Manitoba's public auto insurer restarting much-maligned technology overhaul after pausing it

CBC

27-01-2025

Manitoba Public Insurance is forging ahead with its much-maligned technology overhaul project that significantly overshot cost projections, saying it paused the project last year to get a better understanding of how to deliver it.
CEO Satvir Jatana told a legislative committee hearing Thursday the Crown corporation needed to take stock of Project Nova, an IT renewal project launched in 2019 that's intended to let customers and brokers complete more of their auto insurance business online.
"We took a pause. We didn't want to continue because we have not been successful, I'll say, thus far," she said.
"We did not want to blindly spend additional funds without truly understanding what it is that we're building, what are the needs and how are we going to deliver this."
Project Nova has faced major cost overruns, with a budget that rose from $86 million to nearly $290 million over a few years.
MPI has spent $162 million on Project Nova so far, Jatana said.
"I can't sit here and say that we have realized the full value of that [money], so hence why we needed to pause," she said, in response to questioning from MLA Wayne Balcaen, the Progressive Conservative critic for MPI.
"We needed, with this board, with this leadership team, to ensure that we don't just continue to spend ratepayer dollars without delivering value, and that's what we've been focused on."
'Lots of defects': CEO
The replacement of the public insurer's outdated information technology systems was supposed to be completed this spring, but only two of the four phases are finished, and one of those phases had "lots of defects," Jatana said.
She didn't reveal a timeline or cost estimate for the remaining two phases, which consists of "the majority of the delivery," Jatana said.
An MPI spokesperson said Project Nova is in the midst of "a detailed planning phase that will help us understand the requirements that must be in place before we move forward with implementing any further changes."
She promised MPI will reveal more details in the coming months.
Asked Friday when the pause took effect, MPI wouldn't give an answer, but Jatana said at a committee hearing last March the corporation needed to "rethink [and] re-plan" the IT overhaul. She also said Project Nova's next steps would be released that spring, but that didn't happen.
The first phase of the project involved shifting trucking and commercial insurance customers to an online-based platform, but it's been dogged by problems since its 2023 release.
Jatana said MPI stopped migrating customers over to the new system several months later to address defects. With half of commercial customers currently using the new system and the rest continuing to use the old system, all customers are continuing to be served properly, she said.
The second phase of Project Nova, which shifted the vehicle registration system for trucks and buses travelling outside Canada online, was released last summer.
After the pause to Project Nova, work to fix the bugs plaguing its first phase has continued, and Jatana said significant progress has been made in the last five to six months.
Frustration with lack of progress
The limited progress on Project Nova stems from the corporation enduring a 10-week strike in late 2023, the subsequent work to clear the backlog, and multiple leadership changes, said Jatana, who was named CEO early last year.
She said there's frustration internally, especially among staff who have worked diligently on the project.
"I can never say enough to them, 'This is not you. This is the situation we put you in.'"
Balcaen, the Tory MPI critic, told the committee he's glad to hear Jatana say she doesn't want to "overcommit and under-deliver."
That's a trend "I've seen with this [NDP] government," he said.
However, he wasn't happy Jatana said she couldn't speak further about Project Nova's future steps without permission from MPI's board, whose chairperson, Carmen Nedohin, told the committee the plan for the project still needs to be finalized.
Matt Wiebe, the NDP minister in charge of the MPI file, used part of his final address to the committee to allege Balcaen was "really starting to acknowledge the mess that was left by the previous government."
The sharp jump in costs for Project Nova and the corporation's attempt to hire a few hundred more staff were among the reasons the former Progressive Conservative government ordered an external review of the corporation in 2023.
That audit found the insurer was top heavy and contending with instability from various leadership changes, and that Project Nova "dominates and consumes" discretionary resources.
Jatana has previously said Project Nova cannot be abandoned because MPI must upgrade its outdated technologies.