2008-09-25 - Work Stuff

For reasons I don’t really understand, a few people have asked me what I’m doing here work-wise. So that they learn not to ask such questions to an IT person, here’s the answer…..

The brief that ABV had was that the job was to work on CARE Cambodia’s MIS – Management Information System. As usual, nobody actually knows what that means, but after only one day at CARE the interpretation in this case was apparent. The job is three-fold:

Part one is to have a look over their internal IT system, and keep an eye on things while they move that from being outsourced to hiring and starting an internal IT department. There are various deficiencies with the current IT system, and these also need to be found and addressed.

Part 2 is that they spend a lot of time doing “manual handling” of their data – data entry is painful and duplicated, reporting likewise, and a lot of information goes in and never comes out again. Systems aren’t linked, data is stored in lots of different ways, Excel spreadsheets and Access databases everywhere, etc. The job here is thus to link it all together and automate as much of the drudgery as possible.

Part 3 is to dump as much knowledge as possible onto the new IT department as they arrive, so they can carry the torch. I was involved in the interviews for one of the IT staff, and the candidates were mostly fairly good, so that one shouldn’t be too difficult.

This is all quite a lot of work for 1 person in 3 months, but nevertheless good progress is being made. I’ve assembled from scratch the infrastructure of a web-based system that will hopefully talk to the 2 main existing databases, and be a platform for adding other required functionality, and of course integrating the whole lot. Just today interaction with the finance system started happening, and they even have documentation for it that says what data is where. Documentation! Am also getting a handle on how their timesheet system, also to be created, is to run.

The internal IT system has also been given a poke, and while it’s a little wobbly, it should survive until the new IT people appear to tackle the issues present. I could be doing more here, but I think the best contribution I can make is on the joining data together side, and it is better if the new IT people make major system changes themselves, as they are the ones that will have to know what’s where.

The good thing about CARE is that they know fairly well what they want (i.e. requirements exist), they are realistic, they have a practical view of priorities (priority #1 is what is most needed, not what the manager that complains the most wants), there is no bloated and bureaucratic approvals process, and there are no bizarre and ever-changing business processes to try and accommodate in code (no need for sub getPhaseOfMoon()). As far as nerd programming stuff goes, that is about as good as it gets.

Anyway, enough of that. Am off on Saturday down the Mekong, arriving in Ho Chi Minh / Saigon on Tuesday. Hope to then catch the train that runs all the way “up” Vietnam to Hanoi, and then hopefully get back to Phnom Penh in time for work the following Monday. The train is 3 days, so not a lot of spare time in between. So most likely no blog for a while.

PS – dinner tonight was at the Edelweiss German restaurant on the river, where I had a pork schnitzel and tomato salad (and a soy bean drink) – not bad. The Indian just down the street is gaining favour as a favourite though.