Despite spending millions of dollars, our first online Census failed catastrophically. Right now almost ever Australian knows it is a total fiasco.
The website is still down, if you try to call to ask what is happening you cannot get through to someone on 1300 number.
Last night's census debacle provided many lessons in how not to manage a project, here is some:
1) Never promise what you can't deliver.
2) Think before you speak, if it was a hack as was first claimed, then how can the census reassure people that our data security is guaranteed?
3) Supply people with meaningful information. People who tried to log on after many attempts yesterday, and today are getting this message.
This 15 minutes when I tried again 30 minutes later thinking what they said was true still showed the same message that the website was still down and to try again in 15 minutes.
This has now been going on for a day.
Maybe we should all send the census a fine of $182 per day until the situation is resolved.
