Posts by Glenn Pearce
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Sacha, I meant governance by the board.
But like everyone else I've had a gutsful of this.
How about that Waterview tunnel then ?
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Glenn -- I was arguing that it occurring over 6 years makes it less obvious
Fair 'nuff
The cynic in me would suggest the evidence to the court by the external auditors would be an ass covering exercise.
You could argue the same about Thompson's letter to the staff.
He's a good communicator that's for sure and know's how to do PR. -
Someone should given Swann a job as an Auditor when he gets out of the big house
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Thompson is the Chair, not the CEO. Of course, Ministers can't sack CEOs..
I realise that, who does the CEO report to do you think ?
Ultimate reposnbility is with the board and chairman.James - thanks for the further info, $17mill spread over 6 years doesn't make it any better in my mind.
The implication of the article abot the CFO is that prior to his involvement in 2006 there was much in the way of governance going on ?
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The thing is, it required the kind of expert audit that you'd expect your CIO to actually conduct....
Sort of, I'm not sure whether the overall IT spend at ODHB was completely out of whack or not.
If it was, the sort of review I'm talking about would have picked it up.
It if wasn't and Swann was clever enough to fly "under the radar" so to speak, then you're right it would have required a very detailed audit to pick it up.
But, you might suprised at the level of detail some auditors will go to, I have seen them actually ask to see version numbers and physical evidence of invoiced work having been performed. Most of the big auditing firms have specialist IT teams.
However, a determined fraudster can still get around these things.
Is there any evidence that Thompson had these things in place ?
Or are you suggesting they're not worth bothering with because IT is just too complicated and it's fair enough to just trust your senior managers ? -
IT is still one of those "mystery" areas that tend to get left to their own devices. Would Thompson have known how much he SHOULD have been spending on technical support?
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the way this is normally done by boards is to commission an independent report periodically (say bi-annually) comparing IT spend in your organisation with industry standards. They don't cost a fortune either.
CIO's fear these reports I can tell you.
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I think a DHB has a little more on it's plate than to look for fraud in it's IT sector.
"I'm sorry I was too busy to notice" doesn't cut it as an excuse with me and
"I'm sorry I was too busy to notice for 5 years" is worse
IT is still one of those "mystery" areas that tend to get left to their own devices. Would Thompson have known how much he SHOULD have been spending on technical support?
Fair enough that every board member cannot be expected to have expertise is all areas of a business although it would be nice if the skills of the board were representative to cover different aspects.
However, the issue is governance, not whether Thomson knew how much it costs to upgrade your firewall or whatever.
The board shoulld have ensured disciplines, processes, procedures, audits, checks, balances were in place to minimise the chance of seomthing like this happeneing.
Having said all that, Ryall's dithering is perplexing, something's up
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The timeline of the ODHB thing is a bit murky but even if Thompson did address it immediately when he "became aware" it had been going on for 5 years under his watch, surely there's a confidence in his governance issue there ?
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and that its not a secret?
That's my understanding too, I heard the official line is they will continue to operate as seperate entities for the forseeable.
But then management always say that to start with don't they....
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Telecom directories business, is in the process of acquiring Finda. I'm not sure what their plan would be
Maybe they've bought it because the Finda search engine seems to work, as opposed to the new Yellow one.
Or maybe they bought it to shut it down so they don't look so bad.