[Newsbot]

Title: Roll out of new federal-government-wide email system halted, again
Category: Tech
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2016-05-05 07:01:18
Canadian

[Zipperfish]

People are more concerned with the new pay system. I have staff who aren't getting paid, or who are ready for mat leave and don't have any of the paperwork they need yet. And they can't through to the HR folks who were all let go to centralize the system in New Brunswick.

[2Cdo]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

People are more concerned with the new pay system. I have staff who aren't getting paid, or who are ready for mat leave and don't have any of the paperwork they need yet. And they can't through to the HR folks who were all let go to centralize the system in New Brunswick.

And the NDP supporters want more government run services.

This is exactly why I want a much smaller government. Everything the government has a hand in results in waste and lousy service.

I can't imagine the nightmare people are going through trying to access pay or maternity benefits.

[DrCaleb]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

People are more concerned with the new pay system. I have staff who aren't getting paid, or who are ready for mat leave and don't have any of the paperwork they need yet. And they can't through to the HR folks who were all let go to centralize the system in New Brunswick.

And the NDP supporters want more government run services.

This is exactly why I want a much smaller government. Everything the government has a hand in results in waste and lousy service.

I can't imagine the nightmare people are going through trying to access pay or maternity benefits.

Full disclosure - I work for the contractor in question.

These email problems, just like the problems with the Gun Registry, Digital Health Records in Ontario or the 'Obamacare' website, they are all related back to the government employees themselves. They drag their heels, or they introduce random impossible features after the project is mostly complete, or they just plain sabotage the project.

But we had nothing to do with the Pheonix Pay system!

I've spent enough time in this industry to see what happens when services are consolidated when there is no need to consolidate them. Email happens to be a good thing to consolidate. But this need to go to shared data centers is insane. All it does is create larger central points of failure.

Service Alberta has been trying to do a disaster recovery test for what seems like years, but they can't because they end up picking a time that some Ministry or another is doing some mission critical task. They couldn't do it in May, because we have year end. They can't do it in June, July or August, because Fire Season and SRD needs their control centers operational 24/7. They can't do it in September or October, because the Legislature is sitting. They can't do in in November, because Advanced education is marking exams for Universities. December and January are out, due to holidays. That leaves February and March. And this year, those got quashed because of an interim Budget being authored.

All they have to do is look at larger businesses. They have smaller multiple data centers, and only consolidate those services that make sense to consolidate. New Product development in California does not need to run off the same infrastructure as Sales in Hong Kong does!

[Lemmy]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

This is exactly why I want a much smaller government.

Me too, but...

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Everything the government has a hand in results in waste and lousy service.

...exaggerations like that make your position as wrong as the NDPers you disagree with.

[2Cdo]

Lemmy Lemmy:

2Cdo 2Cdo:

This is exactly why I want a much smaller government.

Me too, but...

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Everything the government has a hand in results in waste and lousy service.

...exaggerations like that make your position as wrong as the NDPers you disagree with.

I spent over 25 years with the feds and seen it constantly. I witnessed Canada Post get more and more yet do less and less. Indian affairs is a bottomless pit. Foreign affair boondoggle costing millions.

That's without even looking.

[herbie]

May have mentioned before, I repointed all employees' IE icons to open Firefox instead because even though they were instructed to only use that with the new gov't system they didn't "like it". I guess it was too hard to figure out how to import their "bookmarks to fuck around".
For the private enterprise guy selling fishing licenses, I gladly made a shortcut to IE on his Windows 10 for $75. When it stops working he can give me another $75 to set up Firefox and yet another $75 to set his start page when he can't figure that one out himself.
There's no difference between the technical idiocy of gov't as compared to private enterprise. Similar to that of whining about gov't should reduce itself when that's exactly what the whole digitizing services thing is about.
On the other end of the stick the techies are in some backroom writing great code but given no clue about the real world needs of the users. Or the three billions hops between Bumfuck BC's 56K frame relays and Godknowswhere the servers are and back to 'instantly' update the database one word at a time.

What's the big problem with mail servers? I can build and program two of them in one day to put wherever you want, but if they aren't connected on the same rack it's gonna kill you with traffic charges.

[Lemmy]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

I spent over 25 years with the feds and seen it constantly. I witnessed Canada Post get more and more yet do less and less. Indian affairs is a bottomless pit. Foreign affair boondoggle costing millions.

That's without even looking.

Not sure how you'd get the government out of the businesses of the military, Indian Affairs and Foreign Affairs, or what it would mean if you could.

I could name lots of areas of government failure too. That, likewise, doesn't acknowledge its successes.

[BartSimpson]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Full disclosure - I work for the contractor in question.

These email problems, just like the problems with the Gun Registry, Digital Health Records in Ontario or the 'Obamacare' website, they are all related back to the government employees themselves. They drag their heels, or they introduce random impossible features after the project is mostly complete, or they just plain sabotage the project.

Scope creep is the death of every IT project and it's something I absolutely prohibit after a project is approved and launched.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

But we had nothing to do with the Pheonix Pay system!

