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Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

That's a pretty hefty fine, but I wonder what the original billings were for developing the system in the first place?

I've heard reports that they spent >AUD$5Million on just the load testing aspect, but I hope someone can verify that. And I trust that they have improved comprehensive testing methodologies that actually work to improve reliability under duress. (<sarcasm>Tip: Perhaps don't build it using Lotus Notes??</sarcasm>)

I guess we can be thankful that is was 'merely' a census and not something like electronic voting!

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I believe the original contract with IBM was only in the order of $10m

See: http://www.smh.com.au/business/ibms-reputation-at-risk-in-wa...

That's actually insane. I work for a different part of the company, sure, but I'm on an $11m USD project right now, as just one of my ~5 projects.

For as much as I've heard about this census issue, I thought it was a bigger (monetary) deal.

In the US, Census data is used for redistricting purposes, which CAN influence election outcomes in the future - so the implications of a census may be wider than you think. I don't know exactly the way it works in Australia, but some googling has led me to believe they use a system that is similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistribution_(Australia)

Absolutely, I didn't mean to downplay the importance of a national census. It is just that the results are used for longer term project planning and policy making, so the effects aren't as immediate as a whole government inadvertently being kicked out or brought into power as a result of an election day debacle.

Another major problem with the census was the Australian Bureau of Statistics holding onto the data and changing their privacy policies which meant that in an act of protest a ton of people entered false information or ommitted details. A really poor census overall.

I'm not sure it is a hefty fine for the situation. Its simply paying the remaining costs for IBM's failures.

I don't see how IBM thought they could pull if off for $9.6 million [0], especially with the ABS requirements for information handling during the census.

"Key measures to safeguard information include strong encryption of data, restricted access on a need-to-know basis and monitoring of all staff, including regular audits. After data collection and processing, the ABS removes names and addresses from other personal and household information. Names and addresses will be stored securely and separate from one another. No one working with Census data will be able to view your personal information (name or address) at the same time as your other Census responses (such as age, sex, occupation, level of education or income). Stored separately and securely, individuals names will also be substituted with a linkage key, a computer generated code, completely anonymising the personal information. Only these anonymous linkage keys will be used by the ABS to bring data sets together." [1]

Currently, it seems IBM is blaming their subcontractors, "While IBM issued a mea culpa, they were then quick to lay the blame at the feet of Australian communications company NextGen Networks and its upstream provider Vocus, blaming them for failing to implement a geoblocking service called Island Australia to prevent traffic reaching the site from outside Australia." [2]

And considering IBM's has a revenue stream of $20.24 billion this quarter [3], the fine won't really impact them.

As to their reputation, IBM doesn't have a brilliant name already:

* Failure to meet deadlines [4]

* In Queensland they were overbudget, overtime, and under scope [5] resulting in their permanent ban from working with the Queensland government.

* They have a great habit of building things that they call incredibly fast, but never perform up to spec in the real world [6].

Anecdotally, National Mutual contracted out to IBM for some "supercomputers" for their COBOL applications, to speed up processing time. The machines were half the speed IBM claimed. IBM's solution? Double the number of machines delivered, and ignore the extra costs of power, maintenance and network load.

[0] http://www.smh.com.au/business/ibms-reputation-at-risk-in-wa...

[1] http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/privacy

[2] http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/ibm-faces-...

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ibm-surprises-with-q2-2016...

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-27/ibm-unlikely-to-hit-cu...

[5] http://www.healthpayrollinquiry.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030_Stretch

Stories of IBM versus state or national governments come up fairly regularly. This one is unusual that IBM was actually found guilty/culpable/whatever. Usually they weasel out on some contractual loop hole.

Australia - or more specifically - already have a known-vulnerable electronic voting system they used in an election, so that horse has already bolted.

All our votes are carried out on paper. If whatever scheme they're using for collation is compromised/suspect a recount could be done entirely by hand.

Your counterpart is probably thinking of NSW's iVote, intended for people who cannot otherwise vote at a normal polling booth, which was trialled in 2015.

It was embarrassingly insecure.

(Doesn't change the annoying niggle of conflating a state with an entire country, but I guess Americans are all Alabamans in that regard)

I assume that the clause or more specifically was intended to say something like or more specifically, NSW

So it seems. Mea culpa.

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