The Guardian has a report on the fortnightly Essential Research poll, from which I assume we will get voting intention numbers later today. The fact that The Age has a Resolve Strategic state poll from Victoria suggests a federal poll from that outfit should be with us shortly. For now, I can relate that the Essential poll has Anthony Albanese at 53% approval (down two on a month ago) and 34% disapproval (up three). The poll also finds 69% believe the Reserve Bank has overreacted with its interest rate increases, and 71% believe the federal government is largely or partly culpable, though it’s unclear if the question specified the current government. An even 29% believe Labor or the Coalition would do a better job managing interest rates, with 42% opting for no difference. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1044.
In other news, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Milton Dick, announced yesterday that the Aston by-election will be held on the inauspicious date of April 1, which is one week after the New South Wales state election (and two after the Arafura by-election in the Northern Territory). Labor has announced that it will again field its candidate from last year’s federal election, Mary Doyle, a finance worker and former organiser for the National Tertiary Education Union, who was the only candidate to nominate. The Age reports the Liberals are taking the preselection out of the hands of their unreliable rank-and-file, which presumably shortens the odds on barrister Roshena Campbell and lengthens them on Emanuele Cicchiello, deputy prinicipal of Lighthouse Christian College.
“All too frequently enterprise systems like SAP are implemented in an operation vacuum, with the lead being taken typically by IT and Finance. This ALWAYS leads to grief once the system goes live. It is imperative that operational functions need to be fully involved in the configuration of these monster systems and that the chart of accounts should be subservient to the management and logistical needs of the company. This rarely happens.”
Ah interesting. Still doesn’t explain the user interface and the need to learn t-codes to get basic information out, and the consistent ‘can I have the tax amount along with the base amount with report x’ ‘no of course you can’t’, ‘how about the fx rate used to convert from foreign currency’ ‘no’, ‘I see ok, now those 15 date columns with very similar names can you give me a precise definition of what they are supposed to hold if the data is correct?’ ‘no’. ‘excellent’.
To be fair I understand 4 Hana has an easy intuitive and well named report function that is easily searchable and intelligent. I’m sure it will be perfect.
And if it makes you feel better I’m involved with an implementation that certainly has the limitations you describe above but also finance and IT consistently get a ‘yeah nah we can’t do that’, based on the project parameters, so I suspect on day 1 there will not be a lot of happiness.
Sceptic says:
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 1:27 pm
George Miller & The Man from Snowy River
A shame they felt they had to cast Kirk Douglass
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mick Jagger was on tour and couldn’t saddle up.
SAP is the product of the centuries of German thinking that brought us Marxism and that other guy whose name I won’t mention for fear of breaching Godwin’s Law.
That is, a human is unable to operate within a system, the fault is necessarily with the human rather than the system.
Is Paul M Mcvey just making things up to fill in the void ?
All supposition & speculation & no facts
Sceptic, in earlier testimony Menzies-McVey said WTTE ‘I aim to give my superiors what they ask for’.
Independent advice? Pfffft!
“That is, a human is unable to operate within a system, the fault is necessarily with the human rather than the system.”
Hmm I can guess now based on personal experience and what I’ve read above, that the combination of the way SAP seeks to bankrupt the customer and business’ inability / unwillingness to invest the time and resources upfront to design something that works, means we all sit in very poor systems with more invested in work arounds given the bad initial design.
Compound that with initial bad design 1, a decade of customisations and work arounds to force initial bad design to work then being fed into bad design to, ‘make it just like initial bad design, only in 1/4 of the time needed, with no investment, no customisations just out of the box’ ….
what could go wrong
One smart developer once told me, to understand SAP you need to understand 1 thing. It is designed by Germans.
So the standard Silicon Valley/Redmond UI concepts settled by Microsoft, Apple, Google et al – like you have the menu with drop downs along the top of the screen – don’t apply to the Germans. It only gets worse the further you go in SAP functions.
