Russel

“that poor technical decisions have been taken, in part because constituent councils’ IT managers were ignored. A number of these have been covered in this discussion – again, by people with direct knowledge of the process”

Well that’s your simple assertion. I assume some of these people were not retained by the Auckland Council. I assume other experts (who got the jobs) disagree.

It’s not unusual for techies to disagree. That happens all the time. IT like life is full of choices. Two dogs fight over a bone – so what.

A minimalist approach was taken by the ATA, I guess from a range of IT options from minimalist to big bang. The longer term upgrade of IT was rightly left to the new Council.

Ongoing upgrade of the Auckland Council’s IT cannot be a transition cost.

Over the next 10yrs the Auckland Council and it’s CCOs will have a turnover of in excess of NZ$40 billion. It’s a seriously large complex organisation. One would expect its IT spend to be in proportion. At even the proposed under NZ$500million spend that is not wildly out of proportion. And all of this when staff and customers are expecting more and more IT services many of which will have to be online.

And you still cannot get away from the fact that the existing TLA spend over the same period (assuming previous trends continued) would have been around or in excess of NZ$900 million.

Looks more of a beat up than a story.

Mr Brown clearly has cognitive difficulty in working out the difference between transition costs (the costs to keep the door open on day 1) and other longer term costs.

The 10 year costs outlined in the Herald story cannot be transitional. The fact that they will be going into the long term plan is a sort of a give away that they are not transition costs.

Mr Brown runs a shock horror line at the costs – heads must roll.

Unfortunately Mr Brown is too quick to the guillotine.

Local Government in the region used to spend around NZ$90million per annum on IT anyway. 90 x 10 is what?

Yes big numbers probably tough to comprehend.

Is Mr Brown claiming that none of the existing IT would have needed replacement or upgrading over the next 10 years?

It does seem odd that ongoing staff and customer demand for better and better IT and more services over the next 10 years should be in anyway a transition cost.

I assume that ratepayers will demand more and more online services for example that demand would be present whether one had eight councils or one.

But I cannot wait for his complaint to the Auditor General. And the witch hunt – who knew what, when, and where.

On the other hand we could accept what Mayor Brown and Auckland Council CEO McKay are saying – no blow out, no crisis.

And Mr Ford’s observation that IT spending is ongoing; subject to choices and prioritisation. Mmmm sounds way too grown up.