The article does call it the "build-from-scratch EMPower program that never was able to adapt to the complicated needs of public education employees". But it goes on to say "The original contractor for the EMPower system was SAP, with Infosys responsible for implementation" – was it really "from-scratch" or was it just off-the-shelf SAP payroll?

What I suspect is the real story: public sector very often has complex and unique rules, which business systems (payroll included) designed for the private sector struggle to handle. In the private sector, there is a lot of flexibility to change the rules, so if you buy an off-the-shelf payroll system, you'll often choose to change your business practices to work with it, rather than try to customise it to handle your pre-existing business practices. But in the public sector, due to laws, regulations, unions and politics, that approach is very often impossible, so you have no choice but to make the system work for your unique needs – and it is unsurprising that such attempts often turn into expensive failures.

The article also says:

> The school board is expected to approve a new contract on March 12 with Frontline Education, which offers a system in wide use among California school districts

This is something else I've seen before – often mainstream vendors (such as SAP or Oracle) whose products work well for your average private sector business struggle with unique needs of public sector entities, but there are often smaller niche vendors which have specialised solutions pre-built to meet the unique needs of entities of that particular type (such as California school districts)–and even when customisations still turn out to be necessary, often have greater domain-specific expertise which makes it likely they'll get them implemented successfully and for a more reasonable price