Chapter 47: Service NSW

Project Initiation

November 1993

When I woke up, I gathered some documents to show to John about how we would tackle the project. My main aim with today’s meeting was ‘project qualification’, that is, to get more details about John’s requirements, what were the key deliverables and results that he wanted to see, plus some feeling on what was he felt was a reasonable budget and timeframe for the project. I was also wanting to get some idea about how the project would run; what accommodation would be provided, would there be access to the Information Technology Services network and email system, and whether computers and printers would be set up for us.

I made sure I had an up to date copy of the company profile for him, along with some screen shots of the UNSW web site and documentation on the structure of the site. I called Michelle and told her I would be on the train going through Wollstonecraft at 9:02, we could walk from Wynyard station to the State Office Block. I chose a light grey suit, white shirt and a blue paisley tie to wear, I didn’t want to try the typical ‘dark grey power suit with the red tie’, this meeting wasn’t about impressing John, or intimidating him, it was just an information gathering exercise.

Michelle met me on the train as arranged; we sat next to each other, and talked about the project. She reminded me of one of this year’s thesis projects that could form the basis for the site search function.

“Do you remember that project, Chris Saunders was the student, I think Ken Robinson was his supervisor, he was developing an artificial intelligence program, one that had a learning ability in it, where you could ask it questions, and it would give answers,” she said. “Something like ‘what research is the university doing on infertility?’ and it would come back with a list of research activities, and you could ask for more information on specific ones”

“I do remember that, he based it on that chatbot program called ‘Eliza’, yes,” I replied. “We were looking at how it could be adapted to the website, as a guide to the university’s research activities. There was some work required to allow multiple people to use it simultaneously, and to work in a ‘stateless’ environment like a website, but it was a very impressive system. I liked how it had the ability to ‘learn’, where people would rate the accuracy of its answers, and new possible answers could be added all the time.”

“That’s the one. Now, for this project what if we look at building that into the website, but where you could ask it ‘how can I apply for a driver’s licence’, or ‘how much does it cost to get a copy of my birth certificate, and who to I contact?’ It would return links to the relevant web page on the site; maybe a brief description of where it would take you, and a hyperlink. For example, the answer to the first question would be something like ‘you can go to any Roads and Traffic Authority office, follow this link for details... ‘, and that link would go to the page on the RTA section of the ‘Service NSW’ site, where it described what you needed to do to get a driver’s licence, costs, documentation requirements, and so on.”

“I like it, that sounds like it would be a good way for users to find the service they need,” I said. “Once we start working on the proposal, we should contact Chris and see if he’s interested in some work with us. I assume you’ve got – or can get – his contact information?”

“Do you really have to ask me that, Will?” she said. “Of course I know how to contact him.”

“Yeah, I should know better than to have asked you. So that’s something we can present to John, a bit of AI behind the website to assist in service delivery.”

We went over a few more things we could cover with John, and when the train arrived at Wynyard, we got out, walked down George Street, then up Hunter Street to Chifley Square, and then into the State office block. We took the elevator up to the twenty-second floor, and followed the signs to the main reception desk.

“Good morning, Will Morris and Michelle Jones to see Mr. Martin,” I said to the receptionist.

She checked a large diary in front of her, and then made a phone call.

“Samantha? I have Mr Martin’s nine-thirty here. Shall I send them down? Okay, they are on their way.”

“Down that corridor, second door on the right,” she said. “His executive assistant is expecting you.”

“Thank you,” I said to her.

At the office we had been directed to, sitting behind a desk was Samantha Juneau, John’s executive assistant from when I worked for ITSO, back in 1980. I recall Karen Phelan referring to her as ‘the dragon lady’.

“Samantha? Nice to see you again, it’s Will Morris to see John Martin,” I said.

“Will! Great to see you, I have been looking forward to seeing you again. Go on in, John and Jim are waiting for you. Can I get you two coffees?”

We told her how we like our coffees, and entered the office, there at a side table was John Martin, and Jim Shipway, both looking older, well, it had been thirteen years since I had seen them last.

“Will! Good morning, glad you could make it. I assume you are Michelle? John Martin, Director-General of the State’s Information Technology Services Bureau. This is Jim Shipway, Director of the State Government Computing Centre. Jim got my old job when they moved me up here; we are just waiting for your old boss, Steve Crossling, who heads up the Network Infrastructure Branch to arrive.”

Just as he spoke, the door opened, and in came Steve. I shook his hand, and introduced him to Michelle.

“We’re getting the band back together!” I said, joking.

