City of Toronto: spinning freely

[Phillip Mills]

A day late, I've just read a Saturday Toronto Star article called, "MFP 
computers obsolete."  (Page B3, GTA section)

It looks to me as if both the techs and the politicians are trying to soften 
up the public so that they will swallow a 63 million dollar computer upgrade 
of 1999 vintage systems.  There may be good business reasons for the upgrade, 
but the technical ones they provide are baffling to me.

1) "Toronto would like to adopt a 311 system where residents could punch in 
that number and get information on city services or report problems.  That 
would require major upgrades."

It might require new servers, but as an excuse for upgrading stuff that's 
performing some current function, the reasoning doesn't cut it.

2) "Deputy Mayor Sandra Bussin illustrated how out of date city hall's systems 
are by pointing out that her office computer can't send a photo via e-mail."

OK, where do I start...?  I'm not a PC hardware expert, but my oldest Mac is 4 
years older that her PC and it has no trouble sending a photo via 
e-mail...guess it's a Wintel thing.  Semi-seriously, though, anyone here 
think they could get poor Sandra's machine to send a photo via e-mail for 
less than $63 million?

-- 
Phillip Mills
Multi-platform software development
(416) 224-0714

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