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Ships Turned Away As Aussie Customs' IT System Melts Down

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the if-it-ain't-broke dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Urgent shipments of medicine and goods for the holiday season have been turned away by customs officials due to a massive computer problem. The initial budget for the system upgrade was said to be A$80 million but has since blown out to A$250 million. Customs officials and the government have been forced to admit that they might actually have to revert to the old system if things don't improve. One cargo user said on national TV that he used to process 300 orders daily but the new system is so complex and unusable, he's happy if he can manage 100 orders per day. The system failure is expected to have a massive impact especially on the retail sector this Christmas."

5 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. The solution is... by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For the AU government to let goods travel freely until they fix or bring up the old system. There really is no excuse for what is going on. Yes, that means that the AU government doesn't get its cut of taxes but them's the breaks. The money lost from import fees would be DWARFED compared to the lossess incurred by *not* letting goods through the ports.

    --
    BMO

    1. Re:The solution is... by ftoomch · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And those incurred losses from *not* letting goods through would in turn be DWARFED compared to the long term economic havoc in a largely agricultural economy caused by pests and diseases (e.g. foot & mouth disease) that are also let through on unchecked goods.

  2. Re:The obvious question... by daern · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What OS do they run?

    Why does this matter? It's much more likely that the problems are down to poorly specified, poorly designed or poorly implemented software, which is by no means an exclusive preserve of Windows...

    Too many large scale software projects fail because of poor development methodologies and a failure to interact with users during development and when this happens, it's hardly surprising that the users don't like working with the new system.

  3. The Real Problem by Grail · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real problem with this system is that it used the principle of "Big Design Up Front". Ask Joel Spolsky about the benefits of "Big Design Up Front" - you get to make all kinds of assumptions about the environment to simplify development, then find when you turn on the switch that this $80M system just doesn't work right.

    The little things that get you down? Oh... date formats, validating input, units for measurement, using a communications system intended for overnight batch operations to support real-time interactive operations.

    As other posters have mentioned, the bid that got the nod was the lowest one. The bid that should have received the goahead was the one that recommended incremental changes. The one that recommended introducing a new means for handling import declarations - and not cutting over, but rather letting the old one die the natural death of user migration.

    The final nail in the coffin was Customs insisting that more detail be included in these reports - no longer can you submit 300 reports in a day saying that what you're importing is "1 Box of parts", you actually have to specify what the parts are and how many are in the box - I suspect this is what is causing the problem as the system rejects "invalid" submissions and forces the importers to rework and resubmit their import declarations.

  4. Re:And his cabinet colleagues by drsmithy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Whats wrong with creationism being given equal time with science as an alternative explanation for life as we know it?

    Because it's not science.

    Creationism should certainly be discussed - but in a religion or philosophy class, where it belongs, not in a science class.