“Yes, it is almost like old times,” John said. “You will be pleased to know, Will, we are still using much the same change management procedures that you set up when you were with us, back in 1980. They have stood the test of time, that’s for sure.”

Samantha appeared with some coffees, and Michelle and I sat on a sofa, facing the other three around a low coffee table. I took my notes and sample pages from my brief case, put them on the table, and opened up my notebook.

“Did you want some background on the company, the sort of work we do, the people we have working for us?” I asked.

“That would be a good start,” John said. “Murray Allen filled me in with quite a bit yesterday, including why you are now not working at the university, but he mentioned that was sensitive, so we don’t have to cover that. But for Jim and Steve’s benefit, you are taking several years extended leave of absence, a sabbatical, I believe they call it. So, WTM Consulting, what do you do?”

I went through how the company was formed, as a vehicle to help a colleague set up a comprehensive IT system for her company, and we tended to specialise in accounting and business management solutions for medium sized business, not just the software installation and tailoring, but a complete IT solution. We could get computer rooms built, hardware and networks installed, mainly IBM Midrange and Personal Computer based systems, train users, do data conversion, a complete, end to end solution. More recently, we had done some internet and web design work, culminating in the World Wide Web development at the University of New South Wales. I showed them samples of screens, including the dynamic pages, mentioning dynamic pages generated using cgi / Perl and data base integration.

“Most of the people we have are those who I knew from UNSW,” I said. “They either went through their degree with me, or were my students, or are well known by the principals. As part of the proposal we will give you full CV’s of all proposed staff.”

“Where do you have your offices?” Jim asked.

“We have office and lab facilities in my house at Lane Cove,” I said. “But my view is our staff shouldn’t be back in the office, they should be working with our clients, on site, getting real work done. Not sitting back in an office, being non-productive.”

“And I see you have a web address, ‘WTM-Consulting.com.au’,” he said. “I assume that’s available now to be viewed?”

“Absolutely, if you have a computer with a web browser, you can pull it up, and see. One of our employees is a web design expert; she is also a graphic designer, programmer and trainer. In fact, she is working with Tim Berners-Lee and some others to develop the ongoing standards for the World Wide Web and HTML. Her current project with them is looking to see if the SGML concept of ‘style sheets’ can be ported to HTML, so that the visual appearance of web pages is separated from the structure of the document.”

“And you’re still working on the core architecture of the Internet?” Steve asked.

“To a certain degree,” I replied. “I have been involved in the development of a number of the RFPs that specify how certain parts of the internet work. Mainly routing, the Domain Name System, ways to manage private address spaces, things like that. At the moment, I’ve been involved in the development of a Unix-like system called ‘Linux’, which is a rewrite of UNIX for the Intel personal computer architecture.”

“So you’re involved in that?” Jim said. “We’ve just started to play around with it in the computer centre, looking at the possibility of using powerful Intel 486 servers to perform various networking and other functions. Taking the load off the mainframes, or avoiding the need for specialized hardware. It’s a promising looking system, I have to admit.”

“You’ve come a long way since you left us at the end of 1980,” John said. “I always felt you would go on to bigger and better things. When Murray Allen called me back then, telling me he was poaching you from me, getting you back at the university, I told him that he owed me, big time. I think he’s now starting to repay that debt, hooking me up with you again for this internet project.”

“Well, if we are going to implement an Internet architecture for the State Government,” Jim said, “why not go with Australia’s internet expert?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far, Jim,” I said. “I’m not really into blowing my own trumpet.”

“Don’t be so reticent about your skills, Will,” John said. “You are well-known in the internet community, both here in Australia and internationally. I am just very glad you are now available to assist me, to work with us again, and we can take the benefits of your knowledge and experience. So, having said that, you can probably guess that we have already decided to take you, and your company, on for this project. It is not the usual way we do consultancy bids, we normally get some fully costed, detailed proposals, and evaluate which would be the best for the State. So, assume we will take your company on, what we need to do is tell you what it is we want – or what I think we want, you will probably have some good suggestions. What I’ll do now is give you my thoughts, we can discuss that, and I hope you’ll have enough information to get a project proposal and plan developed. Does that sound okay?”

“I guess so, I’m not going to tell you not to offer the contract to us,” I said. “I thought that we would have to convince you that we knew what you wanted, and how to do it. But let’s talk about what you are hoping to achieve with the project, for some aspects, there might be alternative ways to achieve what you want, but we can talk about that in the fullness of time.”

