Census - 9 August 2016

[Gringotts Bank]

I think the bandwidth is taken up by Anonymous (hacktivists) who got in early and are busy collecting our data as it appears on the ABS servers. Like those wild bears who casually catch salmon as they swim upstream.

How about some props for this call?

 

[drsmith]

In a press conference this morning, the PM stated that that the ABS census site could cope with 260 submissions per second but reached 150 per second prior to the shut down due to the announced denial of service attacks.

260 per second equates to 936,000 per hour which I would have thought would struggle to be sufficient given the potential for the submission of many millions over a lesser number of hours on Tuesday evening.

ABS website is back up but the census website is still down as at the time of this post.

 

[drsmith]

I've now got an anaemic sign of life but it was all too brief.

Still looking very much like tomorrow.

The above brief sign of life may have been the following,

August 9, 2016

8:50pm

The online form system is restored. Overload protocols are activated to prevent connections until the state of the systems and their integrity can be assessed.

The ABS posts a message on its website and on social media saying there is a system outage and advising people to try again later.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-10/census-night-how-the-shambles-unfolded/7712964

Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.

 

[drsmith]

Presently looking more like tomorrow.

 

[Tisme]

I feel so much more comfortable now that Malcolm has endorsed IBM, ABS & Oz Signals Directorate advice that the census has not been compromised. Phew that makes me feel sooo much better.... of course he's not saying he thinks it's safe, just that the other three say it's safe.


I wouldn't mind hearing from Revolution IT about their assessment, given they were the bods who did the commissioning.

 

[drsmith]

260 per second equates to 936,000 per hour which I would have thought would struggle to be sufficient given the potential for the submission of many millions over a lesser number of hours on Tuesday evening.

To what extent was site capacity the issue ?

Mr Turnbull said there was some anomalous traffic on the night which turned out to be quite innocent and that caused the ABS to take the $470 million national survey down.

“So the site was not crashed by denial of service. But there was what you could describe as a confluence of events which caused the ABS to make that decision,” he said.

http://www.news.com.au/finance/econ...y/news-story/ca419fe4e368656fd01f64eda44bbf19

It's taking a long time to get the Census site back up. I wonder if this is to provide extra capacity for the site.

 

[Gringotts Bank]

Still down.

The load testing experts allowed for 1 million people accessing the site at once. Are they aware that there's 23 million people in Australia?

I don't work in IT and know nothing about load testing, but even I can come up with a bunch of measures to ensure a proper online census event.

How about allowing residents to download the questions in the months prior to the 9th. The questions can be filled out without even being online. On the 9th, you encrypt then zip the file, then send it via an email. Have thousands of different email addresses to choose from, each linked to the ABS. Any thoughts?

This took me 5 minutes to think of. Maybe I'll send those incompetent dicks at the ABS and Revolution a bill for 500k.

 

[drsmith]

Still down.

When trying to access the census page a little while ago, the browser attempted to load the page for a short period before I got the standard couldn't display the page. It then went back to the census website is unavailable page.

I wonder if that was a failed attempt to get the census site back up.

I don't know that I'm brave enough now. When it is back up (at this stage, I'll assume when rather than if), it might be best to wait a few days and see how the dust settles.

 

[drsmith]

Mention bravery and,

The Census website is now available

We apologise for the inconvenience and thank everyone for their patience.

https://stream20.census.abs.gov.au/eCensusWeb/welcome.jsp#top2

I'll see how available.......

EDIT:

No sign of life yet when I hit Complete My Census.

 

[Knobby22]

IBM were the designers. I seem to recall they stuffed up some other system a few years ago from the Federal Government. Why do they keep going back?

 

[pixel]

To what extent was site capacity the issue ?

http://www.news.com.au/finance/econ...y/news-story/ca419fe4e368656fd01f64eda44bbf19

It's taking a long time to get the Census site back up. I wonder if this is to provide extra capacity for the site.

by far the greater worry is the information that, in spite of the data entry burden shifted on the Australian citizens, the total cost is still reported to run to $470 million! Surely, 10M forms could be printed and mailed (twice) for under $10 a pop. Where did the other $370 million go?
What a waste of taxpayers' time AND money!

 

[SirRumpole]

Not being an expert, but knowing that geo-blocking is a reality, wouldn't the census have employed some sort of geo blocking so that people outside Australia could not access the site ?

Or did they and it was circumvented ?

 

[Knobby22]

Yes, found it.

You might remember IBM from such scandals as ‘We implemented a new solution to improve Queensland Health’s payroll system, and it was two years late, $1.18 billion over budget, and had more than 35,000 problems.’

I’m not kidding. $1.18 billion over budget (not counting legal costs, which I’ll get to shortly) on a contract worth just $6.19 million.

Caitlin Fitzimmons, writing for the Fin Review, has a good break down of what is surely the greatest IT swindle in global history here.

She notes: “The Queensland government and IBM agreed to a seven-month time frame to implement the new payroll system, with a go-live date of July 2008.

