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> Let me provide some background information for people who aren't familiar with the agencies involved in this (Centrelink, Medicare, and the Australian Taxatio

> Let me provide some background information for people who aren't familiar with the agencies involved in this (Centrelink, Medicare, and the Australian Taxation Office). These places have some of the worst-run IT departments on the planet. You can add Australia Post to that list as well. Even though it is now technically a corporation, it still carries the stench of its public service roots.

jiggawatts 4y ago
To add extra spice to their already broken organisation, Australia Post acquired StarTrack for parcel delivery. I witnessed an operator in the distribution centre wait a solid thirty minutes for a key lookup in their database. I timed it with my phone. I had time to get get lunch and come back. A key lookup. Literally the consignment number. I grilled him a bit on the details, and it turns out that all single-row lookups take that much time. Name, phone number, or any other details all take about half an hour to produce a result. There are parcel delivery services that can deliver door-to-door faster than their IT systems can look up a record. It's a flabbergasting level of incompetence, but I'm told it's been like that for years, and that they were told not to fix it because during the merger they were to "put tools down" and not spend time and money on anything that Australia Post will fix anyway. I suspect it's still just as broken.
- ctippett 4y ago
  StarTrek ran on top of Teradata I believe, although I don't recall it being quite that bad.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    It's clearly just a missing index (or indexes) somewhere. The guy explained that it has been "slowly getting worse" over many years, which is what you'd expect if there's table scans going on over a steadily growing volume of data. IMHO, this is such as prevalent problem that it's the pandemic disease of SQL databases. They really should have indexing on by default for most columns, with the option of disabling unused indexes (perhaps even automatically). Instead what happens is that 90-95% of all databases are 2-5 orders of magnitude slower than they ought to be, because developers are just unable to grasp these fundamental concepts. Developers haven't gotten any better at this over the last three decades. The tools have to get better to compensate instead. PS: Almost all "no-SQL" databases are automatically or implicitly indexed. When people say that they're "much faster than SQL", I just assume that this is one of the biggest reasons. They're not inherently faster. Instead they're faster by default.
    - selcuka 4y ago
      > They really should have indexing on by default for most columns, with the option of disabling unused indexes (perhaps even automatically). Oracle does that. I think it is not enabled by default, but once you turn it on it's pretty much automated. It creates, rebuilds, and drops indexes based on the application workload. There are third party tools for other databases (such as Dexter for PostgreSQL).
hnick 4y ago
I have a small business account registered to my home address (as a MyPost Business sender), so whenever I buy a parcel from anyone it emails the business that it's coming. They just do an address match on their side and email the business even if I gave the store my own email. Totally annoying and a privacy issue, they don't care and couldn't tell me how to fix it.
- PickledHotdog 4y ago
  If I understand the issue correctly, you buy something online, giving your personal email address and home address. But because the home address is the same as your business address, AP 'intelligently' sends the notifications to your business email address? What happens if you set up an AP MyPost account with your personal email address and home address?
  - hnick 4y ago
    They also associate by mobile phone number and name matching based on one reply I got to my ticket. They suggested changing the name on the business account but that would just shift the issue to someone else unless we use a fake name. And I think it did not let me do it when I tried, it's been a year or two so I forget some details. > What happens if you set up an AP MyPost account with your personal email address and home address? I did, I can't remember the details but it didn't work. I think it prevented me from adding one type of data because that was already in the other account as a unique identifier (possibly phone number). I just tried today though and it let me add my number, so maybe that fixed it finally.
WatchDog 4y ago
Australia Post IT has it's problems, but I don't think it's really much worse then similar sized private sector IT, the banks are a nightmare.
- nineteen999 4y ago
  Having worked in both Aus Post and banking environments I can assure you that Aus Post is worse. If you had seen inside in the debacle that was their "digital mailbox" project you would know what I'm talking about.
  - WatchDog 4y ago
    Haha, I worked for a wholly owned Auspost subsidiary during the inception of the digital mailbox project, we did some work for it in the periphery. The execs would talk in breathless terms about how innovative it was, and how agile the delivery is, and how we should try to emulate their success. AP is a big place, and so are the banks, I guess my views are informed by my personal experience, but at least personally, I've found the banks to be more dysfunctional internally. I guess everyone's experience will be different though.
mission_failed 4y ago
As a customer and tax payer, Aust Post gets top marks for actually contacting me after I submitted a message about not being able to login, then passing it on to an IT person who rang me a couple of days later to say it was fixed. The vast majority of companies who promise to get back to me never do, yet Aust Post called me twice to investigate and resolve.
smackeyacky 4y ago
I'd rather deal with Australia Post 100 times in a row than ever have to talk to DHL ever again. Those guys really suck.

