Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Don't Take Us For Fools

America was prepared to let the whole wide world know that the Challenger space shuttle explosion was caused by a faulty O-ring. And the Apollo 13 glitch was damaged Teflon insulation on the stirring fan wires that short-circuited and ignited the contents of oxygen tank number 2 in the Service Module. In Singapore, the level of disclosure stopped at "a faulty network device" that caused a bank system to crash on the morning of September 13. Nobody will ever know whether it was a printed circuit board, integrated circuit, micro-chip, transistor, diode or capacitor that brought down the financial institution's IT infrastructure.

Okay, now tell us what happened
While it was admirable that CEO Chris David Conner promptly messaged an apology to its customers before the day was over, the guys in charge of the network didn't provide a clue for the hiccup, except the vague "device" and "parameter" reference. Hardly sufficient technical input to provide useful information for others to avoid a similar disaster. In July 2010, DBS’s banking services were disrupted for more than 6 hours due to errors traced to a repair job completed by IBM, their outsourced vendor. The statement that the Armonk, New York-based company took disciplinary action against the employees involved, and reviewed procedures for its staff, implied human errors were at fault. If that melt-down also involved a "device" or "parameter", no one would be the wiser.

Singaporeans are used to the "dumbed down" approach from the bureaucrats. It's a given that the average citizen has too low an IQ to understand factual data that would explain where GIC gets its money to play the market, how HDB prices are formulated and why the CPI upped 4.5% in May despite MAS's expensive open market operations to maintain a strong Singdollar that supposedly fights imported inflation. That's why detailed accounting is so short in supply. But it has to be a tragedy when the private sector is adopting similar approach. The public is conned into signing up for gigabit internet access, without being enlightened that the Ethernet card in their computers is good up to 100 mbps only. Well, if ignorance can help fuel the GDP growth, who's to say it's wrong, seems to be new mantra.

Perhaps the top dogs in charge are too technically challenged to see through the fog generated by their subordinates. One is reminded of the first CEO of IDA, who responded to doubters of her qualification to lead the country's IT development with words to the effect, "I may not know what CDMA stands for, but I can always hire someone who does." Collect the pay, get someone else to do the job. That has to be the national sickness that resulted in another major glitch yesterday - a whole 4-hour service breakdown that disrupted train services at all 16 stations on the Circle Line. Will competent people ever be appointed to the right office in our nation?

11 comments:

  1. The answer is NO. We need a new government with new ideas. Not same old, same old.

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  2. I believe the first CEO of IDA is Ms Yong Ying-I who is the daughter of ex-Chief Justice Yong Pung How. She is a Perm Sec now.

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  3. This is nothing new...passing the buck at the top. Now there's a new phenomenon in China to push the blame when things fail to "temp staff"... the temp staff did it, the temp staff screwed up, the temp staff was not well trained, etc. Question is - why aren't those supervising the temp staff be accountable?

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  4. Truth be told? Here's what I think happened at OCBC. They've been hacked by cyberhackers! A day after the apology, ST published article about how cyber hacking/attack has been on rise. Conincidence? You bet! One thing I've learnt about reading msm, you need to connect the dots. Most often, they just DONT or WONT tell you the truth. Only in SG , like you say, we'll never know the truth when bad things happened. Is Operations Covered-up is so damn good, all these years, when all the so damn smart countries and their super elite squad from economist to politicians and bankers, aero scientist and are making blunders , they NEVER EVER made any . Not even ONCE! The SWF monies keep coming & offset miraculously. The Banks keep floating & no crisis. The Military & Intell keeps functioning, no problem. You name it, they got it! In fact, they are so damn angelic good and infallible, so pure and white that they cannot be taken off the perch. You'll be damned if you believe it.

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  5. David Conner. Not Chris.

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  6. Can't wait for the exchange to implement the high frequency trading in SG. We singaporeans will wake up one day and realize we lost trillions at the flick of a button to world's sophisticated traders, and they will just say is "global technical glitch". On Premiere soon..!

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  7. Is common knowledge among IT professionals/experts in the field that if hacking happens in Banks, which is very common, the first thing Banks do is to contact hacking forensic to come and contain the damage control. Once that's done, then they will release/announce the news to media and said how the hacking was detected in time, damage controlled blah blah blah. But in reality, they have lost millions/billions per year to organized crimes/hackers and they can't do a thing about it. They can spin how they want it, but people in the know will see through the lies.

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  8. So we're coming full circles with ms Saw again eh. All that promises of improved services "after" collecting increased fares are just that..no lights coming out of the tunnel. She can wait for another 4 years before we will relent to the fare hikes again. Not sure how much patience we still have with her..far better she fast-track to somewhere else in her Ferrari.

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  9. LOOKS LIKE IT IS TRUE SG DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH TALENTS TO HAVE A 2-PARTY SYSTEM, TIME FOR PAP TO DISAPPEAR!

    Hey Tattler,

    Can't wait for you to write something juicy about this...

    The biggest shareholder in UBS broke its silence about the $2.3 billion rogue trading scandal that has engulfed the Swiss group, criticising “lapses” in the bank’s controls ahead of a pivotal UBS board meeting in Singapore.

    Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, was already sitting on a substantial loss on its 6.4 per cent stake in UBS before last week’s shock disclosure that a 31-year-old trader on the bank’s “Delta One” desk allegedly lost billions by taking unauthorised futures positions.

    FULL ARTICLE... http://www.cnbc.com/id/44602291

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  10. They have not enough talents is a FACT already. Wikileaks double-confirmed. But at least the 2nd/3r tier MPs are now working as GROs in some cowboy towns where they were defeated. In meritocracy, is called Vote-1-get-2-MPs-free. Uniquely Singapore lah

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  11. http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/fastest-download-speeds-infographic/

    you can bet world fastest internet speed isn't one of them either, no matter how our local ISP tries to spin it.

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