[LINK] Quality & Security Implications of Govt Outsourcing

[David Boxall]

On 6/05/2011 5:06 PM, Frank O'Connor wrote:
...
> Murphy's Law applies in spades to government IT systems.
>
> Bottom line: Their assessment, implementation and
> development methods have REAL shortcomings: the
> suits get in the way at every opportunity
> attempting to 'stamp their mark' on whatever is
> being purchased/installed, 'feature creep' is the
> real name of the development game, they have no
> concept of small iterations of feature addition
> and rather want their big humungous uber-Systems
> from Day 1 (because that's where the Big Money is
> for budgets and ensures that the Empires
> continue), and they have little or no
> appreciation of the idea that the more
> prospective points of failure the humungous
> system that they want entails ... the more likely
> it will fail.
>
> It's more surprising to me when a public service
> IT system comes in on-budget, on time and working
> to specifications (or even close to design
> specifications) than it is when they routinely
> crash and burn taking hundreds or billions of
> dollars in public funds with them. So, the
> security and other implications of Point 2 don't
> really worry me, because it's highly unlikely the
> system as outlined will ever see the light of day.
...

In a former life, I did some small-systems development in the ATO. 
Knowing the poor quality of underlying systems, I made a habit of 
building in frequent breaks where a human had to check what the system 
was doing.

That never pleased those in charge. They demanded full automation 
regardless. Of course, by the time the fertiliser impacted the 
ventilator, they'd moved on to bigger and better things (with an 
apparent positive on their resume).

The same mindset seemed to assume that every non-management employee 
could be replaced by the equivalent of a push-button.

-- 
David Boxall                         | ignorance more frequently
                                     | begets confidence than does
http://david.boxall.id.au            | knowledge
                                     | --Charles Darwin (introduction
                                     |  to 'The Descent of Man' 1871)