Posts by Glenn Pearce
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The software development industry uses open source software all the time at small scale, with great success. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can build larger projects on its back.
I misinterpreted this?
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“We are looking at different options there. It’s difficult because the land is contaminated on the seaward side. That reduces the options available to us for an off-road facility.
What does that mean exactly? Wouldn't this be the perfect opportunity to de-contaminate that area? Or too much $$?
Are they going to consult on that at all do you know, I presume the Weona Walkway is being considered.
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Open source is not a panacea
If your project gets too large, you get stuck with many of the same problems that a “customised off-the-shelf” closed-source solution has. In particular, your foundations will move, and you need to accommodate this.
you are nearly as doomed as if you used closed source. At least your failure will be cheaper.
Keeping your project small really helps. The software development industry uses open source software all the time at small scale, with great success. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can build larger projects on its back.
He seems to be saying Open Source not suitable for for large projects.
Regardless, the Super City IT merger is a systems integration project not a software development project.
All 7 of the councils already had IT solutions in place for each line of business or functional area, in some cases multiple councils were using the same system. Surely the obvious thing to do is pick the best of each (CRM, GIS, Doc Mgmt, Rating/Billing, AP, AR, GL etc. etc.) and merge the data from all 7 councils.
It may have been tempting to take the opportunity for a Greenfields replacement but that doesn't seem to be the pragmatic approach.
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Hard News: The unstable Supercity, in reply to Sacha,
Isn't he actually arguing the opposite in fact?
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Back in 2009/2010 there was a matrix spreadsheet floating around (I think on the Computerworld website) listing the IT systems inventory for each of the seven councils by "line of business". It doesn't seem to be there any more but it made for pretty daunting reading.
Just migrating/merging the data from 2 councils that were running the same source system for one "line of business" eg: rating would be a big job
To do this for 7 councils, multiple different source systems and multiple lines of business is a job on a scale never before attempted in NZ IT history, the nearest equivalent would have been the ANZ/National Bank merger.
The reason many NZ vendors miss out on large government tenders is the mindset that the winning vendor needs to be "big enough to sue" should it all turn to custard.
Typically a large part of the Tender documents will focus on the financial stability/background of the Vendor companies which is why large multinationals tend to fare better, they have the resources to throw at a situation to keep it out of the media (up to a point), eventually that usually runs out too.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Swan,
Not really any better is it, can you identify all the submissions affecting say Glendowie or Westmere easily?
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The domain name hearings.aupihp.govt.nz is registered to the Council, the conspiracy theorists would say they're deliberately making it difficult to find documents :-)
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It's not even possible to find documents affecting a general area or suburb, let alone an individual property.
The search function appears to only search the document title, not the contents from what I can tell.
Not sure who is managing the document management, whether it is the IHP or the Council on behalf of them.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Swan,
The IHP document website is absolutely hopeless with extremely limited ability to search documents and the overwhelming volume of documents would make it almost impossible for any individual property owner to identify submissions that may affect their property for starters.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Swan,
Yes, but if you think that if the IHP magically declares they are all In Scope that the Councillors that voted for the removal will change their mind you're dreaming.
Over on TransportBlog they are seriously talking about how they should have made individual up zoning requests for every single property in Auckland if they had known to avoid the Out of Scope argument. That's hardly engaging in good faith is it?
I'd argue that the Housing NZ submission wasn't really in good faith either, they should have know that planning best practice does not advise spot zoning. Housing NZ have shot themselves in the foot that's why they are arguing the Out of Zone are actually In Scope because they know their spot rezoning requests won't be tolerated by the IHP.