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IBM To Pay More Than $30 Million in Compensation For Census Fail (abc.net.au)

Posted by msmash on from the price-of-failure dept.

IBM will pay more than $30 million in compensation for its role in the bungled census, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has indicated. From a report: The Prime Minister described the four Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that caused a 40-hour outage inconveniencing millions of Australians as "utterly predictable, utterly foreseeable." "I have to say -- and I'm not trying to protect anyone here at all -- but overwhelmingly the failure was IBM's and they have acknowledged that, they have paid up and they should have," he said. "They were being paid big money to deliver a particular service and they failed."

60 comments

  1. Dollarydoos? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is that 30 million Dollarydoos or USD?

    1. Re:Dollarydoos? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      and how much is this penalty/fine/refund relative to what IBM was paid to perform this task that they pretty much completely failed at?

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:Dollarydoos? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nothing civilised is calculated in USD

    3. Re:Dollarydoos? by another_twilight · · Score: 1

      Looks like they were paid $9.6 million for the job

      source

  2. Sigh by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How to make next year's census even more expensive, no matter who supplies it.

    Lesson 1.

    1. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or it would just be a line item in the contract, that if the contractor screws up due to actions of a 3rd party (in this case, DDoS attackers), then they're not liable for anything... I'm surprised it wasn't there already... (in the acts-of-god-or-otherwise-out-of-our-control clause...)

    2. Re:Sigh by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IBM blamed one of its subcontractors for failing to follow geo-blocking protocol to prevent the DDoS attacks.

      What about not useing the big outsourcers to do work any more?

    3. Re:Sigh by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How to make next year's census even more expensive, no matter who supplies it.

      Lesson 1.

      Aside from the fact that the census is not run every year, I'm pretty sure that screwing up a census is going to cost a government way more than this fine. $30 million is chump change in comparison to national budgets.

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    4. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Such a line item would be laughed all the way out of the court, because it was fully within IBM's control.

      The contractor has every right to select subcontractors, and to choose which ones they select. It is not a matter of out-of-our-control influence. No God made IBM select this contractor, nor did any act of nature make IBM not manage the contractor's work, or perform it to a level that would withstand a simple DoS attack.

    5. Re: Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These were not acts of god. These were fully foreseeable and ibm failed to protect against them.

    6. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IBM laid off most of its programmers years ago. They're mostly just a sales organization now; work is subcontracted out and IBM takes a piece of the pie..

    7. Re:Sigh by arth1 · · Score: 1

      The contractor has every right to select subcontractors,

      And therein lies the problem. Government contracts need to be bonded, where subcontractors cannot be used unless those contractors are specifically approved in the contract itself, and the government paying them directly.

    8. Re: Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They copped a lot of flak for it, not often something they do actually does effect lots of people immediately.

    9. Re:Sigh by AmazingRuss · · Score: 1

      But who would do the needful then?

    10. Re: Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australian Census is every 4 years.. It will be long forgotten as a statistical blip
      (unless we have an election... Which happen every 4 years... Conspiracy?)

    11. Re:Sigh by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      How to make next year's census even more expensive, no matter who supplies it.

      Not at all. This was a legal contract and both parties were held to the required performance of the contract. This has nothing to do with the cost of the census other than maybe next time the contractor should actually deliver an easy solution (seriously WTF, IBM has cloud infrastructure which could have delivered this census problem free and off the shelf) rather than pork barrelling.

    12. Re:Sigh by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I'm interested why IBM got the contract at all? They have been blacklisted from 2 Australian states from getting government contracts before, why were they even a contender.

    13. Re: Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We have national elections approximately every 3 years, not 4. Some state elections are every 4 years.

      The census is every 5 years

    14. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not sure why we even need a census to be honest. Just ask google: they seem to dedicate most of their budget to just this sort of data gathering.

    15. Re:Sigh by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      I'm interested why IBM got the contract at all? They have been blacklisted from 2 Australian states from getting government contracts before, why were they even a contender.

      That was my feeling as well, given their previous monumental screwups with government, why were they awarded this one? Looks like IBM have the IT equivalent of jury-shopping down to a fine art.

      The OP mentions that heads rolled at IBM, what about the clowns who hired them for a government IT contract? Or did they end up with performance bonuses?

    16. Re: Sigh by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      So far we've been told the Aus census is every three years, every four years, and every five years. If anyone's running a book on this, put me down for two and six years, just to cover the remaining bases.

