IBM bats away Australian sueball over billion-dollar-blowout The long-running saga of IBM's botched payroll system in the Australian State of Queensland seems to have come to an end, with Big Blue escaping an attempt at further litigation. IBM won the project in 2007 and initially quoted a few million dollars for the creation of a new payroll system for the State's Health Department. By …
Not an option for me at work sadly.
This particular set of IBM ads has driven me nuts all week. Never thought it would be The Reg that made me do it, but it's had me reversing my stance on adblocking, and my home network now has adblocking configured as a DNS server script.
I can handle the auto playing video, it's the sound that did me in. I'd like to support the sites I visit by not blocking ads, but Big Blue forced my hand.
Government's bad and overly-flexible brief plus lousy project management
I've found this to be quite common whenever governments have outsourced 100% of their technical capabilities. They end up with nobody in-house who understands how to communicate requirements from within the organisation to the contractor/consultant, and vice-versa.
On a possibly related note, I've encountered lots of government project/contract managers ("the client") who think that it's perfectly acceptable to change the scope/requirements at any time up to and including the delivery date, without a contract variation. These people are the worst to deal with. And when you try to invoice them for the time you've wasted dealing with their shit...
@a_yank_lurker: Oh certainly. It wasn't meant to be a jab at "da gummint", merely an observation that I can fully understand how these things happen based on my experience working for government clients. Obviously the contractor isn't without fault either. As a private consultant (albeit not in software development) the problem can be exacerbated by assuming the client knows what they're talking about and rolling with it, because you can't do their job for them as well, and there often isn't time to second-guess the client either.
I work in a small city though, where the problem is more common on account of the size and responsibilities of the government departments. You'd expect QLD Health to be large enough to have some people around with the required technical background. Then again, health departments sometimes have enough trouble commissioning new hospitals and that's supposed to be their core function.
I could not agree more. Take Carlisle Hospital - a PFI build that while superficially pretty lacks things such as covering over A&E entrances (people entering from or exiting to ambulances frequently get soaked, and even before recent events, folks must have been aware of the Cumbrian rain norm), an electrical and fire system so flaky that there is a permanent monitoring service provided by the local Fire Brigade) and such grossly underestimated parking capacity that cars are parked on every available piece of grass, block roads and ambulance ingress and occupy many of the double red lines with impunity.
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