jiggawatts 4y ago

To add extra spice to their already broken organisation, Australia Post acquired StarTrack for parcel delivery. I witnessed an operator in the distribution centre wait a solid thirty minutes for a key lookup in their database. I timed it with my phone. I had time to get get lunch and come back. A key lookup. Literally the consignment number. I grilled him a bit on the details, and it turns out that all single-row lookups take that much time. Name, phone number, or any other details all take about half an hour to produce a result. There are parcel delivery services that can deliver door-to-door faster than their IT systems can look up a record. It's a flabbergasting level of incompetence, but I'm told it's been like that for years, and that they were told not to fix it because during the merger they were to "put tools down" and not spend time and money on anything that Australia Post will fix anyway. I suspect it's still just as broken.

ctippett 4y ago
StarTrek ran on top of Teradata I believe, although I don't recall it being quite that bad.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  It's clearly just a missing index (or indexes) somewhere. The guy explained that it has been "slowly getting worse" over many years, which is what you'd expect if there's table scans going on over a steadily growing volume of data. IMHO, this is such as prevalent problem that it's the pandemic disease of SQL databases. They really should have indexing on by default for most columns, with the option of disabling unused indexes (perhaps even automatically). Instead what happens is that 90-95% of all databases are 2-5 orders of magnitude slower than they ought to be, because developers are just unable to grasp these fundamental concepts. Developers haven't gotten any better at this over the last three decades. The tools have to get better to compensate instead. PS: Almost all "no-SQL" databases are automatically or implicitly indexed. When people say that they're "much faster than SQL", I just assume that this is one of the biggest reasons. They're not inherently faster. Instead they're faster by default.
  - selcuka 4y ago
    > They really should have indexing on by default for most columns, with the option of disabling unused indexes (perhaps even automatically). Oracle does that. I think it is not enabled by default, but once you turn it on it's pretty much automated. It creates, rebuilds, and drops indexes based on the application workload. There are third party tools for other databases (such as Dexter for PostgreSQL).

hnick 4y ago

I have a small business account registered to my home address (as a MyPost Business sender), so whenever I buy a parcel from anyone it emails the business that it's coming. They just do an address match on their side and email the business even if I gave the store my own email. Totally annoying and a privacy issue, they don't care and couldn't tell me how to fix it.

PickledHotdog 4y ago
If I understand the issue correctly, you buy something online, giving your personal email address and home address. But because the home address is the same as your business address, AP 'intelligently' sends the notifications to your business email address? What happens if you set up an AP MyPost account with your personal email address and home address?
- hnick 4y ago
  They also associate by mobile phone number and name matching based on one reply I got to my ticket. They suggested changing the name on the business account but that would just shift the issue to someone else unless we use a fake name. And I think it did not let me do it when I tried, it's been a year or two so I forget some details. > What happens if you set up an AP MyPost account with your personal email address and home address? I did, I can't remember the details but it didn't work. I think it prevented me from adding one type of data because that was already in the other account as a unique identifier (possibly phone number). I just tried today though and it let me add my number, so maybe that fixed it finally.

WatchDog 4y ago

Australia Post IT has it's problems, but I don't think it's really much worse then similar sized private sector IT, the banks are a nightmare.

nineteen999 4y ago
Having worked in both Aus Post and banking environments I can assure you that Aus Post is worse. If you had seen inside in the debacle that was their "digital mailbox" project you would know what I'm talking about.
- WatchDog 4y ago
  Haha, I worked for a wholly owned Auspost subsidiary during the inception of the digital mailbox project, we did some work for it in the periphery. The execs would talk in breathless terms about how innovative it was, and how agile the delivery is, and how we should try to emulate their success. AP is a big place, and so are the banks, I guess my views are informed by my personal experience, but at least personally, I've found the banks to be more dysfunctional internally. I guess everyone's experience will be different though.

mission_failed 4y ago

As a customer and tax payer, Aust Post gets top marks for actually contacting me after I submitted a message about not being able to login, then passing it on to an IT person who rang me a couple of days later to say it was fixed. The vast majority of companies who promise to get back to me never do, yet Aust Post called me twice to investigate and resolve.

smackeyacky 4y ago

I'd rather deal with Australia Post 100 times in a row than ever have to talk to DHL ever again. Those guys really suck.