    17. Re:Sigh by prowler1 · · Score: 1

      I have worked for a University in Australia and when it comes to the way they do IT, it is very similar to the way the government does IT. Basically, management hires a bunch of people into the IT department and about 70% of them couldn't get a real world IT job if their lives depended on it. The other 30% get blocked when trying to do their job ie. management asks for a solution, usually full of buzzwords and lack of comprehension, and the 30% with a clue deliver it. Management looks at that and goes, "hrmmm, yeah that's nice but we should get an external contractor/company in and confirm if that is the right solution." Of course, the external entity doesn't want to know about the existing solution so propose a new one. Management goes with it so they don't have to take responsibility if it goes wrong. The 70% get given the task of helping the external entity, the 30% look at it and go that is shit but management asks the 70% who don't want to get in trouble for saying no and say it is great and then a cluster fuck gets delivered which costs the tax payer 10 times more than it should have.

  3. Can we swap government officials? by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Prime Minister said "This was not a particularly clever attack or some great international assault on the census, this was a series of common or garden, utterly predictable, utterly foreseeable denial of service attacks."

    After a decade of fear mongering by US politicians who want to relate every goddamn thing that happens online to a terrorist attack, that is such a refreshingly honest statement that I find myself envying Australia.

    1. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They can have Drumpf.

    2. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would it be fair to say that this "DDoS" was caused by millions of ordinary people trying to access a website at the same time?

      Can the "Slashdot Effect" really be called a DDoS? If IBM didn't handle a large amout of normal web traffic properly, it is simple incompetence.

    3. Re:Can we swap government officials? by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      According to TFS it was geofencing.

      Let me know if you need that in audio format.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    4. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I read TFA. I understand that you believe their shitty excuses, with your 3.6 million UID. You dumb cunt.

    5. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another butt-hurt Shrillary supporter.

    6. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another butt-hurt Shrillary supporter.

      Fuck you.

    7. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They can have Drumpf.

      No, you don't have enough money to pay us for that.

    8. Re:Can we swap government officials? by quenda · · Score: 1

      They can have Drumpf.

      No, you don't have enough money to pay us for that.

      Sure they do. Give us a mere billion dollars, and we take Trump as Prime Minister.
      Thirty seconds later, the ruling conservative party calls for a leadership spill and elects a new leader. Or the Governor General can sack him and call a new general election. Fortunately we Aussies have ways of getting rid of dangerous and incompetent leaders without an impeachment circus.

      Many Australian have been wanting to change from being a monarchy to a republic with a directly elected head of government. Trump's election has killed any chance of that for a generation.

    9. Re: Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We'll take Elizabeth Warren and you can have a nice lady named Pauline. Deal?

    10. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Coincidentally, many Australians are morons. Fuck an Australian republic.

    11. Re:Can we swap government officials? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fuck all Republics, they all suck every single one of them

  4. Outsourcing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe IBM's plan of outsourcing everything to third world countries isn't working so well.

    Why anyone would hire IBM for anything is beyond me. Their professional services produce just awful stuff. Bad designs. Horrid code. Documentation written in Hindlish.

  5. Muwahahahahahahhaha... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    bought time that Big Blue begins to see it's not some invincible titan.

    1. Re:Muwahahahahahahhaha... by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      They apparently encoded your grammar checking software.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  6. According to the I.B.M. census by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How many babies were eaten by dingos?

    1. Re: According to the I.B.M. census by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A dingo never stole a baby... That was the conspiracy...
      "Dingo" is Aust-slang for "arsehole".. And "baby" is Aust-slang for "esky" (or "cooler" to you sepo's)
      Therefore translated: "an arsehole stole my esky"....

      The tourists interpreted that as something about a baby and a dog

  7. Next, Holocaust Management by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

    The service contract for the concentration camp management systems was paid directly to Armonk, NY

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Next, Holocaust Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have they not already compensated the victims' families for that matter?

    2. Re:Next, Holocaust Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My dad worked for IBM, long after their involvement in selling the business equipment that would be used in the concentration camps.

      He's dead now, and I find it odd that people want to punish the company for something that happened before he worked there, even now that he's been dead for 30 years.

      Move on. If you want to rail against IBM for something, there's plenty of stuff that's happened in the last 20 years. The importance in remembering the past is to not repeat it, not to hold people accountable for what their Grandparent or Great-Grandparents might have done (or done differently).

    3. Re:Next, Holocaust Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe IBM shouldn't be branding their technology "Watson", named for Thomas Watson who did some evil shit.

    4. Re:Next, Holocaust Management by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Have they not already compensated the victims' families for that matter?

      No, they're still denying they had anything to do with it, that it was all IBM Germany's fault. But since the service contract was paid straight to IBM US, that's a lot of crap.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Next, Holocaust Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have they not already compensated the victims' families for that matter?

      No, they're still denying they had anything to do with it, that it was all IBM Germany's fault. But since the service contract was paid straight to IBM US, that's a lot of crap.

      Wait, I'm confused. What did IBM do wrong? From what I've read, the Nazi's successfully tracked and executed millions of people with IBM's assistance. There were no DoS attacks.

