18 February 2009

Prison buggered indefinitely

| johnboy
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The Liberals’ Jeremy Hanson brings word out of committee hearings that the electronic security system at the prison still doesn’t work and no-one knows when it will.

This is the prison that was officially opened before the election as a symbol of the Government’s competence.

So when will they bite the bullet and start shipping long term inmates all the way to distant Goulburn again?

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peterh said :

Jim Jones said :

Procurement is pretty distinct from an outsourcing tender process or even just outsourcing though, innnit.

Procurement regularly happens without any outsourcing at all.

the framework is a guideline for all forms of procurement, it is used in the evaluation of tenders as well, a bit like the bid / no bid processes many organisations go through prior to responding to a tender. The tender review process must be performed against the weights and measures as per the framework, and one is value for money. price is only one of several factors, something that the ACT government seems to be just focusing on. if there was another response that met all criteria, but was slightly more expensive, and was won based on the total solution, we probably wouldn’t be discussing this at all.

Ah, gotcha.

To be fair, that stuff reads like the kind of fluffy happy ‘guidelines’ bollocks that Govvie Departments come up with and then completely ignore, just like all those ‘family friendly’, ‘work/life balance’ statements.

johnboy said :

You can’t polish a turd.

But you can roll it in glitter.

(apologies if I use that again soon in a story)

oh i am going to use that one!

tylersmayhem12:53 pm 20 Feb 09

encouraging competition by ensuring non-discrimination in procurement and using competitive procurement processes AND making decisions in an accountable and transparent manner.

Giving a current situation I am baring witness too, these widely harped lines are laughable!

Jim Jones said :

Procurement is pretty distinct from an outsourcing tender process or even just outsourcing though, innnit.

Procurement regularly happens without any outsourcing at all.

the framework is a guideline for all forms of procurement, it is used in the evaluation of tenders as well, a bit like the bid / no bid processes many organisations go through prior to responding to a tender. The tender review process must be performed against the weights and measures as per the framework, and one is value for money. price is only one of several factors, something that the ACT government seems to be just focusing on. if there was another response that met all criteria, but was slightly more expensive, and was won based on the total solution, we probably wouldn’t be discussing this at all.

I think we (the tax payers) should have an unopening ceremony to put things straight until it really is ready to open. Government funded “Free Beer” for all.

Procurement is pretty distinct from an outsourcing tender process or even just outsourcing though, innnit.

Procurement regularly happens without any outsourcing at all.

here is the framework from the fed govt….

Value for Money

Value for money is the core principle underpinning Australian Government procurement. In a procurement process this principle requires a comparative analysis of all relevant costs and benefits of each proposal throughout the whole procurement cycle (whole-of-life costing).

Value for money is enhanced in government procurement by:

1. encouraging competition by ensuring non-discrimination in procurement and using competitive procurement processes;
2. promoting the use of resources in an efficient, effective and ethical manner 6; and
3. making decisions in an accountable and transparent manner.

In order to be in the best position to determine value for money when conducting a procurement process, request documentation needs to specify logical, clearly articulated, comprehensive and relevant conditions for participation and evaluation criteria which will enable the proper identification, assessment and comparison of the costs and benefits of all submissions on a fair and common basis over the whole procurement cycle.

Cost is not the only determining factor in assessing value for money. Rather, a whole-of-life value for money assessment would include consideration of factors such as:

1. fitness for purpose;
2. the performance history of each prospective supplier;
3. the relative risk of each proposal;
4. the flexibility to adapt to possible change over the lifecycle of the property or service;
5. financial considerations including all relevant direct and indirect benefits and costs over the whole procurement cycle; and
6. the evaluation of contract options (for example, contract extension options).

act goverment use the same framework.

here is the info if you are up for a read…

http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/fmg-series/procurement-guidelines/division-1.html#framework

Totally agree that the firm has a moral obligation to fill their obligations.

What kills me (and why I was musing on the ‘cheapest tender’ theory) is the fact that this sort of thing is so commonplace. In the public circus it seems to be the norm (with anything tech related anyway): outsourced projects always run over schedule and over budget.

I read an online book about some of this stuff a while back (http://epress.anu.edu.au/managing_citation.html) which suggested that, a great deal of the time this problem was due to poor management of consultants (rather than the consulting firm being dodgy).

The argument about good and bad people certainly comes into it. But a good person can only do good programming under the right circumstances: they need clear direction on the task/s, the right time, equipment and (sometimes) support staff.

As for “If they take a loss on a project they will learn to negotiate a better price in future”. I dunno. Does the firm actually take the loss? Most of the cases I’ve heard of involve renegotiations of contract, or the organisation doing the contracting actually stumping up. I suppose it depends.

But yeah, obviously a lot more complex than my earlier musings.

I don’t buy that whole “cheapest tender” line.

My partner’s time is billed at two to three times what he is paid, and I’m sure that’s not uncommon. The programmer tends to see relatively little of it.

