[LINK] IT can lead to big savings: Tanner

Bernard Robertson-Dunn brd at iimetro.com.au
Fri Apr 11 19:34:18 AEST 2008


Tom Worthington wrote:

> Recruitment is a very small corporate application which only a handful 
> of people in a government agency would use

Aren't you forgetting about the users who are searching for and applying 
for a job? Potentially thousands, potentially many at the same time.

> 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.

As I tried to explain, there would need to be a number of separate 
implementations - at least two, probably three - prod, 
dev/test/acceptance and DR and not in the same computer room. Five or 
seven servers is not a lot for a system with the requirements that ABS 
has put out.

> 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/>. 

Very modest and totally unlike a recruitment system - ie an application 
which requires authentication, authorisation, logging, archiving, 
security and privacy of a type that search and collaboration 
applications don't. BTW, last year, when I worked on a cross agency 
project that tried to use govdex, it didn't get used. It was seen as 
being so modest as to be somewhat less than useful.

As I have banged on about before, what really gets me is Tom's style of 
gut feeling estimating which ends up in a business case. A project gets 
approved, a budget is allocated and a deadline set. When the poor 
technical people fail to deliver and get the blame, it's really the 
fault of the people doing the business case.

IT people working on real systems have to deal with reality. A business 
case can have no connection with reality but still get approved.  It 
then has a life of its own.

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au





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