Case Study: Individual Preparation Report
Name: Maruf Hashem
Date: January 30, 2013
Case Title: Canadian Firearms Program

Introduction
Gun violence is serious social problem and Canada has a long history of firearms control. However, increasing costs to the Canadian Firearms Program (CFP) has made it a lightning rod for criticism from both pro and anti-gun advocates. Reports out of the media and Auditor General Sheila Fraser paint a picture of inefficiency, incompetence and mismanagement.
This paper looks at the main issues faced by decision makers, analyses them, presents alternatives and makes recommendations based on the analysis.
Key Issues (10 marks)
Issue 1 (Most Important Issue):
The first and most important issue to be …show more content…

Upon careful analysis, several issues were identified. First, the program initially had no central leadership and therefore lacked co-ordination. This resulted in an escalation of features as each stakeholder had their own vision for the program. This in turn gave rise to several problems. Rising costs was the obvious one. In addition, this made the system far more complex than it needed to be.
Second, there were design flaws with the system. For example, there was no standard for entering data, which resulted in erroneous and inconsistent data. Moreover, there were problems integrating the existing systems with the new one. Another major issue was that when a record was modified locally, the system flagged it for review no matter how small the modification resulting in backlogs.
There were also technical issues that were cropping up. Users were experiencing long processing times. Field officers lacked high-speed internet required to access data. In addition, courthouses were not connecting to the system, therefor requiring manual paper forms of prohibition orders, which were entered at later time creating more backlogs.
Finally, all these cost overruns and inefficiencies turned public opinion against the program requiring more spending on ads and PR campaigns to win them back. This was important, as the public was also an important stakeholder