[LINK] IT can lead to big savings: Tanner

[Tom Worthington]

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