http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175

"For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance number
was instead filled in with a birth date."

Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years use in
business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a wealthy
democratic country didn't use data types.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd

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Richard Huxton wrote:
> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175
>
> "For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance number
> was instead filled in with a birth date."
>
> Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years use in
> business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a
> wealthy democratic country didn't use data types.

This is Unbelievable? This is commonplace.

Joshua D. Drake


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----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
To: "Richard Huxton" <dev@archonet.com>
Cc: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 8:00 AM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] OT: Canadian Tax Database


> Richard Huxton wrote:
>> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175
>>
>> "For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance number
>> was instead filled in with a birth date."
>>
>> Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years use in
>> business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a wealthy
>> democratic country didn't use data types.
>
> This is Unbelievable? This is commonplace.
>
And due at least in part to government (and other institutions operated by
damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than paying for
someone who actually knows what they're doing. Just as buying cheap junk
always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't know their
ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.

This time CRA is embarrassed, but they don't care because the people that
suffer are the taxpayers who ultimately paid for such shoddy work in the
first place. There's no consequences for the bureaucratic peons really
responsible for it. They probably even get paid obscene sums in overtime
for the time they spend fixing the problem. More annoying, for me, are the
scurrilous scoundrels that pass themselves off as competent software
consultants who take advantage of such incompetence in their clients' staff.
I couldn't begin to document all the cases I have seen where either the
wrong software was used (imagine a spreadsheet being used as an RDBMS) or
the right software was grossly abused (imagine forcing a data entry clerk to
enter the same data four times because the developer was too damned lazy or
incompetent to develop a simple form to collect the data once and then
submit it to the four externally owned databases that needed to be queried
using it, and then having to manually collate the results returned from the
queries). And then businesses operated by capable folk get burned by such
incompetent and unethical scoundrels and swear off custom software because
they'd rather have a COTS product that gives a 80% fit than try for a 100%
fit with a custom product that in the end doesn't work at all. I have been
told by some of these folk that they have found it virtually impossible to
find capable software developers. This is because these scoundrels I
mention outnumber capable developers by several orders of magnitude (and the
current state of the curricula at colleges 'training' programmers doesn't
help).

It is soooo easy to get cynical, and very discouraged, when I think about
this. :-( Maybe I should have myself lobotomized and become one of the
mindless grunts at Canada post.

Cheers

Ted



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> And due at least in part to government (and other institutions operated by
> damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than paying for
> someone who actually knows what they're doing. Just as buying cheap junk
> always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't know their
> ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.

What you describe is a hundred times better than the reality... most of
them actually get _expensive_ junk with some kick-back ;-)

Cheers,
Csaba.



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>> And due at least in part to government (and other institutions operated
>> by
>> damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than paying
>> for
>> someone who actually knows what they're doing. Just as buying cheap junk
>> always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't know
>> their
>> ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.
>
> What you describe is a hundred times better than the reality... most of
> them actually get _expensive_ junk with some kick-back ;-)
>
I concede.

You're right.

I recall being told by one project manager I knew years ago who had an
opportunity to create a bid for an RFP issued by Transport Canada (long long
ago). He refuse, so his employer prepared the bid. He refused because the
RFP was a joke. There were absolutely no functional requirements, nor
non-functional requirements, identified in the RFP. His company didn't get
the contract, but being a bidder they did see the winning bid. It was just
as ludicrous! It, too, failed to identify any requirements, and so it did
not actually promise to deliver anything, working or not! They would have
satisfied the terms of their contract if, after a few years, and hundreds of
man-years, they walked away without delivering anything. That tragedy cost
Canada hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars (I don't know if
any final accounting was ever done - that would be opposed by the "civil
servants" responsible lest they should be criticised for their
incompetence), and ultimately nothing was delivered because the next elected
government cancelled the project, refusing to through more money into their
opposition's money pit - they prefer, of course, to through it into money
pits created by their political supporters. The decisions to create the
project, and to cancel it, were political, but the incompetence really
responsible for it was lower done within the ranks of the civil service.
The project could have delivered something good had the civil servants
involved been competent! Similar nonsense happened with the firearms
registry. For most of the early history of it, the software systems used
where so bad, and inappropriate, that the clerks that had to use it could
have been ten times more productive if they had the use of properly designed
and implemented software. I can not understand how it became so
outrageously expensive when the real needs for it were so simple (relative
to products I have worked on). I'll bet real, genuinely capable, software
engineers could have delivered a gold and platinum plated product for just a
few million dollars; nothing really relative to what it ended up costing us.

