Posts by John Holley
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Russell Brown,
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.
Hi Russell. Not quite correct. When, after realising what some of us had been saying for several months was correct, the ATA came to the realisation (October 09 timeframe) that the Council would need an ERP for day 1, a process started to review if an existing ERP solution in use by one of the councils would be suitable for the basis of the new Council’s ERP environment. This review was done by Deloitte (nothing at all wrong in this) and peer reviewed by EY. (from memory) Additionally, from memory again, there was general support from the CIOs. This was inline with, where possible, leveraging existing council IT investments as part of the merger process. (No different to what a commercial organisation would do)
The ATA then had a competitive tender for the implementation of SAP, which a consortium led by Deloitte won. The selection was, I believe, made by the steering group which had no CIOs with Local Govt SAP experience on it (ARC, ACC and WCC). Obviously the steering group agreed with Deloitte’s approach of a green field implementation.
So the bigger issue is one of governance from the ATA and not including subject matter experts on SAP implementations from the councils on the steering group.
I have been told that there was an architectural assessment made by staff from ACC that was critical to the approach but that this was not provided to the steering group and that ACC managed to avoid releasing to media who made LGOIMA requests for it – using semantics to not release it rather than following the act and the guidelines from the Ombudsmen (If you know what they want, even if they have name wrong or some other detail, and there are no valid reasons not to release it then release it)
From the Ombudsmen
Section 12(2) of the OIA (section 10(2) of the LGOIMA) states that a request must be specified with “due particularity”. This means that the person receiving the request must be able to identify the information requested.
Also, and this was an argument I had with ACC staff, any request you make for info from a council e.g., when is the next rubbish day in my street?, is a LGOIMA request!
You do not need to use legal language when requesting official information.
A request does not need to be in writing – you can make requests in person or by the telephone.You do not even have to state that your request is being made under the OIA or LGOIMA (although it may be helpful to do so). Any request for information to an organisation covered by the OIA or LGOIMA must be treated as an official information request.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Russell Brown,
That is correct on the IPV6 Russell. When the original RFP document came out (around Nov/Dec 09) IPV6 was out of scope but PCI compliance (ACC was still smarting from losing theirs due to their parking machines being compromised) was originally in scope.
The network design included *27* internal firewalls in the end as ATA/ACC staff refused to implement an new layer 2 network, in parallel, and migrate all legacy orgs to a new IP schema before the cutover. Simple and pragmatic but instead we ended up with costly and complex.
And yep, the chance to put in a IPV6 compliant network went begging.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Adam Gifford,
The selection of SAP was made after considering all the ERP implementations within the legacy councils. SAP was the in largest council, regional council and transport agency (as well as Waitakere) in NZ, running quite successfully. It therefore covered the core business processes of a unitary authority and a really significant CCO (Transport).
There was a robust selection process to select the ERP including peer reviews.
Where possible, we (the CIOs) looked to leverage existing IT investments councils had made – this was after all a merger and we needed to protect ratepayer investments. We made similar decisions around websites (Sharepoint – based on Manukau and NSCC), GIS (ESRI, most councils and ALGIM already had a portal) etc,
But selection of a solution to support business processes needs to be separated from implementation choices. The implementation choices, and subsequent results and costs, highlight those differences when comparing Transport and Council. SAP was not was expensive, how SAP was implemented dictated costs.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Adam Gifford,
Adam, SAP can be incredibly flexible when done right. The problems occur when you put into place arcane rules and insist on customisations to bring modules in line with how the "old" solution did it.
We, the ARC, put in the Sales and Distribution module to handle the regulatory billing (millions per year) for around $150K in three months. The implementation paid for itself within months. The key? We adjusted our practises to be more customer/ratepayer focused and realigned our processes to best practise. The results? No customisations and minimal requirement of support from external consultants.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Don Christie,
Don, you miss the point. The system was already in place. As I have said, Transport was up an running for $2 million. (Adaxa would never had made the grade - where is the HR or asset management?) Why reinvent the wheel?
And, at the ARC/ARTA, we were using open source to leverage our SAP investment.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to nzlemming,
I didn't see those working for the ARA operating with self-interest.
I did see consultants engaged by the ATA checking on the work of other consultants engaged by the ATA. I could only shake my head when I attended meetings with two sets of consultants. I would shake my head more when I realised how little most of them knew about local government.
Prompted me to buy from Amazon The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong by Matthew Stewart. Read it an you will understand!
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Steve Reeves,
I personally saw no evidence of any corruption – and I would have jumped up and down if I did. Self-interest is not corruption.
Commercial organisations will normally try to “up-sell” their products/services etc. That is why it is important, with RFPs in local/central govt, that you have clear and transparent governance. (Jump in here Mark Harris!) The ATA was able to drive decisions through under a cloud of secrecy with no one, apart from the ratepayers of Auckland financially, being accountable for those decisions.
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Having read the IS Capital plan that was presented to the council this month I see a whole lot of revisionism going on. The document tries to say the ATA did it's job.
The ATA is what limited the work that was done up until Nov 1. (18 months of wasted time) The ATA came up with the idea of a "veneer" for day 1. (Without any consultation with all the CIOs - go figure!) The IS plan is a continuation of the obfuscation that has been going on since the ATA started - not surprising if you know the key players.
No one is being held accountable for this cost blowout which was predicted by many of us based on the lack of an IT strategy that the ATA had - as confirmed to Computerworld when the asked for the strategy last year. How can you run the biggest merger in the country's history and not have an planned and articulated strategy beyond, "let's do the bare minumum"?
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Sacha,
It is the largest council in Australasia. Mind you, when the planning was going ahead many, especially the consultants, were saying what a complex migration it would be blah, blah...some of us pointed out that by global standards it was small and straight forward. That is why Transport got SAP to manage the migration of data (at a fixed price and bloody cheap) from the eight systems. Because SAP has teams that do this ALL the time globally, rather than screeds of contractors trying to work it out as they went along. Best practise is to migrate this data from significant corporate mergers (across borders/different labour laws etc.) in months, not the years the ATA planned and locked the Auckland Council into.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Sacha,
Addressing the relative involvement and behaviour of former councils in the transition process would be enlightening. Even just in the IT part of it.
There was some here and there, but all the ultimate decision making lay with the ATA - especially Mike Foley.
For example, none of the CIOs were on the steering committee for the ERP (SAP) implementation. 3 of us (from Waitakere, Auckland and the ARC) had significant experience with SAP implementations, including dealing with consultants. So there was no Council SAP implementation expertise on the steering committee despite there being plenty available. The expertise came from the consultants....