Open letter to Josh Frydenberg - SAVE ARENA stop the $1 billion cut

TO: Josh Frydenberg
Minister for Environment and Energy,

I’m writing to you today with a very important message about ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. That's the Agency you want to cut $1 billion in funding from.

ARENA is a critical force in driving renewable energy research and development in Australia. It has funded projects that developed the most efficient solar PV [1] and solar thermal technology in the world [2].

ARENA is crucial if Australia is to continue to lead in renewable energy research and innovation. If protected, projects funded by ARENA grants will create thousands of jobs [3], and help Australia transition to a renewable future.

Your government talks up innovation, but slashing ARENA's grants funding will cut the legs out from underneath a key industry that would otherwise be set to boom.

As your constituent, I am asking you to lead on innovation and make the right decision for Australia's energy future. Don't send Australia back to the Dark Ages. Don't cut ARENA.

Also, gas is just another fossil fuel and must not be used as a "transition to renewable energy".  The transition should be directly to renewable energy.

The same applies to coal seam gas - there should be a permanent ban on exploration and production of CSG in Victoria.

Regarding your previous comments on nuclear energy, could you please confirm that this dangerous and expensive energy source will  not be used in Australia?

[1] Milestone in solar cell efficiency by UNSW engineers, UNSW Newsroom, 17 May 2016, http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/milestone-solar-cell-efficiency-unsw-engineers

[2] ANU team cracks solar thermal efficiency of 97% -- a world record, Renew Economy, 22 August 2016, http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/anu-team-cracks-solar-thermal-efficiency-of-97-a-world-record-34199

[3] Queensland solar projects that could create 2,600 jobs at risk in federal cuts, The Guardian, 24 August 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/queensland-solar-projects-that-could-create-2600-jobs-at-risk-in-federal-cuts

Yours sincerely,
Peter Campbell
Surrey Hills, Victoria, 3127, Australia

External links

• SAVE ARENA: Tell the government to stop the $1 billion cut, email campaign 
• Malcolm Turnbull Just Made ‘Mr Coal’ His Environment Minister - New Matilda  

Australian Census 2016 - rank incompetence, lies and a failure of outsourcing

The conduct of the Australian Census 2016 is a worrying demonstration of government incompetence.  Here are my observations on the debacle.

Privacy concerns

In the lead up to the Australia's 2016 Census serious concerns were raised relating to a change in the retention of personal data that allows respondents to be identified and what this would be used for.

I didn't see an adequate response from the Australian Government or the Australian Bureau of Statistics about why this was being done and what the personal identification data links would be used for.

I have concerns that government departments and other authorities could access this data and use it to track down issues with individuals, which is not the purpose of census data.


Funds stripped from ABS
The Rudd and Abbott governments both cut funding for the ABS.  This set the scene for the debacle that was to follow.  The ministers previously involved in this were Kelly O'Dwyer and Joseph Ciobo.


Online data collection outsourced to IBM
In a apparent attempt to save money a decision was made - its not clear to me by which minister - to shift the majority of data collection to an online process using the Internet, and to outsource the technology solution to IBM.

With this outsourcing, it was vital that requirements for the solution be specified by government, including:

• Appropriate security for online submission of forms
• Appropriate security for data retained
• Performance - the maximum number of concurrent users supported
• Website availability - protection for Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks

Statements were made by the ABS and the newly appointed minster Micheal McCormack that everything was in order, data would be secure and the website would handle the number of user that would use it on the night Tuesday 9 August 2016 (data collection night).


Website meltdown and failure
During the evening of Tuesday 9 August 2016 people experienced problems accessing the website.  Some people completed forms but were not able to submit them.  Others couldn't access the website at all.  Messages via Twitter from the ABS were confusing - they said to "try again later".  Millions of people gave up trying to submit their response and were left wondering what had happened.


The morning after - claims of hacking
There was intense interest on Wednesday morning on what had happened. Claims emerged on ABC morning radio that

"the website had been hacked"

"no data has been compromised"

"there was a DDOS attack" (no evidence has been provided for this)

"DDOS is not actually an attack because no data was accessed" (by Minister McCormack)

"the website was taken down by the ABS due to a false positive alert from IBM"

"a hardware router failed that prevent people accessing the website"

"the website was tested for up to 1 million concurrent users"

It is not possible to determine the veracity of any of the above claims as no information is available to validate them.

More recently, it has been claimed that:

"access to the website is geo blocked" (you must be in Australia to access the website)

"DNS servers outside Australia were blocked (preventing them routing access requests to the website)

What these claims highlight is rank incompetence by the ABS, the Government and IBM.


Solutions
I work in IT.  The following solutions were possible, but apparently neglected.

Robust security:  Encrypted sessions to secure data (appears to have been implemented)

DDOS protection:  Mechanisms are available to identify and avoid DDOS attacks, which are quite common.

8 million concurrent users:  Website performance should have been scaled to meet up to 8 million concurrent users as the majority of the population is on Eastern Standard Time and therefore was trying to access the online form at the same timee.

Drop the extended data retention:  In the absence of valid reasons for retaining identification data longer, this should be dropped.

Hardware failure: Redundancy and fail over is required, preferably via virtual devices rather than physical ones.

Increase scalability: If the application has been written properly (it may not have been) and the solution is cloud hosted, then performance can be scaled up (e.g. by instantiating more virtual servers) as required, and scaled down when not required.

Unfortunately, recent comments from Prime Minister Turnbull, Minister McCormack and the ABS only amount to misinformation, blame shifting and finger pointing.

The Australian online census meltdown is a failure of outsourcing and reveals gross incompetence of the Australian government.

Turnbull has said that "heads will roll". Perhaps Turnbull and McCormack are the ones who should be sacked for rank incompetence?

This debacle makes a complete mockery of Turnbull's "innovation agenda".

Misinformation, blame shifting and finger pointing won't fix the problems.

See also

• IBM And The ABS Census: Let The Blame Games Begin | Lifehacker Australia
• Lesson of #CensusFail: continued funding cuts mean agencies can’t do their job | The Guardian 
• Census debacle puts the Prime Minister on notice | Sydney Morning Herald