5 ms·

Not all government departments are like that, but too many are, probably the majority. What I've noticed on the ones that work is that they have a core group o

Not all government departments are like that, but too many are, probably the majority. What I've noticed on the ones that work is that they have a core group of technical managers and architects that hold in their heads the whole system architecture and organization. These are people that for more than 10 years decide what will be done and how it will be done. This seems to happen on the more financially crucial and essential areas of the government (e.g: revenue from resources). It is in the more accessory/non-essential departments where there is rotation of technical staff that the chaos thrives. Profit centers are usually organized and efficient. Cost centers aren't.

willhslade 7y ago
Are you familiar with our tax website? Google CCRA.
- jbay808 7y ago
  It's very slow, but I'm always impressed by how functional it is and how easy it is to find what I'm looking for. I'd rate it 7/10, which is higher than I'd rate a lot of Google's stuff.
  - derefr 7y ago
    It’s pretty clear that it’s a new frontend talking to a very old (probably green-screen style mainframe application) backend through some kind of gateway, though. Maybe with some modern DBMSes serving as ancillary data storage, but with the legacy system definitely being the system-of-record that everything has to interface with in the end. If a new-ish web app for a bank or government service has a “maintenance period” where it becomes inaccessible between 5PM and 9AM each day—without the actual web layer going out, just seemingly changing its access ACLs on the data layer—that’s because they’ve got the web app fronting a mainframe that was designed for explicit OLTP ingest / OLAP batch ETL phase separation. The new record event stream gets collated at night to build queriable/indexed tables. Often on hardware so slow that it needs the entire maintenance period to finish building those tables+indices. (This is why better performance in these systems is hard: if you want higher OLTP ingest throughput on the same hardware, you can have it, but then they’ll need longer maintenance windows, so long that they’ll now break their SLAs by being unavailable during business hours!)
    - jbay808 7y ago
      Thanks, I found this post fascinating and informative.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Late reply to a now-closed thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22094219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22094219 I've quasi-blogged at https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius When I do re-start, that will at least get updates. There's a new blog, I promise, eventually coming to GitLab, likely: https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/lair-of-the-id https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/lair-of-the-id Or https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/synopticon https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/synopticon And yes, technology as predicated on energy flux is a principle I've largely accepted. Vaclav Smil's work is singular in this, though I find Daniel Yergin's to be so as well, though that seems largely unintentional / accidental. It's oil, not money, that changes everything. (Or at least changed it.)

willhslade 7y ago

Are you familiar with our tax website? Google CCRA.

jbay808 7y ago
It's very slow, but I'm always impressed by how functional it is and how easy it is to find what I'm looking for. I'd rate it 7/10, which is higher than I'd rate a lot of Google's stuff.
- derefr 7y ago
  It’s pretty clear that it’s a new frontend talking to a very old (probably green-screen style mainframe application) backend through some kind of gateway, though. Maybe with some modern DBMSes serving as ancillary data storage, but with the legacy system definitely being the system-of-record that everything has to interface with in the end. If a new-ish web app for a bank or government service has a “maintenance period” where it becomes inaccessible between 5PM and 9AM each day—without the actual web layer going out, just seemingly changing its access ACLs on the data layer—that’s because they’ve got the web app fronting a mainframe that was designed for explicit OLTP ingest / OLAP batch ETL phase separation. The new record event stream gets collated at night to build queriable/indexed tables. Often on hardware so slow that it needs the entire maintenance period to finish building those tables+indices. (This is why better performance in these systems is hard: if you want higher OLTP ingest throughput on the same hardware, you can have it, but then they’ll need longer maintenance windows, so long that they’ll now break their SLAs by being unavailable during business hours!)
  - jbay808 7y ago
    Thanks, I found this post fascinating and informative.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Late reply to a now-closed thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22094219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22094219 I've quasi-blogged at https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius When I do re-start, that will at least get updates. There's a new blog, I promise, eventually coming to GitLab, likely: https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/lair-of-the-id https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/lair-of-the-id Or https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/synopticon https://gitlab.com/dredmorbius/synopticon And yes, technology as predicated on energy flux is a principle I've largely accepted. Vaclav Smil's work is singular in this, though I find Daniel Yergin's to be so as well, though that seems largely unintentional / accidental. It's oil, not money, that changes everything. (Or at least changed it.)