I know contractors that refuse to do business with the government because of
this sort of nonsense, and I know, from discussions with ex-civil servants,
that such incompetence is the norm in government. I know engineers who have
been burned by government by investing a fortune in new products or
services, and then educating relevant civil servants WRT to the new science
or technology involved, only to find these same civil servants give
contracts to provide the new product or service to incompetent bozos who
didn't know the first thing about it. They just happened to be cheaper.
Why waste time and money developing a product or service that is really
relevant only to government when the risk of such unethical conduct by
government is so high?

I don't support anyone out there can describe a project or three where
things were done right, to provide a cure for the depressing and
discouraging nature of what this thread has turned out to be?

Cheers

Ted



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TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 09:15 -0500, Ted Byers wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
> To: "Richard Huxton" <dev@archonet.com>
> Cc: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 8:00 AM
> Subject: Re: [GENERAL] OT: Canadian Tax Database
>
>
> > Richard Huxton wrote:
> >> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175
> >>
> >> "For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance number
> >> was instead filled in with a birth date."
> >>
> >> Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years use in
> >> business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a wealthy
> >> democratic country didn't use data types.
> >
> > This is Unbelievable? This is commonplace.
> >
> And due at least in part to government (and other institutions operated by
> damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than paying for
> someone who actually knows what they're doing. Just as buying cheap junk
> always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't know their
> ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.
>
Come on, they don't hire incompetent fools. The hire the people
they need to fill their quota regardless of how well trained
and experienced they are. I am not saying that non white males
are in any way less competent than white males, but by removing
them from the pool does not make things better. The biggest
problem with quotas is not hiring less qualified staff, it is
that less qualified staff know why they were hired and know that
they are very unlikely to be fired, so they have little incentive
to work hard or attempt to do their best, they can always fail
upwards.

....snip...

--
Guy Fraser
Network Administrator
The Internet Centre
1-888-450-6787
(780)450-6787



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On Thursday 08 March 2007 08:15, "Ted Byers" <r.ted.byers@rogers.com> wrote:
> They would have satisfied the terms of their contract
> if, after a few years, and hundreds of man-years, they walked away
> without delivering anything. That tragedy cost Canada hundreds of
> millions, if not billions, of dollars

It didn't happen to be a gun owners' registry, perhaps?

(fellow Canadians will understand

--
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work. - Thomas Edison


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----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Hodgson" <ahodgson@simkin.ca>
To: <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] OT: Canadian Tax Database


> On Thursday 08 March 2007 08:15, "Ted Byers" <r.ted.byers@rogers.com>
> wrote:
>> They would have satisfied the terms of their contract
>> if, after a few years, and hundreds of man-years, they walked away
>> without delivering anything. That tragedy cost Canada hundreds of
>> millions, if not billions, of dollars
>
> It didn't happen to be a gun owners' registry, perhaps?
>
> (fellow Canadians will understand
>
No. This predated that fiasco by more than ten years. In fact, had it been
done right, it would have been a much much larger project than the registry.

Ted



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>> > Richard Huxton wrote:
>> >> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175
>> >>
>> >> "For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance number
>> >> was instead filled in with a birth date."
>> >>
>> >> Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years use in
>> >> business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a
>> >> wealthy
>> >> democratic country didn't use data types.
>> >
>> > This is Unbelievable? This is commonplace.
>> >
>> And due at least in part to government (and other institutions operated
>> by
>> damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than paying
>> for
>> someone who actually knows what they're doing. Just as buying cheap junk
>> always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't know
>> their
>> ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.
>>
> Come on, they don't hire incompetent fools. The hire the people

You CAN'T be serious! Have you ever dealt with them or with the
consequences of their incompetence?

