Most eNatis technicians quit

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rpm

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eNatis technicians quit

A total of 36 out of 44 software technicians quit the electronic National Traffic Information System (eNatis), Rapport newspaper reported on Sunday.
 
This is a bit of a vague article.

Although I haven't worked on exceptionly large software projects, 44 software "technicians" ( what the hell is that? ) is a lot of people for a development. It would make sense that a number of people are hired to design and implement the initial code but maintenence there after should be managed by a lot fewer peeps. Also did they quit or did their contracting company pull out? Was it really quiting or end of initial development and rollout phase.

I don't know if the government has the foresight to understand the SDLC and they might just be expecting a once off run. I also wonder if the reporter has any clue either and is not fear mongering.
 
Kosmik said:
This is a bit of a vague article.

Although I haven't worked on exceptionly large software projects, 44 software "technicians" ( what the hell is that? ) is a lot of people for a development. It would make sense that a number of people are hired to design and implement the initial code but maintenence there after should be managed by a lot fewer peeps. Also did they quit or did their contracting company pull out? Was it really quiting or end of initial development and rollout phase.

I don't know if the government has the foresight to understand the SDLC and they might just be expecting a once off run. I also wonder if the reporter has any clue either and is not fear mongering.
Click to expand...

I agree with you. There's too few facts here. A bit of sensationalism if you ask me.
 
Kosmik said:
This is a bit of a vague article.

Although I haven't worked on exceptionly large software projects, 44 software "technicians" ( what the hell is that? ) is a lot of people for a development.
Click to expand...

It's quite simple, those 36 employees were bogus employees who never existed and their monthly 'salary' was pocketed by some guvament dude :p:D
 
Kosmik said:
This is a bit of a vague article.

Although I haven't worked on exceptionly large software projects, 44 software "technicians" ( what the hell is that? ) is a lot of people for a development. It would make sense that a number of people are hired to design and implement the initial code but maintenence there after should be managed by a lot fewer peeps. Also did they quit or did their contracting company pull out? Was it really quiting or end of initial development and rollout phase.

I don't know if the government has the foresight to understand the SDLC and they might just be expecting a once off run. I also wonder if the reporter has any clue either and is not fear mongering.
Click to expand...

I was also wondering whether they quit, or whether they went along with the contracting company pull-out.
 
I speculate that they demanded their fare share of the loot.

Work it out - 9 million vehicles on the road (2009).
R36 "transaction fee" just for using e-Natis.

R36 * R9m = R324m a year every year, increasing by 6% every year (6% more vehicles every year), excluding other e-natis transactions.
Each technician should be entitled to earn about R5m a year, which will still leave plenty of money for actually running the system.
 
davemc said:
I speculate that they demanded their fare share of the loot.

Work it out - 9 million vehicles on the road (2009).
R36 "transaction fee" just for using e-Natis.

R36 * R9m = R324m a year every year, increasing by 6% every year (6% more vehicles every year), excluding other e-natis transactions.
Each technician should be entitled to earn about R5m a year, which will still leave plenty of money for actually running the system.
Click to expand...

Thats just licensing revenue, you forget that that system fee applies to every transaction..incl new reg, dereg, etc...last i heard was about 2.2mill transactions a month!

And wasnt that fee supposed to be a one off originally to pay for the system...methinks the inflows are being diverted elsewhere:D
 
Kosmik said:
This is a bit of a vague article.

Although I haven't worked on exceptionly large software projects, 44 software "technicians" ( what the hell is that? ) is a lot of people for a development. It would make sense that a number of people are hired to design and implement the initial code but maintenence there after should be managed by a lot fewer peeps. Also did they quit or did their contracting company pull out? Was it really quiting or end of initial development and rollout phase.

I don't know if the government has the foresight to understand the SDLC and they might just be expecting a once off run. I also wonder if the reporter has any clue either and is not fear mongering.
Click to expand...

Yep, i'm also going with the "bad article" thing here. Being in software development myself i've seen how these things tend to pan out. You go in, do a project with a full team, go into a post-launch support phase and then you scale down [i.e. going into maintenance mode] . When this happen you pull all your devs out of the project and maybe leave a skeleton support crew behind , depending on the site owner's expertise [i.e. if they have their own IT dept] you might even leave completely only to do support on an "ad-hoc" basis.

So to me it sounds like the contract/project merely ended and the govt/site did not sign a support agreement with all 44 people on the payroll [which makes sense to me, i mean why would you?]. They probably reduced it to 5 core support people, i mean why do you need 44 "technicians" if the development is done?
 
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I had my license renewed 2 weeks ago and was amazed to see how much time eNatis wasted. The clerk had to open Windows Task Manager about 8 times to stop the main program process and each time had to first run some sort of updater (which could not establish a connection) before attempting to log in to eNatis again. This took about 18 minutes per person and the queue behind me was quite long.

Whom ever wrote it had no idea how to write a proper protocol/connectivity layer. Actually, I wonder if the solution has any tiers at all ! From what it looks like it could just be one massive form with thousands of procedures sitting behind it.
 
Rouxenator said:
I had my license renewed 2 weeks ago and was amazed to see how much time eNatis wasted. The clerk had to open Windows Task Manager about 8 times to stop the main program process and each time had to first run some sort of updater (which could not establish a connection) before attempting to log in to eNatis again. This took about 18 minutes per person and the queue behind me was quite long.

Whom ever wrote it had no idea how to write a proper protocol/connectivity layer. Actually, I wonder if the solution has any tiers at all ! From what it looks like it could just be one massive form with thousands of procedures sitting behind it.
Click to expand...

don't be surprised if there is an access 2000 database behind it, with just a "pretty" interface :D
 
Probably the badly-written code is the reason why Akasia and Waltloo test centres had to close down? As they could not handle the large influx of applications...
 
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