Posted on 11/25/2004 8:29:53 PM PST by Mike Fieschko
A routine software upgrade on a small number of PCs last weekend is believed to have gone disastrously wrong when an incompatible system was downloaded on to the whole network.
It sounds as if someone downloaded and installed the wrong software.
Trade union leaders called on ministers to drop plans to cut 40,000 jobs in the DWP and a total of 104,000 civil servants across the government following the computer crisis.
This could possibly explain WHY someone screwed up the system. If the computerization worked, then 104,000 public-sector layabouts would have been out of jobs. It's understandable that the union might not want that to happen. A lot of jobs and a lot of tax money are at stake.
Another outsourced monster IT project going down in flames.
"Although I do not know why your system is not working at this time, I have been authorized to offer you a coupon for a free Slurpee!"
Uh huh.
To err is human; to REALLY fark up requires a computer.
Somebody's gonna hang for this. I wouldn't want to be a manager in the IT dept. there.
That was my first thought as well, but I wondered if they tried to install it on older machines running earlier versions of Windows.
Hmmm...As an IT professional, being THOROUGHLY familiar with what happens on Wall Street when a problem of this nature arises, I can predict the following:
1. A scapegoat will be found (one individual, preferably disposable, wouldn't put it past them to blame and Indian or Pakistani and in particular, the guy who did the upgrade).
2. It will be decided that too much has been spent on what might be a bad system to begin with, so, we'll soldier on with what we have,which will continue to crash until someone can actually find a fix. Internal porgrammers will blame the vendors, the vendors will blame the programmers, error reports will fly back and forth, and somehow, mysteriously, the problem will have corrected itself. In the business, we call this "Error cleared while testing" which is techspeak for "someone f*cked up, but we're not sure who or how, but since no one's done it again, we hope this goes away quietly."
3. The British gov't will rail and cry about why they had to go to overseas vendors for this project, negelecting to note that perhaps the native talent just doesn't exist. This will lead to the import of more foreigners in order to jump start a new tech sector in Britain, since they work cheap and can be easily kept in line by having their visas revoked.
4. When and if any investigation is ever completed, it will be so full of technical nonsense that most computer geeks won't even be able to read it without falling asleep.
5. Someone will cry that the problem was caused by a lack of funding, and will produce at least one memo obliquely hinting at this idea.
6. Whoever does find a fix will be pushed off into the shadows while his/her bosses step into the limelight to gain whatever praise there might be. Said employee will then be laid off at the earliest opportunity because he/she is just too smart for his/her manager's (personal)comfort.
7. If this were a private enterprise, the managers who initially screwed up the project would still find a way to give themselves raises and/or bonuses.
8. 50/50 that the boo-boo is blamed on some nameless, faceless consultant, who, conveniently, has already been fired.
9. The role of "legacy systems" will be brought up again, with the current owners yelling that "we warned you this would happen if you didn't get rid of this", while simultaneously pushing thier own big-budget White ELephants as a "solution".
10. It will be discovere that the ONE GUY who could have done this smoothly was either out sick or on vacation. Said guy will never be allowed to be sick or go on vacation again.
And they wonder why I quit?
EDS. Every Day Sucks.
If we ever have an armed conflict with China, we had better be expecting the same thing to occur in our government offices and every major corp in the US.
EDS - Expect Diminished Service
Most I.S. departments would site this as an excuse to increase their budget, To prevent it's happening again.
Yep. And who opened the gates? Who leaves them open? Our leaders are blind to the dangers of questionably loyal workers and government employees -- on shore and off.
Data is our lifeblood. If we were Romans, it would be like we were managing it with our Hispanic, Gallic and German conscripts.
I don't want to be a cow!
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