I expect the truth of this lies somewhere in the outsourcing industry. It has every smell of miscommunicated requirements and half-assed implementation.
If I'm right, I doubt it'll ever be admitted to though.
People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
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Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#12Although I don't have any direct evidence regarding this instance, I wouldn't be surprised if the old system was greenscreen & form-based, while the new one is some kind of shiny Java-backed web app. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the old system was faster to use and less error-prone: those old greenscreen apps tended to be optimised for long-term use, rather than for showing off in a board-room demo.
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#13Anyone else put in mind of Gordon R Dickson's (1965!) classic: Computers Don't Argue[1] ?
1: http://www.dave.rainey.net/calendars/dystopias/process3.html
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#14Not a system upgrade, but a faulty system. To which branch of the government should the court system be accountable?
Umm, the courts?
I knew various government techies who went to work for the Administrative Office of the [US] Courts. Honestly, I don't know what the chain of command was there.
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#15Tyler Technologies acknowledged in a statement that the upgrade process had been “challenging” - but said poor training was to blame for bad inputting of data and integration with third-party applications that often introduce glitches into the system. People writing software need to take responsibility for how the software is used, especially when it can impact people's lives to this degree. You can't just blame thir…
Except, what is the threshold? Are MS responsible for every time a 20 year old machine running windows 98 because nothing else can run the data collection software crashes? Should I give Linus a ring every time my aunt breaks her laptop that I installed Mint on? Assuming the software itself has no meaningful or significant bugs (a hard thing to prove), it likely IS a problem of training. I know that my travel request…
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Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#16Kind of reminds me of Therac25. There a shitty user interface killed people. Here it "only" affects peoples lives in a dramatic manner. A shitty user interface ruined somebody's life. Consider that.
For those like me who didn't know the details: http://hackaday.com/2015/10/26/killed-by-a-machine-the-thera...
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#17Similar problems have been reported in Tennessee and also in Indiana - where prosecutors have had a perhaps more troubling issue of inmates being mistakenly released early.
It seems backwards to describe this as more troubling.
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#18Holy Cow! There needs to be some serious consequences for those responsible for this travesty.
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#19Software is currently in a strange place legislatively, in the 18th century Civil Engineering exploded (sometimes literally) and the number of disasters went up in radically (for an interesting case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster), over time professional standards bodies grew alongside the maturing industry to both ensure that people working in the industry where adequately trained and adequately protected from external factors (people pushing them to do things cheaply, skimp on designs etc).
Given that we've handed a large part of the running of the modern world over to computers, software and the people who write that software I think at some point we need to start looking at a similar system, now the usual argument to this is "We don't want regulation" or "It's not my code, it's other peoples" but that doesn't alter the reality that this isn't going to get better until the way the industry is run changes, it's not a software issue, better tooling won't save us (it might help though) and there is no perfect outcome.
EDIT: It's worth noting that if as an industry we don't work with our customers on this stuff and reach an accord that fits everyone eventually one will be imposed on us from outside, Software Engineering doesn't exist in isolation, other fields of Engineering are covered already.
Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts
#20Similar problems have been reported in Tennessee and also in Indiana - where prosecutors have had a perhaps more troubling issue of inmates being mistakenly released early. It seems backwards to describe this as more troubling.
Relevant citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation