RealMe (igovt) fail

Forums › Off topic › RealMe (igovt) fail

lapimate

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#173369 20-May-2015 20:10

igovt was introduced about 5 years ago and operated by the Dept of Internal Affairs. Now operated as RealMe on behalf of Internal Affairs by NZ Post.

The National Library and Archives NZ are both part of Internal Affairs.

To access the National Library as a Reader one must sign up for an identity card (cheap cardboard). It is possible to initiate the registration process online. However to complete the process one must visit National Library physically and present eg Driver Licence. National Library (remember, part of Internal Affairs) cannot utilize Internal Affairs‘ own RealMe identity verification system to register!

Archives NZ (remember, part of Internal Affairs) is even worse. Same need for a (separate) identity card (plastic). Cannot even initiate the registration process online let alone use RealMe to register.

wsnz

649 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1309031 21-May-2015 07:51

It wasn't that long ago that the DIA couldn't (or perhaps just wouldn't) obtain a copy of a birth certificate from themselves when issuing passports. You had to apply for a copy of the certificate, have it posted to you, and then post it back to them as part of the application.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79323 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#1309034 21-May-2015 07:53

On the other hand, I got my new passport without even talking to anyone in a DIA or NZ Post shop, using my RealMe. And was surprised when the notification told me it could be up to ten days wait, but the passport was delivered two days later, on a Saturday no less.

wsnz

649 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1309045 21-May-2015 08:22

I agree, the new RealMe provisioning for passports works well, IME.

Regarding the comments from the OP, there could be some very good reasons why NatLib and ArchivesNZ can't integrate with RealMe and fully automate the process; integration projects can strike all sorts of barriers such as financial, political, difficulty integrating with legacy technology (IRD are another example of an entity with these issues), business prioritisation issues etc. I agree it seems silly, but perhaps something is in the pipeline.... someday!

khull

1245 posts

Uber Geek

#1309046 21-May-2015 08:26

Personal experience, the speed where government department makes decisions it is no surprise - Every decision has to be backed up by mountains of feasibility and technical audits, advisory boards and paperwork in an attempt to preserve certain jobs and lifestyle. And with departments like National Library and Archives not having any close alternatives, who cares how fast/slow decisions are?

timmmay

20592 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1309065 21-May-2015 08:37

Integration with iGovt costs money and takes time - often the time of expensive contractors or consulting firms. It could be that a number of systems would need to be integrated, some of them could be legacy and not actively maintained, even old COBOL systems. You might be surprised how much it costs and how much time it takes. So they may have made the decision to keep the cheap and effective (but inconvenient) paper card system rather than spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on IT system integration.

frankv

5681 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1309228 21-May-2015 11:43

khull: Personal experience, the speed where government department makes decisions it is no surprise - Every decision has to be backed up by mountains of feasibility and technical audits, advisory boards and paperwork in an attempt to preserve certain jobs and lifestyle.

I don't think there's any particular effort to preserve "certain jobs and lifestyles". My belief is that the problem is that decision-makers are more concerned about preserving their own jobs than anything else. Hence, every decision needs to be backed by a mountain of feasibility and technical audits and advisory boards, so that words like "took advice from industry leaders" and "followed best practice" can be used should things go wrong.

There is no auditing of the time and money wasted on unnecessary studies and audits and reports, so (from a decision maker's point of view) it's always good to be cautious and slow.

This is also a consequence of the downsizing of the Public Service. No longer do Govt depts have all the skills and knowledge and manpower to do their jobs... they are continually outsourcing work, especially development work, to contractors, and consequently never gaining knowledge or skills. Decision makers therefore often don't have the technical knowledge to make a decision, so have to employ even more contractors to tell them what to decide.

khull

1245 posts

Uber Geek

#1309301 21-May-2015 14:23

timmmay: Integration with iGovt costs money and takes time - often the time of expensive contractors or consulting firms. It could be that a number of systems would need to be integrated, some of them could be legacy and not actively maintained, even old COBOL systems. You might be surprised how much it costs and how much time it takes. So they may have made the decision to keep the cheap and effective (but inconvenient) paper card system rather than spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on IT system integration.

