News article written by Corbett Communications. The statements made or opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Engineers Australia.
From the recent Centrelink data matching debacle to last year’s Census 2016 disaster, and a slow slide rather than rollout of a the country’s National Broadband Network (NBN) just to name a few, has the ‘big glitch’ become the new normal for Australia? Are policy makers, bureaucrats and politicians standing in the way of tech thriving or even working adequately in this country and keeping pace with the rest of the world or are we the epitome of Carol from Little Britain, whose computer always says “no”?
Michael de Percy, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Canberra wrote in 2014 about how the Australian Government has “always been slow to deliver communications technologies”. He said there is also a tradition in this country that politicians use the communications industry as “a big policy switch” to be flicked when called for, providing numerous reports in support of the view, and flicked the other way to start the process over.
“When services that can be delivered by the market are caught up in politicking, the system falters,” de Percy said, offering an historical list of government interference from FM radio to wireless, communication satellites and even going back to shutting down telegraph systems. In the present day, not only do these big “screw-ups” to quote New Corp’s article on the Centrelink’s automated system debacle discourage innovation and affect the economy, the consequences for human lives can’t be underestimated. The most recent technological issue involving Centrelink saw its system go from sending 20,000 letters a year to the same number each week. Some people were told they had to pay up $10,000 due to a computer system error. This situation raised fears of suicides after the government announced it would claw back $400 million in benefit overpayments with the disabled, elderly and mentally-ill particularly vulnerable.
Yet for weeks the Australian Government insisted the system was working despite its own agency repeatedly tweeting the Lifeline help number and the Social Services Minister Christian Porter admitting 20% of review letters were received by people not even owing anything although “the online compliance system is working as intended”. This was almost a year to the day when the organisation had to apologise for a computer glitch that told 73,000 families they were in debt back in January 2016.
The way the Australian Bureau of Statistics handled Census 2016 was nothing short of a disaster, paying IBM almost $10 million to ineffectively run it, with a website that suffered a 40-hour outage, resulting in a Senate Committee Inquiry that cost Australian taxpayers even more money. This came in the wake of privacy concerns and the inconvenience of efforts to complete the census.
Late last year the Telecommunications Ombudsman’s annual report showed complaints about faults on the NBN rose 147.8% from the previous year and general complaints almost doubled to 13,406. Poor speeds, unusable services and drop-outs are among the biggest problems for people connected to the NBN.
Many issues with the network are put down to Malcolm Turnbull’s preferred fibre to the node technology when he was Communications Minister under Tony Abbott over the original vision for the NBN by the previous Labor Government to cover most Australian premises by a full fibre to the premises rollout, with the remainder covered by satellite and fixed wireless technology. Turnbull instituted a switch to a model re-using and upgrading the legacy copper (fibre to the node and fibre to the basement) and HFC cable networks owned by Optus and Telstra.
The separation of church and state is not a new concept and was introduced to avoid political dilemmas but who’s going to separate the Australian Government from interfering with communications engineers and companies getting on with the job they know best?
Author: Desi Corbett
Image: The Carol Beer character from Little Britain whose computer’s politics are always “no”.