[SEMI-OT NEWS] OZ DCIT Overspends a bit on Website . . .

[Buck]

The Department of Communications IT in Australia has apparently paid an overseas company $4 million dollars for developing its website that could easily have been done in Australia for less. The article can be found here , compliments of Australian IT.

Just as a side note. When I visit the DCIT site with Moz 1.2.1, the whole layout is buggered but looks okay with IE 6. Try validating the front page at the W3C Validation Page.

 

[Tea]

That particular webzite, Buck, iz an extraodinary testament to gross incompetence of the pigs-in-trough variety.

I could think of zeveral people who could write a better looking, fazter-loading webzite without even leaving this room. You. Me. Handruin. Who else does HTML here?

I don't know if P5 and Mercutio bother with HTML, but if they couldn't do better than that zite for a whole lot less than $4,000,000, then they ain't the men that I think they are.

Hell, for $4,000,000 I don't think that there iz a single Ztorage Forum member who couldn't do better.

Where'z that trough? I want to get my trotterz wet.

 

[fool]

Four million for that? What were they on? I haven’t done any html for quite a while but if that’s the present going rate I might have to reconsider.

Mind you, the UK govt. is even worse. look at googles search results for ’Swanwick delays‘ and be very glad you’re not under the Heathrow or Gatwick flight paths.

 

[time]

The IT industry in Australia is heavily dependent on government and semi-government work. This gives you some idea of the state of the industry.

Myself, I want to grow tomatoes, but it won't pay the mortgage.

 

[Howell]

The IT industry in Australia is heavily dependent on government and semi-government work. This gives you some idea of the state of the industry.

Then this has to be a slap in the face from an extra leathery hand

 

[time]

As ever, it's money sucked out of the system. M$ sucks ever increasing amounts out as well. So there's less and less profitable work ...

The reaction from Government will be along the lines of "insufficient project management", so the next time, they'll choose an even bigger contractor and lose an even bigger amount of money. :-?

And they'll apply thousands of pages of guidelines to even tiny projects, thereby tying up the contractor in endless meetings, useless reports, and fighting a rear-guard action against the army of staff (including lawyers) pitted against them for the sole purpose of tripping them up.

Which will send many contractors broke, and make the rest shy of dealing with government departments. Which means Government needs to hire more consultants to tell them to spend ten to twenty times as much on a project as necessary, then design a tender process that ensures the nice giant multinational corporation gets the job.

Not that I'm bitter ...