[LINK] IT can lead to big savings: Tanner

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:41 PM 9/04/2008, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>>  As an example, ABS issued a request for tender for a recruitment
>>  system a few weeks ago
>>  <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/03/e-recruitment-system.html>. ...
>
>Without commenting or addressing the functional requirements of the 
>recruitment system, the infrastructure requirements go way beyond a 
>couple of servers. ...

Recruitment is a very small corporate application which only a 
handful of people in a government agency would use  (compared to 
running the census for example). Obviously it would need to meet all 
the usual security and other infrastructure requirements. That would 
seem to be a good reason for it to be one shared across agencies. It 
doesn't make sense for each agency to set up all this stuff 
themselves, for just a few people to use.

>So we are actually talking about significantly more than a single 
>server. My educated guess is 15-20, depending on the complexity and 
>performance and other NFRs. ...

No wonder Minister Tanner is complaining about overspending on IT in 
the public service, if you are proposing to install 20 servers for a 
half dozen users. ;-)

More seriously, I doubt that twenty servers would be needed. Perhaps 
the application needs to be spread across twenty physical servers, 
but in total it would use only the capacity equivalent to one. In any 
case I don't think any agency should be running applications on 
desktop servers; these should be on large shared systems safely 
locked in a computer room.

The Australian Public Service Commission is responsible for 
recruitment for the federal public service and so it would make sense 
if they provided the online service for recruitment 
<http://www.apsc.gov.au/apscrecruitment/>. This can be done without 
risking a ManData mega-project 
debacle  <http://dl.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/433/394>. 
Perhaps the new system could be called PeopleData.  ;-)

There are already some modest web based shard systems provided, such 
as  a search service across agencies 
<http://www.agimo.gov.au/practice/delivery/awards/e-Award_2007/csiro> 
and collaboration  services <https://www.govdex.gov.au/>.

>My experience of trying to get people from one agency to access an 
>application in another agency, both within the same portfolio, tells 
>me that this would either not be possible or is downright 
>impossible. This is for many reasons, not the least of which is that 
>agencies cannot have legally binding agreements with each other. ...

Previously I worked in a government agency which bought services from 
another agency. There were some heated words on occasions, but mostly 
it worked well. I did not feel we had any more control over our 
commercial suppliers than the agency one.

It would not be too difficult for agencies to agree to alternative 
mediation/arbitration dispute resolution in the event of a dispute. 
This could use the same services as used by to companies who want to 
avoid courts. The Australian Government Solicitor offers these 
services <http://www.ags.gov.au/whotocontact/legalservices/adr.htm> 
which are recognized by Australian courts 
<http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/litigants/mediation/mediation.html>.

Being able to take a supplier to court is not much of a threat 
anyway, as it is an admission of failure and embarrassing details 
will come out in the court case. I have been an expert witness in 
several cases of between IT suppliers and organisations, including 
government agencies. None of these case have come to court; all being 
settled out of court to keep the details private.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU