art-ikon - art_ikon Archives

Project National Health - policy driven IT

2009-10-04T23:06:23Z

How can an IT project grow from 2.3 billion to over 12 and no-one question the manner by which the project is set up? I find it very odd that any country can engage in such a huge project in such a wasteful way. We know that government want to mitigate risk by risk transfer and that can only work if the company is sufficiently solid to bear the putative risk. At first sight this seems obvious and good business. However, look at the figures and imagine the cost of this risk mitigation. No sensible project would be underwritten to that degree. The reality is that large contractors revisit the risk on the government, just as the banks have. And the reason for this is poor, unimaginative management.
The NHS IT project has been an absolute disaster for the tax payer and for the IT industry in this country. For the former in terms of value for money and for the later in terms of boosting innovation and competitiveness. What I find very difficult to understand is how it is that a government can expound the virtues of intellectual capital and competitiveness on the one hand and act in such a crass and destructive manner on the other?

]]> The dynamic is not the same as it is an absolute that the banks should not fail, but, in that this project is a flagship of government policy and the government does not want to be seen to fail, this project cannot fail. Except that, by any sensible measure, it already has failed.
Feed the insatiable appetite of large IT companies has decimated innovation that can only thrive in the competitive environment that is fostered by healthy small firms.
To understand all of this fundamental principals have to be revisited.
Definitions of intellectual labour need to be understood, especially in the context of IT engineering, something that government simply just does not get at all.
I shall lay some trails.
One of the strong motives to Open Source software is subversive, while the other is that of wishing not to have to repeat behind closed doors what may need to be done only once if the doors are open.

The long, flat base

2009-10-03T16:50:59Z

Image via Wikipedia

Notice how pyramids, as such, are functionally useless, and are not part of a modern construction repertoire, by which I do not mean pyramid shaped buildings, but actual pyramids. But emblematic they are and rightfully so. Engineering is more about bridges, road and rail lines of communication and various sorts of buildings, depending on function.
Pyramids, though, are emblematic of human structures, not without reason. The repetitious work is greatest at the base, hardest higher up. Slavery is equal at any point. How many are ground to dust to prevent the remains of one of two hidden in its midst from being ground to dust? Large companies are similar, unless they are very skilful in their people management.

]]> The broader the base the more pointless and tedious each component task, because each task at the base withstands a huge amount of pressure from above.
This is not intelligent design.
The pyramid, itself, is not an intelligent structure. But even if it were a bridge there are trade-offs between one massive bridge and several small ones. For instance one massive bridge would never have worked as a solution for bridging the Thames in London.
But this is what government does with IT, completely unnecessarily given IT's flexible and scalable nature.
These solutions have three disastrous consequences.
They cannot be efficient solutions.
They cannot be optimum solutions because they squeeze creativity out of those at the bottom who must implements them.
They cannot be economically competitive because they distort the market and deprive smaller companies of opportunity. What competition there is is at the expense of the first two points and this is ultimately disastrous for any policy that is meant to promote intellectual capital in this country.

From the top

2009-10-03T15:31:25Z

Image by art_ikon via Flickr

I realise that I am never going to fit in to my work environment.
I don't think that I can blog about this impartially. But, perhaps, usefully?
Before the work specific let's set the scene.
We have a government that wants to grow and promote the intellectual capital of this country.
How are we doing?
The answer is probably surprisingly well despite, not because of, the government.
This applies particularly to my field of IT.
Translating requirements into an application is one thing, but translating efficiently, creatively and offering true value for money is something entirely different.
It is quite clear that government has no criteria for the later, and therefore, no depth of understanding of subtle consequences of their decisions that ensue from contractual arrangements downwards.
Largely the government, in their many IT endeavours are ensnared by large IT companies who make it their business to justify the highest possible costs over the short and medium term.
Because they cannot show net profits above around 5% in the public sector they find other ways to make money, the most common pattern is that of over complicating requirements gathering and elongating the length of time it takes to fulfil and item of work. Attendant patterns are non-cooperation with IT partners and back loading costs to non IT ancillary services.
All of this comes about because the Civil Service is inattentive of contractual detail and under manned and skilled in their oversite roles. They also consistently chose large suppliers rather than a series of small suppliers.
Let's look at the consequences of this.
The government could be promoting exemplary projects, and it would be important if they did so.
Three truths
IT is a fluid field with much to learn, new ways of doing things on every level of the project. Experimentation coupled with uncertainty is the norm. This is so much the case that it cannot be said that further experimentation necessarily increases risk (within some parameters). Experimentation, trying things where results are uncertain, can reduce risk.
This truth is fundamental to understanding good IT governance.
The second truth is that top down governance is intrinsically flawed. The larger the pyramid the larger the mass of detail that is essentially unknown and, hence, contains hidden risk.
The third truth is that large pyramids are intrinsically unstable and dangerous when one needs to interact with another, at what ever level up or down the pyramid.

movabletpe, MTOS 4.3 or pro?

