[LINK] Fwd: [aliaACTive] www.aph.gov.au - we want your feedback

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Carl Makin wrote:
> On 23/04/2009, at 11:06 AM, Ivan Trundle wrote:
> 
>> But it would take less than 10 minutes to set up on any decent
>> website. That was the original complaint that I made: that setting up
>> a survey, even with 100 questions, is absolutely trivial with the
>> right tools. I do it almost daily, and it surprises me that any
>> reasonable website does NOT have the resources to deploy this.
> 
> But you forget, this is a government department.
> 
> This is how it really goes.
> 
> 1. Marketing decide they need a new survey,

Interesting, the thought crossed my mind, that the survey might have been part
of a campaign to promote the website, a bit cynical, but it worked.

> 2. They email a request to the web development area,
> 3. The web area bounces the request as it didn't come with a charge code
> 4. The marketing person goes to her Director who goes to the web area  
> Director who then discuss budgets and priorities.  This takes a week.

Are you telling me marketing area doesn't control the website?

> 5. The request is resubmitted and allocated to someone.  It goes back  
> and forth between the web area and marketing until both are happy.   
> This takes two weeks (at least).

Is anyone with IT Technical skills involved or have all been outsourced -
so, it no doubt involves a vendor's account manager and if you are lucky - maybe
Leah.

> 6. Now they enter the change management process.  A Request For Change  
> (RFC) is lodged and, if they are lucky this is a standard change and  
> doesn't require Change Advisory Board (CAB) approval (1 week).  If not  
> then it has to go before the next CAB meeting to be discussed and  
> approved (2 weeks).

Knew ITIL was in the mix somewhere - what do you expect if you take help desk
procedures and apply them to effective and efficient use of ICT.

In my view, compliance to ITIL and COBIT is not enough! I would guess the results
of a survey of Australian Government CIOs would be similar to this:
<http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/790d48a25a3505008525726d00567783>

> 7. Once approved it is then placed on the Forward Schedule of Change  
> (FSC) and scheduled for release during one of the mandated change  
> windows (up to a month).
> 8. Survey now available, elapsed time 6 to 10 weeks.
> 
> No wonder they use sites like Survey Monkey.
> 
<snip>

meanwhile, picking up on Leah's suggestion of Limesurvey:

> Trivia
> 
> LimeSurvey is ranked highly on SourceForge.net, with an overall rank of 99 out of over 100,000 projects as of June 4, 2008. [11] It has been downloaded more than 200,000 times and its development status is listed as "5 - Production/Stable, 6 - Mature". [12]
> 
> In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the Verified Voting Foundation used PHPSurveyor to gather data about voting irregularities. It identified over 13500 incidents in the first 10 hours of voting and was selected as part of their Election Incident Reporting System. [13]
> 
> The Korean translation has been created by a South Korean Cyber Crime Police Unit.
> 
> Limesurvey is used in many Higher Institutes to enable staff and students to administer their own surveys.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LimeSurvey>

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202