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And yet, I have first-hand witnessed a scenario like the one described in an AU government department. A small system developed by business (one person who had
by Smoosh 6y ago
And yet, I have first-hand witnessed a scenario like the one described in an AU government department. A small system developed by business (one person who had subsequently moved on) using Excel and Word and macros to keep track of information and generate letters to "customers" had become an essential tool, but unsupported and undocumented. When we (IT) recommended redeveloping it in Java with an SQL database (and documentation and testing and backups), they balked at the cost. Partly because the original person did the work "in their spare time", so the business never saw the actual costs. And partly because there are zero infrastructure costs with Excel and Word. There was very much a feeling that IT massively inflate the costs and will build a Rolls Royce when a Ford will do. It was a house of straw vs house of bricks situation, but they were happy with their straw house, they thought their only problem was that the little pig who built it was no longer there.
- jonplackett 6y agoWas that system working on the single most important problem facing the country at that time though?
- srtjstjsj 6y agoWhy are there infrastructure costs for a database server? Once you have one it can host all your small databases.
- rvba 6y agoDeveloper salaries are the main cost.
- bigger_cheese 6y agoThe problem with my Private sector Australian company is everything IT related is aggressively outsourced through various networks of contractors. In the old days when the relevant business application was written, hosted and supported in house there was a clear chain of responsibility I could pick up the phone and I'd have a direct line to the person who "owned" the application. Nowadays if there is a problem it's pick up the phone talk to helpdesk get assigned a ticket number and get the buck passed between different teams, The database team will blame the server team, server team will blame the networking team, networking team will reply to ticket with 'looks ok no problem on my end' and the ticket will get closed without resolution. From what I can tell there are a bunch of incentives in the support contract around how quickly support can close out tickets, so rather than trying to fix the problem support try to do everything they can to farm the ticket off to someone else so it won't impact their metrics. The whole thing feels maddening and has to be rather inefficient.
- michaelt 6y agoPaying your share of having a unix sysadmin and a DBA available 24/7.