2009-08-31T16:03:16Z

...
Tangentially, the situation with MT is certainly confusing.
These are observations rather criticisms. I assume that the more thought and discussion I am involved with on this topic the better I will finally understand it.
Let me explain -
The project I work on professionally is a pretty large government funded web site and I have just been working on the 'software refresh' - I think that name reveals plenty about where this is all going. 'Software refresh' really wasn't in the sense that there is a large content driven web site that surface many nodules of discrete functionality through bespoke code. Each nodule is still part of the whole, and the normal way would be to see them as packages that have a set of dependencies that vary according to version.
I think you know where I'm going.
If you substitute perl for the server scripts in ant and shell the situation conceptually may be similar to that of the movabletype codebase?
Perl has CPAN and associated tools, Java also has some tools. But it is very difficult to apply these tools retrospectively.
For instance Byrne keeps old versions of Photo Gallery linked - and this is a different type of decision as to whether the link should be removed, than publishing version and version dependencies for Photo Gallery. It is a different (logical) order of decisi

Image by art_ikon via Flickr

on.
An equivalent example from my professional life would be broken links to public content - how should they be mended? This is in control, and of a refresh remit. But, in terms of different order of decision, another example is where the whole code base of a particular project might be better worked in a different directory structure.
Since we are talking about dozens of discrete projects, you may imagine this is an intimidating proposition. And I have come to the conclusion that no-one quite knows their way around these issues.
It is not quite knowing how to deal with this sort of thing that I am assuming applies to the MT codebase, OS and commercial, as well.
So when I complain that the situation around MT is confusing I, at the same time, imagine that the reason is because the situation is complex.
Now I do have something to add to this though. This is that there is a similarity in approach to creating a large web site where many intrinsic bits of code exist in various scripts and have been placed there over the years in, what is described as, an organic way, to what must happen in a community such as MT, both OS and commercial, over the years.
It seems that the only way out is to either ensure that each atom of change works with every other part of the system or enforce categories of code within which change may take place. At the moment most, Java, Perl or other, do a bit of both. Further, by insisting to the extreme either alternative I don't think there is anyone who would be able to say this would evaporate all the problems I have outlined. However, it maybe that there is such a way. What do you think?

Realism Painting

2009-08-31T11:16:06Z

Realism Painting,
originally uploaded by art_ikon.

This is the most lovely Bella.
This blog is a mixed bag of entries, both fun and technical and other. There is no particular order. Think of it like this. I am using an alias so that i can express myself freely. This means experiment, say wrong things, do wrong things. Imagine that news@art-ikon is staging and art-ikon is the live version. Ideas that seems to work in some way may find there way into my other blog, under my own name.
Bitchy comments and other about my employer and employment probably wont.
Who will read this?
I really don't care that much. If the ideas are good enough when, or if, I review them, they may find another form of expression anyway.
Since I want to cover ground from government contracts in IT to psychology, the spectrum is necessarily vast and I don't expect anyone else to necessarily keep up. It is enough that this is my medium for sorting through my ideas.
And, b.t.w. this was posted into my blog from flickr.

this is art-ikon!

2009-08-29T22:33:58Z

And here is my lovely bro ...

2009-08-29T18:09:07Z

Image by leahculver via Flickr
"Python, Ruby, Java"

I remember this fire. Thinking about it it was quite a likely shop to catch fire as it was a hardware shop selling many plastic things such as plastic bins, brushes and pans, washing baskets and so forth.

I wonder how I walked around to see that as it all seems quite cordoned off. Maybe I asked someone or came back later?

This is Jake ---

Photo of Jake by art_ikon via Flickr

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Queen - Princes of The Universe

2009-08-27T23:24:16Z

round up - details

2009-08-27T13:52:13Z

One or more errors were found in this template.

Template - Photo

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Edit every instance to MTEntryTitle (which is pointless in forst conditional, but I leave it in.)

Template - JavaScript (MT Config)
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line 13 - remove to comma.
line 29 - remove whole block starting community: and ending comma.

news@art-ikon now publishes.

Oddities

Template Feed - Recent Comments
at line 23 is unrecognized.
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I haven't attempted to edit this. I know that the same error occurs for this template under MTOS 4.23

Template Entry Summary included in Main Index (Frontdoor)
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I haven't attempted to edit this. I know that the same error occurs for this template under MTOS 4.23

round up

2009-08-27T12:09:33Z

OK - what blogs do I have?
Under MTOS 4.31

art-ikon

http://www.art-ikon.com/art-ikon
hybrid news
this blog seems OK, although haven't explored author and feedback tags etc.

news@art-ikon

http://www.art-ikon.com/newsart-ikon/
hybrid news (photo gallery)

has two pages -
- art-ikon-news-gallery
- news@art-ikon

Concern here is that no images display.

No images display in the UI, so there must be some fundamental incompatibility with this version - 4.31 - that hasn't been fixed.
b.t.w. I cannot see what difference 4.31 OS and 4.31 Pro would make, as entry level is free licence to Pro. I would think that would mean they are in synch?

Under MTOS 4.23

art_ikon_news

http://www.art-ikon.com/art_ikon_news/art-ikon-news/
hybrid news (photogallery)
this blog seems OK, although haven't explored author and feedback tags etc.

art_ikon_gallery

http://www.art-ikon.com/art_ikon_gallery/
photogallery
this blog seems OK, although haven't explored author and feedback tags etc.

First Entry - New Blog

2009-08-22T23:00:01Z

This is more or less it for set-up. No doubt other changes can be introduced.
Let's get to it.
I am art_ikon and I post as Ikon-Art.
Because I want to be completely free in what I have to say here I employ an alias.
It may become apparent over time why this is necessary, although I doubt what I have to say is all that outrageous.
Further on I will introduce details of who I am, that is the internal me.