It's really nice to see a good, short case study emerge from a Parltry Committee Inquiry and a journo's analysis of the Report:
Vic govt axed IBM i2 from freshly digitised contact tracing system Did not meet predictive analytics needs. Ry Crozier itNews Dec 14 2020 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/vic-govt-axed-ibm-i2-from-freshly-digitised-contact-tracing-system-558957 It's easy to be critical of the Vic DHHS people for taking from March to July to get their ideas sufficiently clear in their minds, and do enough 'probity' to make it unlikely that the second go would be a stuff-up. But it would have been hard in March, sitting there, trying to work out what was going on, and what kinds of decisions might be needed, and what kinds of data might need to be interrogated in what kinds of ways, and what kinds of automated triggers might help. 20-20 hindsight's easier. Okay, it's amazing that $4.2m could have been committed to up-front, rather than a short series of contracts being used, to experiment, do a quick proof-of-concept application, and only then sign a supply contract. But (a) DHHS and Cabinet needed to be doing something, and be seen to be doing so, and (b) they're remarkably profligate at any time. Blind reliance on the 'predictive modelling' and 'AI' mantras might have been the biggest villain in the piece. -- Roger Clarke mailto:[email protected] T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law University of N.S.W. Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
