The Judge RANTS!
Date: 06/08/09
Vexations
I really wish that I could go into detail about what is happening at work at the moment.
I have been in the Depratment long enough now that I thought that I had seen every possible way in which it could screw up.
It seems that I'm guilty of underestimating it.
So it is that a new computer system, which was intended to tie in to one big application the data previously held on a number of discrete databases, has been rolled out to the network when it still doesn't frigging well work. They'd already had to delay it for about eight months past its original target date because some bits of it weren't playing nicely with other bits, but this should have reassured us that they were trying to get it right before implementation.
Huh!
We are now in the fourth week after its introduction, and there are still massive amounts of work on hand - much (but by no means all) of which built up in the six week changeover period between systems - which we cannot deal with because the new system either cannot handle it at all, or can only handle it by the data-processing equivalent of travelling from London to Stockholm via Ouagadougou (with a toilet break in Dhaka). There are failings in quite fundamental areas of its operation; failings which are the inevitable consequence of having software designed and coded by people who have no experience of what it is supposed to be there to do. Even leaving aside the issue of staff familiarisation with it, it now takes about ten times longer to do something very straightforward compared to its predecessor.
The system it replaced was nearly twenty five years old, and was admittedly getting a bit creaky. But it worked, because it was designed and implemented totally in-house, by people who not only knew what they were doing, but also knew what the system was intended to achieve.
And yet we were assured that the new system had been thoroughly trialled and piloted. If it was, then it must have been trialled by Judge Jeffreys (although he would surely have condemned it), and piloted by surviving members of the Imperial Japanese Air Force circa 1944.
In short, it doesn't fscking work. And it may be at least next Spring before they iron the significant bugs out of it.
Of course, that's not the picture that the Depratment's senior managers wish the public to have. Indeed, it's not the picture that they want the staff to have, with messages on our intranet constantly telling us how well it's all going. And this to the thousands of people who are having to work with it, and who are facing daily, nay hourly frustrations at being prevented from doing their jobs properly because of yet another load of junk which should never have been made operational until they were sure it was - what's that phrase? Ah, yes! - 'fit for purpose'.
And the response from management to criticism? Either a) ignore it, or b) cudgel the messenger. One example may suffice. When a member of staff pointed out to his colleagues that the order in which entries in a certain category of data appeared was (and I hope you'll pardon my use of a technical term here) all to cock, and ended his e-mail with a light-hearted comment, he was censured by a senior manager, who ordered him to stick to 'strictly factual' content in future. This despite the fact that that particular member of staff would have won awards for effective communication for well over a decade had the Depratment bothered to have any, and that the same message which got into the hair of the senior manager had been praised for its effectiveness by at least two managers on the front line.
It's all show and bluster, and we know it. That's why - only a matter of a few weeks ago - the Depratment came last in a staff survey in more than a dozen Depratments of Stoat. Particularly low marks were given for job satisfaction and for confidence in the Depratment's senior managers.
And they wonder why we have higher than average sick-leave levels, and why experienced staff can't wait to find somewhere else to be, even if it's a Twilight Home For The Bewildered.
I just wish my lottery numbers would come up big, and soon.
