[beedogs]

I've done work at CityLink, and their IT shop is just totally clueless. This does not surprise me one bit.

This is the same company that was doing "mirroring" with Veritas Volume Manager across a metro fibre link, rather than using their TrueCopy licenses. For no reason. Two fibre cuts rendered their entire production database (tolling) environment inoperable and nearly irrecoverable, on two separate occasions. I worked about 36 hours straight getting everything back online and was given a pair of movie tickets as a thank-you gift.

[DrStalker]

I've worked with State Transit in NSW (buses & ferries) and they were awful. The most embarrassing part was the UNIX team and Windows team refusing to talk to each other even though they were only one cubicle partition away from each other so any communication had to go up through two levels of management and back down.

The scariest part was every single database of user information was transformed from another database of user information; there was no source of truth, just a great big never ending circle of import & convert that had reached equilibrium and was now stable, provided nothing changed.

[eckyptang]

This is unfortunately normal in most public and corporate bodies. They are afraid that if they talk then information will filter across and they'll lose their remit or hold over the solution at hand.

It's silly really.

[jlsync]

You got movie tickets! A long time ago (13 years) the production database was irrecoverable! I got backups working just a week before tolling finally started. Failure of that system would ultimately result in the tollway becoming a freeway (allowing for buffering of data at the gantries, etc. etc.)

Although I had some responsibility for the tunnel safety systems at the time, we never touched them knowing that any problems would result in the road being closed.

[beedogs]

From what I remember, the gantries were (at the time, a few years ago) able to store about 2 weeks' worth of traffic before tolls would effectively become free.

[samotage]

Me too, they are the most imbecilic of IT organizations. And to think its the safetymongers whom ruled the day...