John then spent the next ten minutes or so expanding on what he had told Michelle and me yesterday afternoon, they wanted a way to have a ‘nsw.gov.au’ internet presence, giving access to the Internet mail system to all state government departments and agencies, and setting up a World Wide Web site for the State Government. At least he had a reasonable idea of what he wanted from the Internet, and the sort of things it would be able to do.

“Okay, that’s given me a good start,” I said. “At least you know what things you hope it will do for the State, you’re not like ‘oh, this Internet thingy looks pretty good, let’s have two of them!’, you have a clear picture – at least at a high level – of what you want.

“Now, there are several ways we can do this. How much do you know about the DNS system, the different address classes, private networks and Network Address Translation? I don’t want to go over stuff that you know and understand, but then I don’t want to talk about options, assuming you know the basics and architecture behind it.”

“I think you can assume we know the basics, but some of what you mentioned, well, let’s hear it from the expert,” John said, and the other two nodded their heads.

“Well, knowing what you want to do, at least at a high level, the first part of the project will be setting up the key infrastructure,” I said. “What we need to do is get the ‘nsw.gov.au’ domain administration transferred to you, and set up a server to host that part of the DNS system here. Probably two servers, in case one fails, with an automatic fail-over. Would you want those servers hosted in the State Government Computer Centre?”

“Yes, I think that would be appropriate, we’ve got the infrastructure to keep the environment operational through all sorts of failures,” John said.

“Now, there will in fact need to be two DNS systems, the external one that has all of the publically accessible ‘nsw.gov.au’ hosts in it, and an internal system, that will be on the inside network, behind the firewall.”

“Firewall?” Jim asked.

“What we need to do is have a boundary between the public Internet, and the internal State Government network,” I said. “What I think will be needed is an external, official IP address range – most likely a Class B network, which will have all of the external IP addresses for your systems. Then the firewall will be the divider between that network, and a private network – I would suggest a private Class A network, using the 10.x.x.x address range. The firewall will provide the Network Address Translation service between the public IPs and your private network, giving access to those servers that need to be accessed from outside the firewall.

“What that also does is provide a layer of isolation for most of the devices on your network that don’t need to be accessed externally. Now, things like mail servers, web servers, FTP servers and the external DNS servers clearly need to be accessible from all over the Internet. But individual application servers, personal computers, internal routers, printers and the like, no one from outside needs access to them.”

I continued to describe how the distinction between the external network and the internal network would be implemented with a possible addressing scheme for the internal network to help make it manageable, the use of DHCP to reduce the workload of managing devices, and so on.

“All of this will be in our proposal, and the overall implementation plan,” I went on to say. “One thing we need to work out is for those organizations that have their computer systems installed elsewhere than the State Government Computer Centre, do we connect their network to the internal side of your firewall, or have them set up their own independent internet connect? There’s pros and cons for both approaches, I’ll put that in the plan, and that will be one of the first things we need to resolve.”

“I’m sure some agencies would want their own connection,” John said. “In fact, some would want to be as independent of us as possible; they resent having to go through us, they don’t like being answerable to anyone else to justify their projects.”

“Of course, if they went with their own internet connection, they would have to see if they could get their own IP address range, and they are starting to get in short supply. At least if they wanted a Class B address. Mind you, most government agencies wouldn’t need more than a Class C address, not when using a good firewall with NAT,” I said. “And it would be difficult for them to justify anything larger. But then they need to have someone who knows what they are doing to configure and set things up.”

“Could you not set things up for them, as an extension of this contract?” John asked.

“Well, I could do anything if I was asked, and paid for,” I said. “But we will have to work out what would be the best way for the State to take. That’s going to be one of the first tasks; because it will determine what equipment we need as part of that firewall and associated routers.”

“What I suggest you plan for early on in the project is for a meeting with the Cabinet information technology steering committee,” John said. “We can brief them on the project, and the directions we are going, and what we hope to deliver. That way, we get authority from the top to implement the project plan, and hopefully cut off any dissent before it can start.”

“Sounds a good idea,” I said. “What we should include in that is the web site plan, what I am calling ‘Service New South Wales’, a way for people to access State Government services and information on the Internet. I’ve given it a subtitle of ‘Positioning a Connected Community for the 21st Century’, the idea being that if there is any information the State makes available to the public, they can access that through the Web, any service, any transaction could be done that way. The challenge will be structuring a web site that allows for that to be done easily.

“The thought I had is while those in the Government like to think in terms of what each agency or Department does, that’s not how the general public thinks. They don’t care about what a particular department may or may not do, or that they need to talk to some other body to get that application processed, or renew a certain license or permit. They have a particular task they need to get done, they don’t care what organization or agency does it, as long as they get it done.

“One thing we have in mind is an artificial intelligence ‘referral engine’, a smart chat bot, where you can ask it a question, say ‘how do I renew my driver’s license’, or ‘what qualifications do I need to be a hairdresser’, and the referral engine will give a list of answers, with links to where they can find that information on line, or get that task done. One of the people on our team developed that as part of his thesis earlier this year, and we will get him to further refine it, and build it into the web site.”

“Are you suggesting that each department doesn’t have their own website?” Jim asked.

“No, not at all,” I replied. “We will come up with an overall design, or theme, and each department and agency can have their own site that fits into that design. But there will be lots of interlinking, that’s the whole point of the Web. That’s where the specific information on each service would be located, and the responsible agency would maintain that information, since they are, in theory at least, the experts on it. But we don’t want people in the community to have to guess which agency provides any particular service.”

“That will go down very well with the politicians,” John said. “The Premier in particular, he’s been pushing for something like that, and I’ve been asked if there’s a way in the rural and regional areas where we can have one location for all state agencies, and they can do everything in the one visit.”

“What I want to cover is how the actual project will be run,” Michelle said. “Will we be working out of your location, either in the Computer Centre, or up here? We will need desks, computers with network connection, phones, and so on.”

“We will provide office space up here in the State office block, plus a work area in the Computer Centre,” John said. “If you can give me a list of what resources you will need in the proposal and project plan, we can set that up for you.”

Michelle, John and Jim spent a while talking logistics, payment schedules – the project plan would include a list of deliverables, and the payments would be based on achieving certain deliverables. Finally, John had a list of all of the departments and agencies that would form part of the overall internet connection and web site, including number of staff, locations, email systems, and other information we would need. I thanked them for their time, gave them my card, plus the information I had prepared on the people we would have working on the project, a background on the company, and samples of the web page design we did for the University.

On the way back to Wynyard station, Michelle and I talked about how the meeting went.

“Well, that was a huge surprise,” Michelle said. “I expected we would have to do a full on sales pitch, convincing them that we knew how to take on the project, and why we would be the best people to do it for them. But they had already made up their minds to go with us, it was surreal!”

“I certainly wasn’t expecting that,” I said. “Sure, Murray said that John wanted me to talk about the project to him, but ... I guess Murray must have done a good sales pitch for us.”

“You know he had a soft spot for you,” she said. “He felt that you had huge potential, even becoming head of the School eventually. I’m sure he would have impressed on John just what a good job you would do for him.”

On the train trip back home, we discussed the overall project, and back at my place, we started on the project plan. Debra and Gillian joined us after lunch, they had finished the UNSW Web Site project, and it was due to be officially launched on Wednesday, December 1st. That morning, I would have to go in to the university first thing, and push the DNS changes out to the public DNS so the site would be accessible on the Internet. There was an official ‘launch function’ that we were expected to attend, not that I was vindictive, but I saw it as a chance to send John Hiller a big ‘fuck you’, particularly when he discovered that I would be leading this major project for the State government.

There was going to be the University’s official photographer there, and Tracie said she wanted a full article in the University’s newsletter, a press release and a write-up in the Alumni news. She asked me for brief two-paragraph summaries of the main people that were working on the project – Debra, Gillian, Larry, Michelle and myself – particularly considering all of us, with the exception of Gillian, were UNSW alumni.

When we got back home, we started work on the project plan – well, Michelle did, I started to order the additional equipment that we would need to set up a proper development lab here. First was a 19 inch rack cabinet, a decent battery UPS to fit in the bottom, a rack mount Cisco router, and enough parts to build three rack mounted powerful i486DX computers. I would install Linux on each of them; one would serve as our firewall / mail server / DNS and DHCP server, another as my Linux test machine, and the third as a general-purpose application server. There would be a sixteen-port network switch, currently 10Mbps twisted pair connections, but the switch could be easily upgraded to support 10/100 Mbps ports once the faster network adapter cards were readily available.

I contacted Telecom, they would put in a primary rate ISDN line, 2Mbps that would provide our Internet connection. They would be able to replace the existing two phone lines to our PABX, there was an adapter for the PABX that would connect to the ISDN line, pulling out the voice channels, and passing the data channel to the router. I checked with Frank Bubalo to make sure the alarm system would still work across that connection, and he said provided it still presented a standard PSTN style voice connection, things should work. I spoke with Patrick Tarpey, he would get the ISDN adapter for the PABX and come around and install it over the weekend.

As well as the servers, I ordered a number of new desktop computers; they would run mainly Windows 3.1, with the exception of two computers that would run Linux. For document production, we (that is, Michelle and myself) preferred to use vi and troff or TeX to produce high quality documentation. That meant a good quality laser printer would be required, and a HP LaserJet 4 was ordered, along with two Jet Direct network interface devices, allowing our printers to be network capable.

“What else are we going to need in here?” I asked Michelle. “I assume your initial plans for taking a vacation have gone out the window.”

“Well, I assume the two weeks either side of Christmas / New Year are going to be pretty quiet, you’ll be doing your Coffs Harbour race. That will be enough vacation for me; I’m really excited about working with you, full time in the company. But what do we need in here? Maybe a book case, filing cabinet, a few more desk style chairs around this table. Stationary, I’ll go up to Penfolds in Chatswood tomorrow, get what I think we will need. I can’t see me spending more than a hundred dollars on that all up.”

“Sounds good; what if we get that furniture this afternoon? There’s an office furniture place in Atchison Street, St Leonards, they have reasonably priced stuff. We can see what sort of chairs they have, too.”

We had some lunch, and then went in search of furniture. I picked up two three foot by six foot high bookcases, and a decent four drawer filing cabinet, and saw some chairs that would be good for us, they would deliver everything tomorrow morning. That would give us time to move things around a bit in the ‘Banksia Room’, leaving space for the computer equipment rack. I suspected we would need at least one additional power circuit, so I called up Bruno, another one of Alexa’s cousins, and after the standard introduction, he said he could come around this weekend and give me a quote for running a fifteen-amp power circuit, with a number of outlets around the room.

Over the next week equipment continued to arrive, I had Bruno install three power circuits, one for the rack, and the other two had a number of outlets put into the floor. At least he was able to run the cables back to the main breaker board through the basement ceiling. The rack was delivered, I built and set up Linux on the servers, we ran the network cables and set personal computer workstations up on the desks. Telecom installed the 2 Meg data line, the other end was terminated at connect.com.au, the phone and alarm systems were reconfigured to work with the ISDN link. WTM Consulting was now operational in our own office, complete with internet connection. Debra had designed and set up a simple web site for us, despite the simplicity of the site – there were only four individual pages – it looked professional.

Len had set up our mail server on one of the Linux servers, we set up email accounts for each of us – I was ‘will@wtmconsulting.com.au’, and I sent out messages to all of my professional contacts, and co-developers in the Linux world letting them know what my new email address was. I set up a relay on the University’s mail server to forward all of the email to ‘will.morris@cse.unsw.edu.au’ to my new account.

We attended the official release of the University’s web site, I was prepared to sit back and let the others on the team take much of the credit for the site. Well, all I had done was set up the infrastructure for hosting the site; Debra and Gillian were the main people responsible for the development of the site. Some of the people from Computer Science asked me what I was doing, and I told them I was taking a year or two sabbatical, and setting up the Internet architecture for the State Government. I pointedly did not refer to why I suddenly decided to take time off, and when asked about John Hiller and rumours of him trying to upgrade a student’s fail result, I said nothing. Hiller would find out soon enough that I had the better of him, no need for me to upset him any more than I had.

I called Murray Allen to let him know how the meeting with John Martin went, and told him that I owed him a dinner for setting up the contract. We agree on dinner – I would take him and his wife, Dorothy, out for dinner this Friday night at the Longy, Lisa, Fiona and Michelle would be with us. Friday night dinner was always pretty good at the Longy, it was nice having a nice, friendly local pub not all that far from home. It wasn’t quite within walking distance, like the pubs at Erskineville were, but still close enough.

The four of us arrived at the pub before the Allen’s; we found a table for six at the back and waited for them. They were only a few minutes after us, I made sure Dorothy was introduced to Fiona, and we sat down and looked at the menu.

“So, how’s retirement going, Murray?” I asked him.

“Well, I’ve had the time to improve my golf game,” he said. “In fact, I played a round with your father on Wednesday, up at his club at Bayview, with the Sydney Vets. Great course, we had a great game, even if he did beat me by one shot, a really good chip up the hill to the eighteenth green. He seems to be enjoying retirement, I must say.”

“Yes, I think he plays golf at least three times a week, but somehow has a natural affinity for water,” I said. “There are some holes where he won’t play with the good balls he has, because he’s afraid they will end up in the drink!”

“I can understand that, my golf balls seem to have an internal guidance system that’s also attracted by water!” he said. “But I enjoyed playing with him and catching up with him, he’s much happier, far more relaxed now he’s not working. I think he was getting fed up with all the changes at Telecom, he wasn’t happy there.”