Yesterday, I heard on the radio an advisory given by GSIS apologizing to its members for delays and inconveniences and attributing the entire fault to IBM. The advisory didn’t really get into particulars so I decided to research on what it really meant.
According to ABS-CBN news, the ongoing dispute between GSIS and IBM Philippines is over an alleged defective software. GSIS is suing IBM and its partner, Questronix Corp., for tort and breach of contract after allegedly providing the state pension fund with defective software that paralyzed almost 90% of its operations. On March 30, the GSIS management system ground to a halt, resulting in “crashes” affecting the processing of loans and claims as well as the updating of members’ records. According to the complaint filed by GSIS, the damages suffered by it were estimated at P5 billion, given the man-hours lost and the amount of resources spent for data recovery activities when its Integrated Loans, Membership, Acquired Assets and Accounts Management System crashed. On the other hand, IBM is filing a libel suit against GSIS for employing a “series of unwarranted public attacks.” IBM wants P200 million in damages.
GSIS said multi-million daily transactions were dependent on this system, whose intermittent crashes have been “catastrophic.” It really must be because the software allegedly crashed months ago and until now GSIS is still giving advisories apologizing to its members. However, IBM claims that it has no responsibility over the software crash because GSIS did not purchase the software from them but from Questronix Corp, which customized it before distributing it to GSIS. In fact, IBM blamed the pension fund for failing “to follow industry norms and best practices in the handling of its data.”
Furthermore, GSIS has filed criminal charges against IBM Philippines’ general manager and a former GSIS senior vice-president for information technology services group for graft and corruption. I just find it funny and at the same time distressing that whenever something happens in our government everything boils down to graft and corruption. It somehow seems that in the end the software allegedly crashed not because of manhandling of data or defective software but because of graft and corruption (illegal extension of software contract, dictation of bid price of a server project and to pressure another bidder to back out). But those are just random thoughts and probably a topic for another entry altogether.
Although I really applaud our country’s efforts towards the digitalization of data and towards digital government, it is a little daunting that as all governments move towards the digitalization of data, we all become more and more reliant on technology and the computer that once something crashes, we all become paralyzed as well. Most of us think of the digitalization of data as an always positive thing but we fail to consider the negative as well. We fail to consider that if we do take a major leap towards that direction, we become prone to “crashes” that will paralyze major operations of our government.
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the government trusted the IBM brand to deliver the goods. that's why they were willing to pay the higher price. but, they failed to deliver. at this rate, we should just switch to Open Source. At least it cheaper and seems to be more reliable.
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