Posts by Russell Brown
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Tonight's show should come up pretty well. Glenda Hughes was good value, and had some comments on offering advice to, er, difficult clients.
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This Computerworld story from last September covers the way the plans inexplicably changed:
Given the time pressure, the choice of SAP made sense from a cost and complexity perspective, says one source. A limited tender process was then run to select the implementation partner to deliver the ERP solution. A consortium consisting of SAP, Deloitte, Hewlett Packard and Soltius won the tender. But it is what followed that has raised concern among senior IT people within the council.
Concerned staff say that instead of leveraging existing investment, as outlined earlier, it was decided to build a new SAP system from the ground up, involving extensive use of consultants, which has driven the cost up. They claim this approach does not support the earlier decision to select SAP without a formal tender process – because that decision was based on the intention of leveraging existing systems in order to keep costs and complexity to a minimum.
So SAP/Deloitte got the job without any competitive tender -- on the basis that existing SAP installations would be leveraged in pursuit of a quicker and cheaper transition -- and then promptly got the golden prize of a greenfields system.
The comments under the story are worth reading too. The more I know about this, the more troubled I am by it.
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Here's the relevant part of the Royal Commission's report, based on talks with officials in Toronto:
33.27. City officials expressed the view that it was better and less disruptive to use one organisation as the core entity into which others are absorbed. This insight may be relevant to aspects of the Auckland transition, for example, the proposal that the best of existing IT systems should be used as the base for the Auckland Council system.
It really does need to be emphasised that Foley ignored both internal and external advice -- and exposed Auckland ratepayers not only to very significant costs, but to a much longer transitional process. It's fairly staggering.
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An interesting story by Anthony Doesburg in 2009, shortly after Mike Foley was appointed as the ATA's IS chief:
The royal commission that dreamed up the new council studied a similar amalgamation in Toronto, where it took 10 years to unify IT systems. A piece of wisdom from the Toronto transition team was the advisability of using one of the merging organisations as the core entity into which the others are absorbed.
That could be an argument to take the best of existing IT systems and use them as a base for the new city. For core systems, such as those for managing rates collection, payroll, geographic information and licensing and permits, that probably makes sense, so long as they can cope with the Super City's size.
Naturally, Foley decided to do the exact opposite.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Duncan McKenzie,
My clients are delighted, Auckland Council a little stunned, and NZTA rather grumpy.
There is a lot that could go wrong (NZTA could appeal on a point of law, Auckland Council fail to meet its obligations and forfeit the money), but here’s hoping…
You bloody champion, Duncan. Fingers crossed.
Give the overall cost of the project, the reluctance to just do the sensible thing -- which NZTA has actually done in recent years -- and continue the cycleway along with the motorway was daft.
I actually think the perceived shape of Auckland is going to change when people start using these paths. It's easy enough to ride from Pt Chev to Onehunga now, and it's going to get a lot easier.
Apologies for hijacking a thread about another city that needs more love than we do ...
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Frédéric Bastiat,
Yes big numbers probably tough to comprehend.
Is Mr Brown claiming that none of the existing IT would have needed replacement or upgrading over the next 10 years?
It does seem odd that ongoing staff and customer demand for better and better IT and more services over the next 10 years should be in anyway a transition cost.
My view -- and it is informed by the views of people with direct knowledge of this system -- is that decisions were taken that have exposed Auckland ratepayers to huge, unnecessary and unbudgeted costs.
Also, that poor technical decisions have been taken, in part because constituent councils' IT managers were ignored. A number of these have been covered in this discussion -- again, by people with direct knowledge of the process.
The implications of the decision to build an entirely new system have been signalled in the massive difference in the cost of transitional systems between the one managed by the ATA ($56 million) and Auckland Transport ($2.2 million). And no, the Auckland Transport COO is not small. It accounts for two thirds of rates revenue.
And yes, at the very least, I regard any spending to get the Auckland Council to the point where it can send out rates bills, for example, as transitional. By the most conservative measure, the costs are several times those presented by Rodney Hide last year. A series of IT professionals in this thread have expressed shock at the figures.
I was told last year that:
- Cabinet and Internal Affairs were alarmed at the costs being generated by ATA decisions.
- That there was a deliberate effort to bury some of those costs until after a council was elected, thus making the costs the responsibility of the new council.
- The ATA was being aggressively secretive about these issues when approached by journalists.
Given that this story involves $300 million in unbudgeted costs to ratepayers, I am inclined to believe that the warnings I heard last year were correct. And that we were lied to.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Lisa Black,
The manager told me on my next visit that they were trying desperately to get more because so many people were interested in it as a stylish, functional commuting/city bike.
Tim at our local cycle shop, Rode, tells me he's also selling a lot of those stylish city bikes to women -- and the bikes aren't exactly cheap either. Clearly, there's a demand for something that's not a mountain bike.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Just started a job in Fanshawe St, and am in the process of identifying the least-risky way to get here. Assuming I take the Northwestern Cycleway, how bad is the traffic once I get to Newton Road. I think nipping through Western Park and then heading past the Birdcage and around Victoria Park is the safest way to go – but open to suggestions.
Newton Road's a bit nasty -- very high kerbs, lots of morning traffic -- but the footpath is easily wide enough to use until you get off the bridge. I do hate that little slope up to Newton from the cycleway, though -- it's funny how quite small slopes can be more irksome than big ones.
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Also, having bitched about Auckland's hilly terrain, I should acknowledge how great it is to have a city full of boutique volcanoes to play on. I just nipped up Mt Albert, which is a really excellent way to get up a sweat without having to ride too far from home.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
What about free adult learn-to-ride lessons for those who never did (such as those who grew up in hilly places)?
This is something that often gets forgotten. It wasn't so hard for me to step up my riding because I've ridden on and off since childhood -- and learned urban riding in London, where I was briefly a cycle courier. But it's a bigger leap for people who don't have any experience.