Slashdot Mirror
Ships Turned Away As Aussie Customs' IT System Melts Down
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."
This is news generally because of the rarity of this sort of thing. The only real issue I can think of is that our Health Minister has recently announced plans to immunise ALL Australians against bird flu. This could disrupt that (if it was realistic anyway). I guess this is all a part of ever increasing control.
I was actually part of a company a couple of years ago which put through a proposal to assist with tracking firearms imported into Australia. We were shocked at what we found when we consulted several customs offices.
There was no integrated network system between interstate customs offices.
Sure, they e-mailed each other and did some odd bits of communication, but there was nothing solid in place. Part of our proposal was to put in a system where if a shipment of firearms was sent from Melbourne to Sydney the Sydney office would actually know that one was going to arrive. A step up from their existing system at the time, where the firearms actually left Melbourne, turned up at the Sydney customs depot without prior knowledge and then processed!
Task Mangler
Apparently the issue is that the data coming in (mainly from ships) is quite crufty, whereas the system expects nice clean data (GIGO anyone?).
Also, apparently a lot of these Brokers have a vested interest in the old system, as the new one will allow major importers (eg. supermarkets) to clear goods themselves, meaning less money for the brokers.
As for delays and ships being turned back- appears to be mainly FUD, with a little bit of lack of foresight and poor planning.
Seems like a change management failure to me.
One factor seldomly taken in account is the user's reluctance to the new system.
You may have a 100% working new system, with a 1000% improvement over the old system, but if users are not excited about the new system and they do not want to use it for whatever-the-reason (maybe just because he/she now has to learn new things), the new system is going to fail. Users will make sure it fails. I have seen that many times.
The rumour on the grapevine is that the problems don't entirely stem from the software. The data entry now requires details (you want what now?) and that makes it impossible to process cargo as quickly as before. The software is just a convenient scapegoat. The reality is that the old system allowed the data entry to be sloppy (and effectively useless).
Yes, petrol companies operate on Sundays. Refineries are so complex these days they can take weeks to switch off or on, so they operate constantly. I have heard of some older ones which have been modified and added to so much over the years that nobody actually knows how to switch them off safely - there are companies whose sole purpose is to go around figuring out the best way to switch plants off.