Indeed - however that is a technical problem that vendors are signed up to provide the thought leadership and experience (MDM and integration using middleware and messaging). Expensive? probably - but that can be negotiated and agreed in the bidding process that aligns with AoG strategy along with timeframes. Often business owners trouble themselves with the details and wanting to control every aspect (perhaps due to mistrust and abuse by vendors like a certain Payment/Financial system for the education sector)

franky: This is also a consequence of the downsizing of the Public Service. No longer do Govt depts have all the skills and knowledge and manpower to do their jobs... they are continually outsourcing work, especially development work, to contractors, and consequently never gaining knowledge or skills. Decision makers therefore often don't have the technical knowledge to make a decision, so have to employ even more contractors to tell them what to decide.

And that introduces the delays via Independent/Technical Quality Audits. At times the department decides the best decision is to do nothing (to address a potentially impacting issue/breach) until the audits are completed without a secondary plan

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

timmmay

20592 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1309306 21-May-2015 14:36

khull:
timmmay: Integration with iGovt costs money and takes time - often the time of expensive contractors or consulting firms. It could be that a number of systems would need to be integrated, some of them could be legacy and not actively maintained, even old COBOL systems. You might be surprised how much it costs and how much time it takes. So they may have made the decision to keep the cheap and effective (but inconvenient) paper card system rather than spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on IT system integration.

Indeed - however that is a technical problem that vendors are signed up to provide the thought leadership and experience (MDM and integration using middleware and messaging). Expensive? probably - but that can be negotiated and agreed in the bidding process that aligns with AoG strategy along with timeframes. Often business owners trouble themselves with the details and wanting to control every aspect (perhaps due to mistrust and abuse by vendors like a certain Payment/Financial system for the education sector)

You've used a whole lot of buzzwords there, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. In the end it likely comes down to cost - spending $100K or $1M or $10M to change their membership system vs providing their core services.

khull

1245 posts

Uber Geek

#1309313 21-May-2015 14:44

I'm agreeing with you - it is definitely a cost decision however I am also saying that the decision makers may not necessarily understood the benefit and more importantly, value of the project (or the implications of not going ahead with the project implementation). A dollar value on its own does not really mean much. Questions needs to be answered is relative to what and the value obtained. I've seen projects that end up being quoted with a value and then the business runs around trying to justify that spending by asking irrelevant questions like was the quote from the vendor correct, what are the processes in place to avoid incurring the costing.

This is why certain departments still run on Windows XP (or insert any out of support software/infrastructure) - and you'd be surprised it is not always a technical migration problem. They couldn't see beyond what the mitigation/remediation tasks are if such an unsupported system/infrastructure suddenly were to fail because it can not be quantified/costed easily. (DR is not the answer)

Sideface

9367 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1309327 21-May-2015 15:09

Throwing money at a Government IT problem does not always work.

The classic example of this was the UK National Health Service "Connecting for Health" scheme - an online booking system with electronic care records.

Started in 2004, it was expected to cost 2.3 billion pounds over three years, but by June 2006 the total cost was estimated to be 12.4 billion pounds.

Our Auckland-based company was building software for the NHS - we designed it to run on really basic Windows XP machines, of the type then used in New Zealand schools.

I traveled to the UK on a delivery trip to discover that our software would not run on NHS PCs, which had only 250MB of RAM - this was AFTER 6 billion pounds had been spent on upgrades.

In April 2007, the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons issued a damning 175-page report on the programme. "This is the biggest IT project in the world and it is turning into the biggest disaster." The report concluded that, despite a probable expenditure of 20 billion pounds "at the present rate of progress it is unlikely that significant clinical benefits will be delivered by the end of the contract period."

Our company went bust - we got none of the money wasted on "Connecting for Health".

Sideface

andrew027

1286 posts

Uber Geek

#1309404 21-May-2015 16:50

Others have already pointed out a number of reasons why National Library's and Archive's systems may not be compaitble with RealMe, but this sort of thing can be a bit of a no-win situation for government, with the public quite happy to get up in arms when the Dom Post publishes a story that DIA are spending $X,000,000 to make their own systems talk to each other.