> they need to fill their quota regardless of how well trained
> and experienced they are. I am not saying that non white males
> are in any way less competent than white males, but by removing
> them from the pool does not make things better. The biggest
> problem with quotas is not hiring less qualified staff, it is
> that less qualified staff know why they were hired and know that
> they are very unlikely to be fired, so they have little incentive
> to work hard or attempt to do their best, they can always fail
> upwards.
>
What does this have to do with anything? No one here, except you, has said
anything about the profile of the people involved WRT race, gender,
religion, &c. Nor has anyone said anything about "qualifications". The
only thing that has been said is that, based on what is seen in the "work",
the people responsible for that work must be incompetent. It is an
inference based on what is seen in what has been done and has nothing to do
with any of the prohibited grounds for discrimination used as excuses for
affirmative action. And yes, I have seen cases where less qualified, even
unqualified, people have been hired as a result of these affirmative action
initiatives (and I have been told, by HR personelle in government, that
certain favoured groups are deemed to be superior to white men, even if the
favoured party has no education nor experience and the latter have earned
doctorates and decades of experience), but no one has said anything about
such people being employed on the projects to which I referred. But this is
an aspect of our present society that is bound to degenerate into a flame
war, launched by the politically correct, so we ought to say little, or even
leave it alone. Those in power tend to be vicious, especially when there
are no effective checks on their conduct and no consequences for what they
do.

Cheers

Ted



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Since this thread has already degraded, I'll offer my two cents. The
biggest screw ups in US history have been instigated by groups of
privileged White men. I know my name may sound otherwise, but I'm a
White American male, so I'm not pointing the finger at another group.
Let's see, Enron, Arthur Anderson, the entire Bush Administration and
its fiascos in Iraq, Katrina, foreign policy in general, etc. I've
worked for large, major IT providers and I can tell you that
incompetency shows no racial or ethnic boundaries. It tends to exist in
large, politically connected, no bid contractors, not low bid
contractors or ones who benefited from affirmative action.


Ted Byers wrote:
>>> > Richard Huxton wrote:
>>> >> http://www.thestar.com/News/article/189175
>>> >>
>>> >> "For instance, in some cases the field for the social insurance
>>> number
>>> >> was instead filled in with a birth date."
>>> >>
>>> >> Unbelievable. Sixty years of electronic computing, fifty years
>>> use in
>>> >> business and the "professionals" who built the tax system for a
>>> >> wealthy
>>> >> democratic country didn't use data types.
>>> >
>>> > This is Unbelievable? This is commonplace.
>>> >
>>> And due at least in part to government (and other institutions
>>> operated by
>>> damned fools) opting for the least expensive provider rather than
>>> paying for
>>> someone who actually knows what they're doing. Just as buying cheap
>>> junk
>>> always comes back to get you, hiring incompetent fools that don't
>>> know their
>>> ass from a hole in the ground will come back to get you too.
>>>
>> Come on, they don't hire incompetent fools. The hire the people
>
> You CAN'T be serious! Have you ever dealt with them or with the
> consequences of their incompetence?
>
>> they need to fill their quota regardless of how well trained
>> and experienced they are. I am not saying that non white males
>> are in any way less competent than white males, but by removing
>> them from the pool does not make things better. The biggest
>> problem with quotas is not hiring less qualified staff, it is
>> that less qualified staff know why they were hired and know that
>> they are very unlikely to be fired, so they have little incentive
>> to work hard or attempt to do their best, they can always fail
>> upwards.
>>
> What does this have to do with anything? No one here, except you, has
> said anything about the profile of the people involved WRT race,
> gender, religion, &c. Nor has anyone said anything about
> "qualifications". The only thing that has been said is that, based on
> what is seen in the "work", the people responsible for that work must
> be incompetent. It is an inference based on what is seen in what has
> been done and has nothing to do with any of the prohibited grounds for
> discrimination used as excuses for affirmative action. And yes, I
> have seen cases where less qualified, even unqualified, people have
> been hired as a result of these affirmative action initiatives (and I
> have been told, by HR personelle in government, that certain favoured
> groups are deemed to be superior to white men, even if the favoured
> party has no education nor experience and the latter have earned
> doctorates and decades of experience), but no one has said anything
> about such people being employed on the projects to which I referred.
> But this is an aspect of our present society that is bound to
> degenerate into a flame war, launched by the politically correct, so
> we ought to say little, or even leave it alone. Those in power tend
> to be vicious, especially when there are no effective checks on their
> conduct and no consequences for what they do.
>
> Cheers
>
> Ted
>
>
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>
> http://archives.postgresql.org/


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