I've spent enough time in this industry to see what happens when services are consolidated when there is no need to consolidate them. Email happens to be a good thing to consolidate. But this need to go to shared data centers is insane. All it does is create larger central points of failure.

Shared data centers? Don't you mean "The Cloud"?? It's a fucking miracle from Jesus Himself, don't you know? The Cloud will cure cancer, end global warming, and bring about peace on earth and don't you dare tell the dumbass managers that it's just a fucking virtual server cluster in a unsecured warehouse in Michigan or they'll burn you at the stake for heresy.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Service Alberta has been trying to do a disaster recovery test for what seems like years, but they can't because they end up picking a time that some Ministry or another is doing some mission critical task. They couldn't do it in May, because we have year end. They can't do it in June, July or August, because Fire Season and SRD needs their control centers operational 24/7. They can't do it in September or October, because the Legislature is sitting. They can't do in in November, because Advanced education is marking exams for Universities. December and January are out, due to holidays. That leaves February and March. And this year, those got quashed because of an interim Budget being authored.

Just let them know in writing that your first DR exercise will take place during an actual disaster and now that you've informed them of this in writing that they can't deny knowing about it when the disaster eventually happens.

In my office I have a motto: We're one disaster away from doing it right.

(Maybe two.)

Feel free to borrow it!

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

All they have to do is look at larger businesses. They have smaller multiple data centers, and only consolidate those services that make sense to consolidate. New Product development in California does not need to run off the same infrastructure as Sales in Hong Kong does!

Intel does this really well. Distributed data farms around the world with email centrally managed but replicated to regional server farms. They moved to this model back in 2003 and it's been working great ever since.

[BeaverFever]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

People are more concerned with the new pay system. I have staff who aren't getting paid, or who are ready for mat leave and don't have any of the paperwork they need yet. And they can't through to the HR folks who were all let go to centralize the system in New Brunswick.

Sounds like my employer, after "improvements" and "outsourcing optimization" in 2014-2015

[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Scope creep is the death of every IT project and it's something I absolutely prohibit after a project is approved and launched.

With the famous Obamacare website, even though we took the heat for all the departmental clashes, we came out on top. This is what our stock looks like since:

0:

gib-a.JPG [ 31.35 KiB | Viewed 620 times ]

Didn't hurt a bit!

And because government knows we've got their back and will take the heat for internal disputes as far as the public goes, we've gotten many more contracts from the US government since. For example, every security check the government does, comes through us.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Shared data centers? Don't you mean "The Cloud"?? It's a fucking miracle from Jesus Himself, don't you know? The Cloud will cure cancer, end global warming, and bring about peace on earth and don't you dare tell the dumbass managers that it's just a fucking virtual server cluster in a unsecured warehouse in Michigan or they'll burn you at the stake for heresy.

Sweet Jesus Mary Joseph, don't get me started on the bullshit that is 'the cloud'! Almost as idiotic as the 'Internet of things'. How often are you driving to work and suddenly thing "Gee, I should turn the lights on in the living room! Wow, that app sure saved me that time!"

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Just let them know in writing that your first DR exercise will take place during an actual disaster and now that you've informed them of this in writing that they can't deny knowing about it when the disaster eventually happens.

In my office I have a motto: We're one disaster away from doing it right.

(Maybe two.)

Feel free to borrow it!

We've been saying that for a while! We had a major outage a month or so ago, where they were moving roaming profiles from one SAN to another. They said there would be no noticeable outage. It actually resulted in huge problems, as profiles became corrupt. Tens of thousands of users experienced problems for a couple weeks as things were rebuilt. And to top it off, now they added another change window for critical changes on Thursday night. There are going to be some interesting Friday mornings coming!

And that was just a 'minor' change! And I am totally stealing that motto!

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Intel does this really well. Distributed data farms around the world with email centrally managed but replicated to regional server farms. They moved to this model back in 2003 and it's been working great ever since.

There are shared services here that work well. Like above, email is one. Another is something we are the first Ministry to implement - common printing. Every floor of every building has the same exact model of Lexmark multifunction printer. I can log on to any PC in the ministry (also managed by Service Alberta) print to a common queue, walk to any printer on any floor and swipe my door access badge on the RFID receiver attached to the printer, and the touch screen will show me all the jobs that are assigned to me. I can then direct them to print, fax, hold, or delete. I can also feed documents into the scanner, and they will be emailed to me as a PDF.

And the maintenance of all the printers is farmed out to a private company, on public bid. It just works like it's supposed to.

On the other side, we've been avoiding moving things like out in-house applications and Oracle Databases to them, because they refuse to provide long term costs, and will not guarantee us access to be able to maintain the applications directly. Previous experience in other ministries has resulted in departments such as Justice and the Solicitor General having multi day and even multi week outages in their mission critical apps. Something we, as one of the few revenue generating ministries, cannot afford.

But we've been ordered by our new NDP overlords to come up with a plan by July to transition everything to shared services within 3 years. As timing goes, that's as long as we have on our current contract before we get into the 4 'optional' years.