Good people, bad people. The cost is not that much different. Often the bad people are more expensive.

The firm has a moral obligation to fulfil their contractual obligations, in my opinion … no matter what it takes.

If they take a loss on a project they will learn to negotiate a better price in future.

You can’t polish a turd.

But you can roll it in glitter.

(apologies if I use that again soon in a story)

Don’t forget people, you (or at least a lot of people) voted for this government of liars. There’s no way on God’s green earth the prison was going to be finished anywhere near the time Sad Simon proposed pre-election.

If it looks like a piece of sh*t, smells like a piece of sh*t…………………….

Poptop, yes. Even funnier is the fact that Minister H is giving a talk on the ‘human rights compliant prison’ at a conference I am going to in March. I imagine it will still be human rights compliant then, what with no prisoners and all.

Didn’t Bovis Lendlease suffer large losses because they couldn’t built Wembly Stadium on time. In this case it’s the ACT community that will bear the loss

tylersmayhem1:25 pm 19 Feb 09

Well put Peter!

Jim Jones said :

Isn’t it an almost inherent problem with the tender process though?

The company to provide the cheapest tender offer invariably wins the contract, but the offer is low because it’s unrealistically developed. So the tender goes to the company who will almost necessarily go over budget, over time and do a bad job – all the while frantically trying to patch things up in a short period with low-paid, underqualified staff so that, in the end, the job needs to be redone properly anyway.

Obviously this is a simplification, but there is a kernal of truth, no?

maybe if the government stuck to the concept of “value”, being the total solution, including price, innovation and implementation time all acting as factors within the value concept, not just the cheapest, these tender wins would have better long term wins for all concerned. Whilst they stick to the cheapest, there will always be room for major errors. Price shouldn’t have been the deciding factor for the prison tender.

I would have thought that security, safety, human rights, ease of use and on time completion would have been better factors to consider.

The government has got what it asked for. the “cheapest” initial solution, but not necessarily the best. Once the prison is finished, what will be the overall cost? there were probably responses that were far more expensive than the winning tender response, but I bet that they look pretty cheap now, in comparison.

tylersmayhem11:55 am 19 Feb 09

Thank you Jim Jones. Spot on man! I see it time and time again in the Public industry. Beat contractors down on price in the tendering process, which means they need to take shortcuts, hire cheaper people etc etc.

When working abroad I worked on several high profile projects. When I started, I could not believe the amount some of the contractors made per day. But I tell you what, man could they deliver awesome solutions, well within agreed time lines.

Pay peanuts, you usually get monkeys. want an awesome solution, invest in it.

Being the countrys’ first Human Rights Prison, I’m surprised they are even fitting a security system – surely this impinges on the poor crims’ basic right to freedom of movement? Or perhaps it’s to keep out riff raff like ratepayers who might want to see where their money has gone…

FFS, pull down the barbed wire and set it up as low cost housing for the poor and homeless. Just shoot anyone convicted of a crime – god knows with our magistrates that won’t need many bullets in any given year…

Well, Jim Jones, I’ve just heard of too many stupid government contracts that basically just pay contractors by hours worked rather than result.

And my partner has had to untangle too much bad code. Invariably once you strip all the crap and spaghetti out the thing will go.

But you often need someone with the patience to untangle Christmas tree lights and string and stuff, and a good grasp of the simplicity of what is needed and the basics of computing.

Seriously, it’s usually either that the programmer virtually got his qual from a Corn Flakes packet or the design is so poor that the ‘left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing’ and so the programmers make independent decisions and assumptions resulting in the bits not fitting together properly and the whole not working. Then more and more ludicrous lengths have to be gone to to ‘jury rig’ it.

Isn’t it an almost inherent problem with the tender process though?

The company to provide the cheapest tender offer invariably wins the contract, but the offer is low because it’s unrealistically developed. So the tender goes to the company who will almost necessarily go over budget, over time and do a bad job – all the while frantically trying to patch things up in a short period with low-paid, underqualified staff so that, in the end, the job needs to be redone properly anyway.

Obviously this is a simplification, but there is a kernal of truth, no?

I just get so ticked off at these contractors, especially when they’re wasting public money. Hire decent people, you morons, deliver a decent product, and do what you’re damn well paid for!!

There’s no mystique about software. It’s no harder than building a bridge or a road. People can either code decently or they can’t. If they can’t, then get somebody who can.

I think contractors use the general shoddy performance of the industry as a cop-out, and I dearly hope that the government holds Chubb to their side of the bargain.

They should probably send in someone ruthless at this point, like Darth Vader.

I have no problems with a headline of “Prison finally operational after eight years, at no net cost to taxpayer”.

Getting a free prison paid for by Chubb would make for a reasonable return on a significant amount of public faith.

This is getting so ridiculous that I am too annoyed to even make some analogy between this Government failure and the virtues of libertarianism.

I read the article in the Canberra Crimes this morning – still no word on how much this becale is costing the taxpayer, and what action is being taken to recover these costs. This, guys, is an incredibly expensive snafu.

