Wednesday, May 28, 2008

NSW, failing State thanks to Microsoft and SAP?

Followers of this blog may be wondering where DH has disappeared to over the past month. She is ashamed to admit she has been moonlighting in the Public Service. She apologises for being pulled away from providing this useful service to the public by considerations of mere money, not that there's much left once DoH gets its cut. But Centrelink made her do it.
 
She has now had 3 public services jobs, and let's hope 3 swallows dont make a failed state. 
 
But if these 3 jobs are any indication, NSW is held together by a few staples and rubber bands. smoke mirrors and spit. And the heroic efforts of the unfortunate hard-working and conscientious public service workers trying to hold it all together.
 
In fact DH is rapidly coming to the conclusion that Microsoft and SAP are to blame. Or significantly, anhow. While politicians and policy makers spin grand plans and fantasies, pity the poor workers who are trying to implement it, with new software releases pouring down on their heads at regular intervals, each more complicated than the last, Each making the simplest procedure more and more complex, with more and more stupid questions from that f%ing little paperclip person, may he be booted to hell along with his designed.
 
Remember built-in obsolence? How the big C (don't mention the C*p*t*l*sm word) needs to keep selling stuff, and so has to keep releasing newer and worse versions of stuff that worked fine before.
 
DH"s experience in every place she has worked is that they are understaffed, there is no time for staff to be trained in the software, each release makes their work more complicated, they do not understand the capacities and limitations of their technology. You find management spending a day a month just filling in codes for their own timesheets. It's tragic.