“IBM stands by the work it did for Queensland Health, though anecdotally it seems that the affair has tarnished Big Blue’s reputation in corporate Australia.”

Well, it certainly didn’t ‘tarnish’ IBM’s reputation in the eyes of the Abbott Government, because it f you note the date on the ABS contract for the Census – October 2014 – that was quite some time after IBM had already screwed the pooch in Queensland, and after it became involved in a multi-million lawsuit with the state government to avoid having to compensate taxpayers for its monumental screw up.

https://newmatilda.com/2016/08/10/c...-its-business-as-usual-under-a-turnbull-govt/

 

[bellenuit]

How about allowing residents to download the questions in the months prior to the 9th. The questions can be filled out without even being online. On the 9th, you encrypt then zip the file, then send it via an email. Have thousands of different email addresses to choose from, each linked to the ABS. Any thoughts?

Yes, that is something I thought would be a better alternative. It could also offer an option to print the census form and have it mailed if there were issues like we had a few days ago.

One thing though. When eTax was used to submit taxes, which at that time was a program you downloaded to your computer, there were a lot of complaints that as it ran on the end-users' computers there were a lot of incompatibility issues. For a few years it ran only on certain versions of Windows and it was only in the last few years that support was added for Macs. The suggestion was that rather than run it on the computer which introduced all the incompatibility issues, it would be better to have it accessible via a browser. This they have now done using MyGov. Although there are compatibility issues with browsers, there are far less of a problem than running directly on end users' computers. I suspect this may have been the thinking behind doing the census that way.

 

[orr]

IBM were the designers. I seem to recall they stuffed up some other system a few years ago from the Federal Government. Why do they keep going back?

There was a Technology firm in Britain circa mid 1990s, EDS from memory, used by the UK government for Civil and defence work. Over budget, never met a dead line... if they ever did get it working, under performance. All mercilessly and mirthfully pilloried in the Private Eye, and just kept getting more work.

I'm guessing, 'knew where the bodies were buried.....'

I believe Herod had these things worked out 2000 odd years ago and we've trusted these donkey's to run the country , half the Cabinet I wouldn't trust to run a bath.

And Tisme; Can't imagine the The Signals Direction boy's 'accidentally misplacing' a USB stick or two with 'all' the data from the census, down the back of the couch just before the official delete date, can you?

Ahh those immortal word from the head of the NSA... 'get everything'

 

[pixel]

I.B.M. = It's Best (done) Manually

 

[Tisme]

Yes, found it.

You might remember IBM from such scandals as ‘We implemented a new solution to improve Queensland Health’s payroll system, and it was two years late, $1.18 billion over budget, and had more than 35,000 problems.’

I’m not kidding. $1.18 billion over budget (not counting legal costs, which I’ll get to shortly) on a contract worth just $6.19 million.

Caitlin Fitzimmons, writing for the Fin Review, has a good break down of what is surely the greatest IT swindle in global history here.

She notes: “The Queensland government and IBM agreed to a seven-month time frame to implement the new payroll system, with a go-live date of July 2008.

“IBM stands by the work it did for Queensland Health, though anecdotally it seems that the affair has tarnished Big Blue’s reputation in corporate Australia.”

Well, it certainly didn’t ‘tarnish’ IBM’s reputation in the eyes of the Abbott Government, because it f you note the date on the ABS contract for the Census – October 2014 – that was quite some time after IBM had already screwed the pooch in Queensland, and after it became involved in a multi-million lawsuit with the state government to avoid having to compensate taxpayers for its monumental screw up.

https://newmatilda.com/2016/08/10/c...-its-business-as-usual-under-a-turnbull-govt/

Not just QLD but other states as well. The LNP used it as election bait and then coddled up to same group of scoundrels once elected....... what could possibly turn someone's head I wonder?

 

[Craton]

Site must be up coz am in!

 

[Tisme]

And Tisme; Can't imagine the The Signals Direction boy's 'accidentally misplacing' a USB stick or two with 'all' the data from the census, down the back of the couch just before the official delete date, can you?

Ahh those immortal word from the head of the NSA... 'get everything'

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) probably overloaded our pipe to the CIA database. All that meta data being syphoned off to the ASIO boys too.

 

[bellenuit]

Having worked for companies that have provided computing services to governments, in my experience the main issues are the government specs and last minute changes made by bureaucrats that know little of the issues they introduce.

Once the specs are in place and the project quoted upon, little should change. But then halfway through the project, some overpaid incompetent bureaucrat insists on having his pet idea added and some fundamental features changed no matter what the consequences and despite warnings by the experts. This drives the price up and increases the risk of failure. Often at the end when potential problems that had been warned of by the supplier eventuate, the government bureaucrats heap all the blame on the services supplier, knowing they are usually under a confidentiality agreement so cannot defend themselves and in any case cannot risk antagonising the government if they want future contracts. It is usually when these issues go to court that these issues get to see the light of day.