The Germans believe they know better
Oh, and Greggery is now alluding to a belief that Kathryn Campbell was not interested in hearing advice on income averaging.
Taylormade likes to particularly highlight issues that reflect negatively on ALP politicians. Fair enough too, all mistakes or wrong doing needs to be known.
What he never does is comment on the other side. We can never forget his infamous reference to the “achievements” of Scott Morrison shortly after the election. When challenged on numerous occasions to offer up some examples he never responds. It’s not his fault because there are none.
Now we have a Royal Commission that is trying to reveal who invented the illegal robodebt scheme. Plenty of documents are being examined but what we may never know is the verbal conversations that took place because most participants have poor memories.
However, as time goes by we do learn more about just how appalling the ATM Governments were, and these three governments were appalling for one simple reason, and that goes to the horrible people who formed those governments.
Robodebt is just one appalling example with numerous additional instances of corruption, lying, and rorting as well.
Gladys to Darryl: “I don’t need to hear that bit”
Kathryn Campbell to underlings: “I don’t need to hear that bit”
“Sceptic, in earlier testimony Menzies-McVey said WTTE ‘I aim to give my superiors what they ask for’.”
That is every single person who succeeds in business or the public service. If your independent advice was valued or valuable in anyway you’d be the boss.
I’m aware of a public service organisation where the EL1 and EL2’s were quite unhappy and were stupid enough to say it out loud, and the message back from the SES was a blunt, ‘you are here to do what you are told not think, not question, not bicker, just do what we tell you.’ Independent advice, you got to be kidding., we don’t have a society like that, I’m not sure we ever did,
In a private multinational enterprise I had a boss for a few years who would often say something like, ‘well I’ve told my boss x, I know you think y, if he asks you feel free to give your frank view’. In five years my boss +1 never once asked, and I never told him.
I was taking enough of a risk tell my direct boss when I had a different view, always wrapped in a ‘its your decision I’ll do it your way, I just want to give you the best view I have’. My boss didn’t like being offered alternative views but he took it in stride, we had a team member for a couple of years that always always sided with the boss on any question, and it turns out that particular boss liked that even less.
Compound that with initial bad design 1, a decade of customisations and work arounds to force initial bad design to work then being fed into bad design to, ‘make it just like initial bad design, only in 1/4 of the time needed, with no investment, no customisations just out of the box’ ….
_______
WeWantPaul
When I was at the forefront of putting in a complex (BaaN) system into a manufacturing environment we made a rule that customisations would occur over our dead bodies. These systems are SO configurable and well integrated, that there are almost limitless possibilities to configure them in such a way as to reflect sensible business process flows and to structure charts of accounts that will be helpful as opposed to stultifying and difficult to intelligently interrogate.
Too many companies try to bend the new systems to emulate the “way we have always done business”, even though these artifacts are very much sub-optimal. There are never better opportunities given to companies to go back to first principles to engineer superior business processes.
It’s all about change management – or it SHOULD be!
Kathryn Campbell’s SC now gets to cross-examine Menzies-McVey.
“One smart developer once told me, to understand SAP you need to understand 1 thing. It is designed by Germans.
So the standard Silicon Valley/Redmond UI concepts settled by Microsoft, Apple, Google et al – like you have the menu with drop downs along the top of the screen – don’t apply to the Germans. It only gets worse the further you go in SAP functions.
The Germans believe they know better”
Well as a user I can safely say they are wrong, as a customer I can see the $ they are raking in for the sh1t they provide and perhaps they are right.
The implementation contractors should all be lined up and shot as well.
So Kathryn Campbell has counsel – who is looking to earn his stipend
sprocket_ says:
“So Kathryn Campbell has counsel – who is looking to earn his stipend”
KC has her own KC.
Well, SC in this case.
Is Kathryn Campbell paying for her SC out of her $900k ‘Director of Special Projects’ salary?
Home ownership in Australia peaked in the early 60s at 72% with relatively stable prices despite a rapidly rising population ????
And I bet they they were never sold by AUCTION !!!!!!!
