Posts by John Holley
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I may have to write a more fully detailed tome for you Russell!
What most don’t realise, but mentioned by Cassandra, is how secretive and authoritarian the ATA was. Worse, the DIA knew of many of the serious issues e.g., the ATA arbitrarily selecting a vendor for a solution after the RFP selection process had clearly selected another vendor (I know of at least 3 instances where this occurred).
You had the ATA and Auckland City obfuscating on OIA and LGOIMA requests – the latter being clearly in conflict of the intent of the act and the guidance from the ombudsmen. Much of the info was there but the ATA and complicit council staff blocked the release of information that would have brought this all to light much sooner. The ATA told staff that all documents needed to be tagged as “draft” and therefore were not subject to OIA or LGOIMA requests, for example. This is absolutely incorrect, but when you are use to working in an organisation cloaked in secrecy, Watercare, why would you want to be open to the people who will end up paying for your stuff ups?
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
SAP, when done well, is a really good solution. I stand by the decision to use it, just not the greenfield approach that was taken by the ATA.
The ARC and ARTA pushed to leverage existing investment. That happened for Transport. Don't blame SAP.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to TracyMac,
We had a really smooth running SAP instance at the ARC (which Transport copied and had up and running in 6 months).
We had full workflow for payments, including approvals. (no paper needed to be stamped or signed). If you were a supplier and submitted and invoice that matched the PO# you were given and had the right amount on it, you got paid in 7 days. Oh yeah, no PO, no invoice. Worked a treat.
Auckland City Council staff said you couldn't do that...and the consultants...so Auckland Council was paying suppliers out of legacy systems on Nov 1.
Transport? Didn't listen to Auckland City folk or the consultants and had a working system on Nov 1. They were paying suppliers out of the new system from Day 1. (and don't forget the size and volume of payments Transport makes)
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to ,
ARTA's SAP was the ARC instance (which provided shared services for both the ARC and ARTA). This included all the core modules (including Asset Management put in at the ARC for under 2 million but listed at a future cost of 7.5 million for the new council - go figure!)
Transport, paid staff and suppliers from day 1 out of the new system. Something Council, with a greenfield approach couldn't do.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to John Holley,
Oops. That should have read
There is no legal justification under international law, including the laws of armed conflict, to deliberately target and kill an unarmed individual *if* they are *ARE* hors de combat
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
Actually, with respect to the diplomatic cables, Wikileaks only leaked (from memory) to the Confidential level. No classified documents e.g. Restricted or above, were released.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Yep. That includes helicopter flights to Auckland ;)
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Sacha,
Sorry - been busy the last few days - ironically writing an essay on the goals of al-Qaeda.
There is no legal justification under international law, including the laws of armed conflict, to deliberately target and kill an unarmed individual *if* they are not hors de combat. The unanswered question then is what OBL was doing? So yes, you can legally shoot an unarmed individual if they attempt to escape or commit a hostile act.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
National security or defence matters are valid reasons (by the Act) to deny an OIA request.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Let's be clear here. This was a US reaction to a direct attack on their soil, killings 1000s of US citizens. Any student of US geo-politics/strategy will tell you this was just plain stupid and, when you finally piss off the really big kid on the block, his reaction will be severe.
But let's be clear that there is no evidence that the US have killed hundreds of thousands of dead brown people. (One certainly can argue on wasted cash though)
We all tend to forget what a brutal regime the Taliban were (and would like to be). We tend to forget that it has mainly been "brown people" killing "brown people". The US may have helped flame the fires, especially with the invasion of Iraq, but Al-Qaeda set the world on this path.
Given Al-Qaeda's goals:
1. Short term - removal of western influence in Islamic states
2. Creation of a fundamentalist caliphate (Yeah, OBL had a god complex deep down)
3. Islam expanding through the world and, possibly, removal of infidelsI would tend to say the US reaction, especially to the Taliban regime, was entirely appropriate. Why should you let a regime harbour and support terrorists that have killed 1000s of your citizens?
How the counter-insurgency has been fought is a different issue.