Many of you know that I worked for a National Police initiative called NEPI from 1995-2000 which ran the national fingerprint, names, AVO database etc. I loved it. Nice people (all tech nerds), stressy boss but it was exciting and worthwhile work until we did a proposal to replace the national fingerprint identification mainframe and the then Police Minister, Amanda Vanstone decided it was a great idea but wanted to run it from Canberra. Crimtrac was born and NEPI dissolved. Anyway, got an email from the biggest white-anter and sirrer at NEPI the other day and have since met up for lunch - I love being on leave! Had a great chat and a lovely lunch over a couple of chardy's. He's now working for IBM so they paid for my meal - thank you IBM - if I'd known in advance, I'd have ordered the lobster!
Tell ya, the public service is a monster. Full of well intentioned people treading water, making sure the process is adhered to, complying with EEO rules but not producing anything. After five years, and of those that worked at NEPI (National Exchange of Police Information) only 2 have gone into the private sector. The rest - yep, treading water in Education, Transport and others. It's no wonder we never get anything done in this country, time to introduce some KPI's and accountability rather than dwelling on flexitime - results count, not the time spent on achieving them, if indeed they are ever achieved. Crimtrac is still running but making most of its money doing criminal history checks for DIMIA (Dept of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs). There's still no national DNA database as the states won't agree on legislation about who can be tested. In NSW you have to be in prison or charged before DNA can be extracted without your permission - funny tho, South Australia managed to change legislation toot sweet during the Peter Falconio murder investigation . . where there's a will, there's a way - all Public Servants need is the will.
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