“Too many companies try to bend the new systems to emulate the “way we have always done business”, even though these artifacts are very much sub-optimal. There are never better opportunities given to companies to go back to first principles to engineer superior business processes.
It’s all bout change management – or it SHOULD be!”
I think there is a natural business trap the way the boston consulting, Mackinsey etc etc world of business does things.
They want an out of the box greenfields implementation, but they do not want to invest either the time or the money to ‘engineer superior business processes’.
Also finance are very much ‘path we have walked’ you are not going to get finance to think about better ways to do things. I’ve seen consultants try and force finance teams to do things better / different and it usually means they just stop doing things, most of which do serve a purpose.
WWP: “This report doesn’t have x any more”
Finance guy under pressure: “Well we stream lined the process, stripped out all the inefficiency and redundancy.”
WWP: “No you just stopped recording some important things.”
Finance guy not under pressure: “Look the CFO was delighted I got a $10k bonus for this and a top review rating, moving my annual bonus into the $50k range, it is what the company is demanding.”
WWP: ‘I need x, how am I going to do y?”
Finance guy smug: “sounds like a you problem”
That would be my contribution to Ukraine, everyone any where in the globe who works for a ‘consulting’ firm can be conscripted, flown to Ukraine, and then be required to live in Russia when it is over.
It would be one of those very rare moments where it make Ukraine, Russia and the rest of the world all better off.
Like when a lawyer leaves one practise to go to another and in the process improves the average quality of both.
WeWantPaul @ #129 Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 – 11:38 am
Some companies have already figured out that Labor is going to be a soft touch in the area of carbon storage and carbon offsets. There are going to be billions to be made in these rorts. And they probably won’t reduce our actual carbon emissions by a single tonne – they may, in fact, encourage more emissions.
I suspect any handover meeting between Kathryn Campbell & MeziesMcVey took place in a cleaners cupboard buried in DHS car park
A brilliant article from 2022
This specific point in the cabinet brief for the Budget is probably the point of no return. It will likely deliver culpability for robodebt back to bureaucrats as much as elected representatives because it is the nexus for a fundamental shift in the burden of proof that rendered robodebt unlawful.
The document essentially reveals the point at which the executive was bowled up to a proposal to flip the basis of the creation of a financial liability from proving a debt to disproving a debt.
This would never fly in commercial or consumer finance, but in the institutionalised, disconnected and often myopic world of welfare administration, the fundamentally flawed idea was fitted with rocket boosters to get it off the ground.
https://www.themandarin.com.au/208196-campbell-knew-nothing-robodebt-specifics-mysteriously-bypassed-department-head-before-cabinet/
Sceptic
In an anechoic chamber, perhaps.
“already figured out that Labor is going to be a soft touch”
I’m not sure we’ve seen evidence of that yet, being a soft touch is a bit different to their institutional cowardice.
I remember the day the Terrace in Perth was alight with the news that Gillard had told the Australian MD of Chevron to have a bex and lie down, when he was trying to bully her. He had to ask his team what a bex and lie down meant.
Seeing Kathryn Campbell in this thread reminds me she is still drawing a huge salary from the Commonwealth.
What is the reason that this continues to be so? Is there some legal reason she must be retained?
After the evidence yesterday my heart breaks for the victims and their families.
Interesting. I didn’t know about Noel Pearson and his obsession with “Direct Instruction” …
https://arena.org.au/noel-pearsons-radical-centre-by-chris-sarra/
I am not really up on education theories, but It seems like a crackpot scheme …
… and then there is this …
Glenn Maxwell rolled for a duck by Wes Agar, Victoria now 5/119, but look to have a match winning lead of 174.
When you get a blob against Wes, you ain’t going to India in a hurry…
“Glenn Maxwell rolled for a duck by Wes Agar, Victoria now 5/119, but look to have a match winning lead of 174.
When you get a blob against Wes, you ain’t going to India in a hurry…”
With the Australian selectors it shouldn’t be ruled out.