      Now, you could argue that IBM shouldn't have been doing business with the Nazi's to begin with. But then I'd argue that they also should not be doing business with the Australian Government, especially not in the deeply unethical practice of performing a census.

    6. Re:Next, Holocaust Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have they not already compensated the victims' families for that matter?

      No, they're still denying they had anything to do with it, that it was all IBM Germany's fault. But since the service contract was paid straight to IBM US, that's a lot of crap.

      How is this company still in business?

  8. English Motherfucker by alvinrod · · Score: 1

    I suppose I should be thankful that it wasn't reported as an "epic fail", but can we ditch the idiotic meme of using fail as a noun and go back to using failure?

    1. Re:English Motherfucker by wjcofkc · · Score: 2

      Because English is a static language. It never changes a bit and has always been so and so it shall be. Right?

      --
      Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
    2. Re:English Motherfucker by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      Because English is a static language. It never changes a bit and has always been so and so it shall be. Right?

      Ãæt is sÃÃlic, wit Ãearf welhwilc prohÃrof mæÃelword

  9. Australia does it correctly by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    IBM is going to do, in round two, what they should have done in round one.

    Systems are not complete until the hardening is done.

    That won't happen as long as there are no significant consequences.

    Litigation and publication are the proper responses for DDoS and hacks.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  10. I don't know why IBM got the contract by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    After they completely botched two major projects in Australian states they were blacklisted from government contracts in those states, ... then they win a contract for the federal government and botch that up too?

    How about they deliver something that works at all before there's any talk of them getting a taxpayer dime again.

    1. Re:I don't know why IBM got the contract by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

      Not going to happen as long as corporations fund 99% politicians election campaigns. Though i don't have a cue how its funded in Australia.

      --
      Jack of all trades,master of none
    2. Re:I don't know why IBM got the contract by dwywit · · Score: 1

      I'm personally acquainted with one of the managers from IBM (at the time) in Queensland - she told me that the government signed off every stage of the Health Dept payroll contract. Also, the court case determined that it was the middle-upper management in the Health Dept that were largely to blame for the bungled system. They didn't do the legwork required to make sure the system was properly specced.

      As much as I'm disappointed in what IBM has become in the last couple of decades, banning them from government contracts in Queensland is an act of spite and blame-shifting by the government.

      Having said that, computerised payroll systems aren't exactly cutting-edge technology - why are they still not able to get it right?

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    3. Re: I don't know why IBM got the contract by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck are you talking about Health department payroll when we're talking census?

    4. Re: I don't know why IBM got the contract by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the context of the discussion, the question was asked as to why IBM was given the contract when they were "supposedly" also responsible for the QLD Health Payroll screwup.

      The point being made, was that they were pinged in that case for something that really wasn't their fault (the QLD Health Payroll screwup was 99% the work of politicians and civil service in QLD) - so they got a bad rap for that one simply by association.

      That said, they (IBM) are near 100% responsible for the Australian Census screwup - put simply they should have known better.

      The issue with IBM is that they are now driven by MBAs, and this is reflected in both their management style and the way they now operate. The people who CAN turn things around in the company are being pushed out in favour of the lower cost workforce.

      It's a sad fact but companies do not innovate - people innovate. You take those people out and replace them ... you don't automatically get innovation. This has been seen time and time again, and yet the MBAs in charge never learn the lesson.... If you want some examples of this, look no further than Commodore, Apple, Sun ... and the list goes on.

    5. Re:I don't know why IBM got the contract by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Quite possibly. However there is an element of performance expected in contracts. The fact that someone can sign it away doesn't excuse the sheer amount of money that was given to IBM in exchange for what ultimately was nothing.

      What would the result have been if the government didn't sign off? More billable hours?

    6. Re:I don't know why IBM got the contract by another_twilight · · Score: 1

      It looks like IBM won wrt to the QLD Health Dept. payroll debacle and there is talk about sacking the bureaucrats involved.

      However, part of the point of hiring external contractors for this sort of thing is to take advantage of their expertise. If the government failed to 'properly spec' the system, then either IBM failed to provide knowledge, guidance or push-back on a poor design. They they chose to proceed with a design they knew wouldn't work (and if they didn't know, then they deserve even greater criticism). They chose dollars of reputation and deserve some of the blame for the failure and are, rightly I think, being excluded from future consideration.

  11. Only LNP can stuff it up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wrong!

    Only the LNP are so incompetent as to politicize the census in the first place.

    The stuff up is because of their privacy fiasco (was the first ever to require non-anonymity or jump through hoops to complete the census and remain anonymous).

    1. Re:Only LNP can stuff it up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      is it hard work being so incredibly sucking stupid?

  12. THis, again? First time in 1890 !! by See+Attached · · Score: 1

    This happened to IBM once before: http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

    --
    Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.