Newsletter Volume 27 Issue 10, Oct 2015
From The Editor
Regretfully, we have had to postpone the QESP Australian Conference on Software Management (ACOSM15.) Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused. Further details will be available via our Events page on the website and in the Newsletter.
“more than 50% of the 2.5 million users who access government services each month said they experienced a problem.”
The above quote comes from a 14th October article in The Mandarin, reporting on a talk by new DTO CEO Paul Shetler at a CEDA conference on Digital Government. the DTO’s first work program aims “to have working services up and running within the next 20 weeks.”See below, Whole of Government Agile.
Some recent government and regulatory initiatives, both local and international, are giving useful advice on ICT Outsourcing, including case studies outsourcing disasters. “One of the mistakes was a focus on driving the cost down, as a result of which the contracted company started having financial difficulty and went under — though the owner of the company still ‘walked away a very wealthy man from it for various reasons to do with how the contracting was designed’”. See below, When ICT Outsourcing Goes Wrong.
A 16 October 23, 2015 Science Daily article, based on materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells us “System that replaces human intuition with algorithms outperforms 615 of 906 human teams” No, the article doesn’t say whether that is male or female intuition that is being replaced. It does tell us that “where the teams of humans typically labored over their prediction algorithms for months, the Data Science Machine took somewhere between two and 12 hours to produce each of its entries.” See below, Automating big-data analysis.
An October 23, 2015 article in The Conversation draws an interesting parallel between the 1986 NASA space shuttle Challenger disaster and a current need for more open data in the scientific community. The author describes the lack of open data as a “major deficiency in the system of science, an embarrassment really.” See below, Fooled by Dud Data.
Current Issue
Articles in the current Issue cover:
Whole of Government Agile
“The prototype will be built around the users’ needs, rather than government’s structures.”
When ICT Outsourcing Goes Wrong
“ the Ministry of Justice was getting data feeds from the contractors ‘for a very long time, it just happened the data wasn’t necessarily right.’.”
Automating big-data analysis
“We view the Data Science Machine as a natural complement to human intelligence.”
Fooled by Dud Data
“The bureaucracy is not very good at acknowledging when something isn’t working.”
Events
“The World’s most successful Awards Program”
Consensus (www.consensus.com.au) runs a series of Awards Programs that identify the most innovative technology designed and developed in Australia (and some in New Zealand ). Over 400 evaluations of innovation have been conducted by the 130 Judges since the Awards were started in 2000. Recent independent analysis of the Winners of the Awards shows that 9 out of 10 (90%) of the Winners of Consensus Awards have gone on to perform exceptionally well internationally. The same research showed that across the board, the companies have enjoyed over 1200% increase in sales or value since they have won Awards.
Based upon these achievements, Consensus can truly claim to be the World’s Most Successful Awards Program. A Consensus Showcase in late November 2015 will profile over 100 CEOs of previous winners. The value of the companies that will be present is in excess of $8 Billion. At the same event, Consensus will be presenting the Consensus Student Innovation Awards, Consensus IT Professional Awards, Consensus IT Writers Awards and the BigData Innovation Awards. For more information please emailcontact@consensus.com.au
Ted Smillie
QESP Chairman