The Australian selectors could rescue Josh Phillipe from the WA second 11.
New from Dr Kev:
‘Poll Roundup: No, Labor’s Honeymoon Is Not Over Or Anything Like It’
‘2PP Cross-Poll Average 56.1% To Labor’
‘Labor would win an election “held now” with an increased majority (approx 92 seats)’
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/02/poll-roundup-no-labors-honeymoon-is-not.html
Been out today until now but I get the impression, based on scattered comments on PB, that a viewing of this morning’s RC proceedings, once available, would be interesting. Would I be correct?
I must be a bad person, enjoyed reading hem to my kids and will enjoy reading them to my grandkids:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/roald-dahl-books-editing-philip-pullman
Bennelong Lurker says:
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 3:21 pm
Only in so far as showing how endemic the consumption of Kool Aid was in the DHS /DSS hierarchy
BL
Likewise
Seems Holmes and Greggery took a dim view of a government lawyer who glossed over advice that the Robodebt scheme was illegal.
And Kathryn Campbells controlling manner seems to have been mentioned again.
I wonder how she’s getting on at Defence? And what did her army subordinates think of the Major-General? Were they likewise fearful?
Thank you Sceptic and Rossmcg.
Business as usual, only more so then.
Oliver Sutton says:
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 3:19 pm
New from Dr Kev:
‘Poll Roundup: No, Labor’s Honeymoon Is Not Over Or Anything Like It’
‘2PP Cross-Poll Average 56.1% To Labor’
‘Labor would win an election “held now” with an increased majority (approx 92 seats)’
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/02/poll-roundup-no-labors-honeymoon-is-not.html
————————————–
Looking at the federal Victorian lib/nats combined primary vote of 27%
If that is accurate Dutton and his cronies will be hoping the seat of Aston is a rogue primary vote of 40% +
RC
Is this the smoking gun?
BKsays:
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 2:10 pm
Basic problem stems from IT being classified as a cost centre and put under the control of finance.
The missed opportunity is not using IT to gain a competitive advantage and therefore report direct to the CEO.
This playing out right now in the EV space. Compare the performance of Tesla to all the other legacy car makers.
Some lessons are never learnt
SkyNewsAust and Dailytelegraph will host a NSW People’s Forum showdown between Dom Perrottet
and Chris MinnsMP 730pm AEDT March 22nd – just 60 hours before polls open across the State.
Granny Annysays:
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 2:05 pm
Taylormade likes to particularly highlight issues that reflect negatively on ALP politicians. Fair enough too, all mistakes or wrong doing needs to be known.
_____________________
After the Tudehope pile on the other day, I am just waiting on the calls for the Assistant Treasurer of Victoria to resign.
C’mon hurry up. Should he resign or not ?
1934 pc
Most of the homes sold at auction until the 1980s were mortgagee in possession.
The Victorian bloke can resign if Morrison does.
I had to go out and missed the completion of Menzies-McVey testimony.
Before I left, I felt Greggery was building to something.
Was there anything significant revealed before Menzies-McVey slithered from the stand?
timbo, Greggery did allude to an observation that Kathryn Campbell was ‘not interested’ in advice on income averaging — and the hapless Mr M-M did not demur.
Taylormade @ #193 Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 – 1:23 pm
What else can you expect from a Labor right Shortenite.
Only thing they’re good at is damaging a Labor Govt.
Now at Robodebt RC: someone within AG’s department drafted an email calling for Robodebt to be classified as a ‘Significant Legal Issue’ (based on established criteria) — but it went nowhere.
Commissioner is perturbed by the absence of any record of why it died.
RC
Is it really possible for there to be so many unrelated, uncoordinated cockups by so many departments?
So it’s just a massive coincidence ?
Thankyou Oliver Sutton
The RoboDebt RC is edging towards uncovering ‘coverup-style’ behaviour, in the period when shit had already hit the fan, and the perpetrators were not yet ready for the Mea Culpa.