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@Daragh Curtis: Was it outsourced? It just looks like the company produces software that you can use under licence from them, I don’t think they tailor it, I think that’s up to the person/team in house. There seems to be missing information around this ‘code’. In fairness to the coders, this is exactly what you get when you rush a product to market without developing and staging it correctly for bugs or code misinterpretations. Like it really does sounds as simple as someone saying 1,2,3,4 and the receiving person picking it up as 1,3,4,2 and putting it into code. All that been said, I can imagine that the cost of the tribunal, court cases, taskforces, workgroups, junior ministers, outsourced investigations that will now be assigned to investigate this will cost ten times the price of the software if developed and invested in properly from the start.
@Dave.: I do 100% agree with rushing software. I’ve been in that position myself many times and mistakes happen. You are 100%. I would however hazard to point out though – that testing this software SHOULD have picked this up – so while I understand the plight of the developer (as in the actual coders) I am not convinced the company as a whole did a good job – because they released a substandard product. Unit testing would have picked this up very quickly.
–
Also quick one , during the interview , it was noted that this was not an Off the shelf product , nor was it Out of the Box. It was built from scratch specific for the grades system – so it is 100% customisable (in fact was explicitly built for the sole purpose of the Irish grading process).
Is this a wee bit of a mountain out of a molehill? It was a serious mistake but this system was never going to be perfect. How many people realistically would’ve received vastly different offers proportionally? It’s definitely an upsetting time for this affected but in the grand scheme of things this was a long way from the worst outcome.
Leaving Cert Algorithm – a serious and basic error by ‘people’ involved in the software design, coding and testing – not the fault of an ‘algorithm’ as the minister suggests!!!
Looks like those awarding contracts, managing software projects and coding and testing the algorithms are not qualified to do so … employ some software engineers.
Any surprise here? No. It’s the civil service.
No Consequence due to the 1927 Ministerial Act. The minister is responsible for all acts and the people who were negligent are not.
These civil servants would not last a week in the private sector
The Minister should not resign. The civil servants should resign. Yeah right.
Foley must be sacked immediately she should not be given the chance to resign. When you consider Calleary was forced out for having a pint. She has to go.
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