots of them. Because it is technology that most MPs do not even understand they are prepared to pay the ridiculous fees demanded by computer specialists, sad!
Back to the local scene, we now know how much money the local pols pulled in for doing a part time job. Last month the County published its "remuneration report" which details the amounts paid to councillors for being at the County level. Tonight the Cobourg report will be published it is here for those who missed it on the agenda [it never appeared on the agenda, the memos never Are - Ed] it shows all on the Council payroll.
But the big thing for Cobourgers to note is that the Mayor by attending a monthly meeting at the County is able to bump up his $30,272 + expenses of $3,482 ($33,754) by adding his County money - $9588 - for a total of $43,342 but you then have to add in the money he gets from the Local Utility for being a Director of the Company and the money he gets for being a Director of a subsidiary ($4,500 estimated total) and that comes up to a grand total of $47,842. Not bad for a job that could be called full time, if he worked at it constantly.
The sad part of this is that although most people I talk to hold the Council in low esteem for their actions over the past few years and complain about a lack of vision nobody is chomping at the bit to want to be the next mayor, even if it pays a respectable stipend.
Back to the local scene, we now know how much money the local pols pulled in for doing a part time job. Last month the County published its "remuneration report" which details the amounts paid to councillors for being at the County level. Tonight the Cobourg report will be published it is here for those who missed it on the agenda [it never appeared on the agenda, the memos never Are - Ed] it shows all on the Council payroll.
But the big thing for Cobourgers to note is that the Mayor by attending a monthly meeting at the County is able to bump up his $30,272 + expenses of $3,482 ($33,754) by adding his County money - $9588 - for a total of $43,342 but you then have to add in the money he gets from the Local Utility for being a Director of the Company and the money he gets for being a Director of a subsidiary ($4,500 estimated total) and that comes up to a grand total of $47,842. Not bad for a job that could be called full time, if he worked at it constantly.
The sad part of this is that although most people I talk to hold the Council in low esteem for their actions over the past few years and complain about a lack of vision nobody is chomping at the bit to want to be the next mayor, even if it pays a respectable stipend.
2 comments:
Geez Ben, you sould apply for a computer job at E-Health. I bet you would work for a lot less than what seems to be the going rate!
A very sad thing about the eHealth situation: immediatly after yesterday's announcement, Ms. Kramer was lauded as the single most capable person to jump start the stalled eHealth project. Much progress was said to have been made over the last five months, no doubt due to the decision to sign contracts without tender. No strength without weakness.
There are at least two general aspects to eHealth problems in Ontario:
1) System design/development, arising from poor performance of those paid to do this work. Deb O'Connor mentioned that one eHealth consultancy firm, Accenture, under the name Arthur Anderson Consulting, was associated with a computer system fiasco presided over by the Harris Tories.
2) System implementation, arising in part from the reluctance and/or refusal of physicians to participate in electronic health record systems, perhaps especially in hospital-based settings.
Post a Comment