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posted by martyb on Thursday November 12 2015, @07:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the schadenfreude dept.

There are many ways to gauge satisfaction with a new computer system, but when the people who have to use it show up for work wearing red and declare it "Code Red" day, you probably don't need to bother with a survey.

That's exactly what's scheduled to happen this Thursday in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, where government workers plan to protest the one-year anniversary of a controversial new computer system.

Ontario's Social Assistance Management System (SAMS), installed a year ago this week by the province's Ministry of Community and Social Services, was supposed be a more efficient replacement for its outdated case management system.

It hasn't quite turned out that way.

Several tales of woe, but no deeper dive on causes, like scope creep.


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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:37PM (#262343)

    If private companies like Google, Amazon and others, can build high capacity, rock solid, high reliability IT infrastructure then so can the government.

    you were doing ok until this, where you couldn't be more wrong

    if google fucks up its own systems, it exposes itself to risk of losing market share and real money (as long as government doesn't do the wrong thing and bail them out). the profit motive, however despised by socialist morons, is a powerful motivator and is why private companies strive to improve. the big difference between the government and the private sector (private sector that isn't in bed with government anyway) is that private companies have elections every day, when consumers either choose to buy their products/services or not.

    if governments held elections every day and public servant salaries were really threatened by poor performance, the quality of government services might increase. the real problem is that government is essentially the only monopoly with no competition and the authority to force people to buy its shit. why do you think big corporations pay politicians and lobbyists to to to get some of that monopoly money for themselves? it would be nice if politicians either had enough integrity to resist bribes (good luck with that) or they didn't have as much influence to sell in the first place (small government).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @09:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @09:29PM (#262371)

    In private business, you spend based on how much money you have. Government decides on a course of action first, then just takes that amount of money from their subjects. Thus there is no motivation for frugality; money is effectively a limitless resource. (This is not an oversimplification; this is literally how it works in places that for example rely on property taxes: Town governments, school districts, and the like, set their budgets each fiscal year, divide the property valuation in the district by that number, and that's how they decide the tax rate people are forced to pay. This is an automatic, yearly process. At least with fixed-percent sales/income taxes, the idea of increasing the percentage to cover more government spending is not automatic and has the potential to become a big political issue when proposed. But they still almost always get away with it.)

    In private business, a project coming in under-budget is a good thing; there is more money to go around for future projects. In government, agencies that come in under budget get given less money by their parent governments in the next fiscal year, so there is not only no motivation for frugality, but actually a motivation against it. (Departments within bureaucratic private businesses can begin to behave in the same way of course, but on the scale of large projects, private businesses intentionally overspending their resources doesn't have the kind of benefit has it does with government.)

    These two things conspire together to make government the wonder of the modern world that it is.

    And if there's any lesson learned, it's that overcharging and overspending is rewarded: The taxpayers never revolt against this stuff, at least not to the point of actually making a difference, and the contractors and their political masters always get away with it. (If you're from the Boston area, witness what's going on right now: After Massachusetts got royally raped up the ass by the Big Dig, there are two large-scale construction projects going on right now - the rehabbing of an "historical" bridge [bostonglobe.com] and the extension of the public transit network [universalhub.com] - where the contractors, after completing enough construction that obviously the project can't get cancelled, have come back with massive over-budget projections.)

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @11:21PM (#262404)

      You and the person to whom you replied have this naive view of business that you're comparing to this stereotype of Big Government. You have this idyllic view of efficiency and the bottom line where every dollar saved in development goes back into the company for the common good. Have you ever seen the sausage being made at a big corporation? It is ugly. And depressing. It is full of turf wars, in-fighting, money squandering, budget bloat, incompetence, etc., etc., etc. It is every bit as bad as your description of how the government works. This is the nature of large organizations, because they are run by people, and people are petty and power hungry. They'll blow thousands and thousands of dollars to redesign the office space into a cool industrial vibe, when all the employees want are new monitors and chairs. Then they'll turn around and do it all over again because the "new thing" is that cubicles walls should be pulled down and there should be an open atmosphere, until the fad changes to something else. Meanwhile these new projects over here are getting their budgets raided to support the "too big to fail" legacy monstrosity that they're bilking the Government for that is in danger of collapsing.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 13 2015, @05:10PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 13 2015, @05:10PM (#262748) Journal

      You did alright on the limitless funds, but you left out "fiat currency". When the currency is tied to something of value, government has almost unlimited funds. That is, they can bankrupt the economy, but they can't really do much more harm than that. With fiat currency, we can bankrupt today's economy, as well as the economy of future generations. The US is probably in a unique position, in that our fiat currency is the dominant currency throughout the world, so we can continue to bankrupt even more future generations.

      Some day, there will be an accounting. God only knows how that accounting will go down, but eventually, the house of cards will come tumbling down. The dollar has no intrinsic value, and it is tied to nothing of value. People who defend the dollar claim that it is tied to some mythical "trust" in government. What trust? More and more of the world is learning to distrust our government, our military, our currency, as well as our people.

      Hell, I'm American, and I don't trust much of anything American.