TV3's government money programme last night. (1 Viewer)

[Scientician 0.8]

Anybody watch it?
The litany of ill-advised, corrupt, half-baked, overpriced schemes the government spent money on was just embarrassing. We're well and truly back to Banana Republic status except the climate's too shit for bananas. Rawble, rawble, rawble.

 

[egg_]

Didn't see it. I suppose e-voting was on the list - is there anything else?

One of my uncles was advisor to John Bruton when JB was minister for finance. If he's typical of the backroom boys in Irish politics then it's no wonder we are so fucked. He's a nice fella, and clever, but all he knows about is politics and he doesn't have much respect for any other kind of expertise. He'd be the kind of fella that'd push through the e-voting scheme cos it corresponds to his own idea of "progress", and it would seem like a good move politically to be seen as the person who introduced e-voting, but would favour the advice of poorly-informed cronies to actual real computer people who were telling him how insecure the whole thing is

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Those operating on behalf of the state/people never seemed to seek the best value for money in these projects because there was so much money going around nor did they create contracts that would be flexible enough to changing fortunes so you have 20 yr contracts for various projects/services that cannot be broken without paying ridiculously punitive get out clause payments. With regard to e-voting machines, I don't know the whole technical flaw but l would have thought the state could have sought a refund/replacement for the product from the manufacturers since it was not fit for purpose. I'm not sure if that was even tried. The PPARS system was another fucking disaster.