[LINK] IT can lead to big savings: Tanner
Tom Worthington
Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Tue Apr 15 12:59:46 AEST 2008
At 07:34 PM 11/04/2008, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>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. ...
Yes, there may be thousands of people searching for a job and
hundreds applying at a time, but they are not going to use much in
the way of computer resources.
>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. ...
Yes, but each implementation would only take a small fraction of the
resources of each server. The development and test systems in
particular are not going to be heavily used. As a result those
servers can be shared with other applications.
>Very modest and totally unlike a recruitment system - ie an
>application which requires authentication, authorisation, logging,
>archiving, security and privacy ...
GovDex is supposed to be rated to national security standards and so
presumably does all of the above. I don't know if it does it well, as
I am only a very casual user of the system. However, I think it is
too easy for an agency to say that they don't like what a system
does, so build their own. In the case of a system like GodDex, which
is intended to facilitate agencies working together, that is a
particularly dumb idea: "we need to work together, so lets all build
separate uncoordinated systems to do it".
>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. ...
My back of the envelope estimates are intended to spark discussion
and have people question the assumptions upon which business cases
are put. Building computer systems is a complex and expensive
business and that is why I suggest that the Australian Government
needs to build fewer of them, and build each one better.
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
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