Miz, is it really truly true about the glass art?? I lolled!

tylersmayhem8:49 am 19 Feb 09

I have to say that I am actually really surprised this is taking so bloody long! I would have thought that whoever the contractor is that is responsible for the installation of the security systems would have done this before. While it’s not an “out of the box” solution, I would have thought it would have been the same as all the others they had done, with a bit of customising here and there.

Regardless, I hope they’re paying some pretty stiff penalties, which will be widely announced to keep taxpayers like me doing something silly to end up in there in the future ;P

caf said :

It seems a bit rough to hold the minister responsible for the standard IT contractor inability to complete software to spec on time. Look on the bright side – the fact that it’s still being worked on at least means we didn’t accept a crap non-working system, which happens all too often. All we can really ask is that due diligence be done, and penalties be put in the contract for non-performance. It doesn’t sound like anyone in the bureaucracy has stuffed up, to me.

Err.. there are penalties for non-performance, right?

(On the other hand, holding an “opening” before it was actually ready was a completely egregious election stunt).

I don’t think the Minister can be held responsible for the stuff-ups either – large scale construction projects invariably end up facing delays for a range of reasons. I do, however, blame the Minister for pretending to officially ‘open’ the prison just before the election (to much media attention ‘look how well we manage large scale projects’), when the prison was clearly not ready to be opened! Why does the Canberra public accept this level of deceipt and bare-faced lying from their Chief minister?

I have visited the new prison. It seemed to me, when I was there, that the whiz-bang security was intended to replace the number of staff you would normally require (ie they thought it would save money in the long run). First thing I thought was, I wouldn’t like to work here, what if the technology fails and there is no backup staff member to help me out?

Unfortunately, they appear to be ‘locked in’ to the technology (boom boom), but I reckon they could retrofit proper locked doors etc, staff the prison sufficiently and move in some prisoners (instead of the iris/fingerprint scanners etc that don’t seem to be working) . . .

. . . for your amusement, the glass artwork in there might have to be covered somehow, as it turns out it has a few sharp edges! We wouldn’t want any emo prisoners doing themselves an injury in a ‘human rights’ prison, would we!

Goddam, they should send in the SAS of code geeks and bill it to Chubb. The debugginator!

el said :

Honeywell?

Chubb Security. Whose record on projects such as this, I believe, speaks for itself – but for some reason Bovis Lend Lease (prime contractor) decided to subcontract the security system to them anyway….

It seems a bit rough to hold the minister responsible for the standard IT contractor inability to complete software to spec on time. Look on the bright side – the fact that it’s still being worked on at least means we didn’t accept a crap non-working system, which happens all too often. All we can really ask is that due diligence be done, and penalties be put in the contract for non-performance. It doesn’t sound like anyone in the bureaucracy has stuffed up, to me.

Err.. there are penalties for non-performance, right?

(On the other hand, holding an “opening” before it was actually ready was a completely egregious election stunt).

Move along, move along, here in Canberra there are no problems or solutions that are the direct responsibility of any member of the ACT Labor Party.
Teflon Jon has everything under control.

Well they can’t ship prisoners to Goulburn when NSW hasn’t been accepting new prisoners for months since they’re too overcrowded (unless they’ve changed this stance in the past month or so?), that’s the reason why BRC and the place at Symonston are overflowing.

Not surprising the minster for something becomes minister for nothing whenever he does something wrong and is looking for a scapegoat to cover up his misleading of the community.

There is no fancy technology in “OZ”, which is what I imagine all prisons are like.

When the issue of compensation for the defects were raised a few weeks ago, the Stanhope “government” (now there’s an oxy-moron) quelled any discussion and the public has no information on exactly what the taxpayers are liable for.

What a shambles!

If it’s a software issue, they’re stuffed. Possibly forever!

If there’s a penalty for being behind schedule, how far overdue does the prison have to be before the security system contractor effectively pays for the entire cuddleprison project?

I don’t want any of my taxes to have paid for this farce, but would like to see some return on investment.

I like “cactus” myself.

Bob Hawke’s lasting contribution to the vernacular.

I don’t think anyone could come up with anything more appropriate than buggered.

I heard that early testing revealed that pressing the Esc key on the security systems console allowed just that…

Sorry 🙂

what about the old lock and key? not as spiffy as the security system, but it might just work… and post guards on the walls with rifles.

Apparently whenever they try and use it, it crashes.

Feel free to suggest other appropriate adjectives.

Woody Mann-Caruso5:39 pm 18 Feb 09

security system at the prison still doesn’t work

So it’s buggered?

But at least the Yes Minister hospital was “the most efficient hospital in the country”. Even without prisoners I doubt the ACT prison could make a similar claim.

Stanhope’s prison without prisoners is a lot like Yes Minister’s hospital without patients (and a huge bureaucracy to keep it going).

Prison buggery, eh?

Stay classy, Canberra.

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