[Tfug] TUSD Tech Nightmare

[Bexley Hall]

--- "Bowie J. Poag" <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:

> I hope it's not like this elsewhere in the
> country...
> 
> Every school's IT department i've ever seen has
> been, in some facet, 
> comically mismanaged. Largely good people, but
> absolutely helpless 

I don't believe the problem is confined to schools
(both "secondary" and university, etc.).  I've rarely
encountered a *business* that spent its IT dollars
wisely.  For me, the test is:  "If this was MY
money, is this how I would spend it?"

> technologically. It borders on sad.. Dumping tons of
> money at problems 
> they don't understand, for software they dont use,
> and sold enormous 
> amounts of hardware so far beyond their needs it
> boggles the mind.  One 
> place I saw here in town had a dedicated quad
> processor Wintel box as a 
> webserver...serving precisely half a dozen webpages.
> 6 HTML documents. 
> $300 a month if I remember correctly, spent on a
> dedicated T1 for a 
> webserver that saw practically zero traffic. A 56k
> modem would have been 
> overkill for that thing.

How is that any different from "folks" buying the
latest Wintel hardware -- discarding their 24 month
old machine -- just so they can watch MOVIES on a
little computer screen?
 
> Even the UofA has it's issues. I used to *routinely*
> pick up NeXT 
> workstations from the UofA auctions. $10k-$15k Unix
> workstations who's 
> function could have easilly been replicated with a
> simple X terminal. 
> And besides, why NeXT?  When I worked for UofA,
> there was a woman in our 
> department that had managed to get her own SGI o2
> gumdrop workstation, 
> which, at the time, was about $12k. A massive
> hot-rod graphics 
> workstation. Her justification for buying it? "It
> looked user friendly, 
> like my Mac at home". When she found out it wasn't a
> Mac, it just 
> collected dust in her office. A couple grad students
> ended up using it 
> as an X terminal to contact a bunch of antique
> RS/6000's I maintained. 
> Nothing I could do about it but shake my head in
> disbelief at how 
> financially irresponsible (and occasionally
> corrupt!) the department was.

Again, "its not THEIR money" so they have no real
concern over the "value" they receive for it.  In
a sense, they receive INFINITE value:cost ratio
(since their "cost" is 0).

And, since very few firms/organizations tie the
actual RESPONSIBILITY (and accountability) for
decisions to real INDIVIDUALS, no one ever pays a
price for these bad decisions.  Hence, no one ever
learns from them.

Take say $100K of your *own* money and think about
how you are going to invest it (business) and you
will be amazed at the thinking that goes into your
decisions!  :>

> Ahhh, the stories I could tell you over a beer.. :)



 
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