Planning apps decided by junior tester - 'proper whack'

[CloudStuff]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9967701/P...

Yes, I realise this paper is far too left-wing for ph, but this made me laugh.

[Equus]

Ooops!

To be fair, some of those decisions aren't that much worse than some real ones I've seen.

[anonymous-user]

Not remotely surprised to see Swale council involved, unfortunately I lived in their area for a while, seem bad by even Public Sector standards

[bobtail4x4]

the standard system has a test page
that looks like the real page

I can see why this has happened,
I have asked for a BANNER to appear on the test page, so you know its not a real one,

[CloudStuff]

bobtail4x4 said:

the standard system has a test page
that looks like the real page

I can see why this has happened,
I have asked for a BANNER to appear on the test page, so you know its not a real one,

Of course, the test system should be segregated and nowhere near the live database. But we all know that!

I do love the teenage angsty /emo nature of the comments though.

All planning apps should be decided via the usage of camden market-derived existential musings.

[sospan]

That DailyMail article was interesting. The real culprits are the IT people involved who failed to design and implement the change process correctly. Whoever was in charge, either IT or another Manager in Admin etc were incompetent or dismissive of standards and how to do it properly. There was a specific British Standard called “Tick It” for software design, writing, implementation. It was pretty straight forward and logical to use. We used it to upgrade/ develop systems for Quality Management in our company, either bespoke in-house or bought in.
The end user who made this error shouldn’t have been able to make the errors described. Safeguards were clearly not in place. Clear parallel testing of the new versus old should be in a way to isolate them from live access until the new version passed tests to check its accuracy and fitness for purpose.

[QuickQuack]

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/proposal-whack-council-w...

Here's a non-Daily Mail link for those interested.

This incident highlights the inflexibility of the current planning system. A clear case of administrative error, yet the decisions are legally binding and have to go to judicial review to be overturned. It's absurd.

[blueg33]

It will be the quickest and JR in planning history.

It is insane that an admin error can’t be reversed. But it could have easily been prevented with a system that requires the case officer to review before it’s published.

But we have to have a system where planning decisions can’t be altered due to change of mind and delegated decisions are the most vulnerable to this.

[Pupp]

blueg33 said:

It will be the quickest and JR in planning history.

It is insane that an admin error can’t be reversed. But it could have easily been prevented with a system that requires the case officer to review before it’s published.

But we have to have a system where planning decisions can’t be altered due to change of mind and delegated decisions are the most vulnerable to this.

You would think it should be, but it needs to be remembered each applicant, supporter and objector (to the extent there are any of the latter two as stakeholders) has the ability to participate as an interested party. I can see the potential for an applicant about to be deprived of an albeit erroneous approval having something to say if it looks likely the LPA will redetermine the opposite way for some reason.

And the ‘inflexibility’ being criticised is not just a feature of the planning system; it’s typical of all administrative decision making undertaken within a statutory process driven framework and necessarily so; would be uncertain chaos if decision makers could change their minds on a whim or because they are nobbled. Far better the clear expectation is the process is observed and decisions are decisions.

Pitiful and inept by Swale; but they’re not the first and won’t be the last to issue a defective decision.

[BobSaunders]

Once caused a 14% global spike in child molestation for someone called “test icles” That was not a good day.

Security testing occurred on production, because it had to be.

[Equus]

blueg33 said:

It is insane that an admin error can’t be reversed. But it could have easily been prevented with a system that requires the case officer to review before it’s published.

But we have to have a system where planning decisions can’t be altered due to change of mind and delegated decisions are the most vulnerable to this.

Under normal circumstances, of course, only the Case Officer would be issuing the decision, and even their decision is reviewed and signed off by a Senior Planner.

The oddity, perhaps, is that an approval can be relatively easily altered or revoked by the LPA themselves (using Sections 97-99 of the T&CPA).

But the wording of Section 97 means that it can't be used for refusals and I can see no really good reason for this - it's just an anomaly resulting from the wording used in the Act (which refers to revoking or modifying 'permission' rather than 'a decision').

[Chipstick]

How quickly can you demolish a pub?

Asking for a friend.

[bmwmike]

Why did the tester have creds for the production system in the first place?

I used to deliver security testing services into various councils around the UK. This incident doesn't surprise me in the slightest, nor does the bureaucracy required to unwind it. Biggest bunch of money-wasting losers you'd ever meet - they literally never gave a toss about security issues, nothing got fixed, all of it was just a tick box exercise.

[rustyuk]

Here is some of the best I've personally seen over the last 20 years in IT

Test personal Ad's published in a Newspaper - Some real perverted stuff in the test system - all went to print
60 Washing machines delivered to an IT Managers House
Flight logging system displaying that planes had landed before they had taken off.
£140 million taken from customer accounts by mistake in one day.
Software on a PCPro Demo CD (Remember those) that when uninstalled permanently disabled your mouse and keyboard
£1 million credited to customers Tesco club cards due to a wrong button being clicked
One of the UK biggest retail sites taken down for half a day losing millions due to someone forgetting to reboot a server
Big energy provider unable to do anything for days because of a blocked gutter on a data centre caused a bit of water to drip onto a single UPS

[Hol]

sospan said:

That DailyMail article was interesting. The real culprits are the IT people involved who failed to design and implement the change process correctly. Whoever was in charge, either IT or another Manager in Admin etc were incompetent or dismissive of standards and how to do it properly. There was a specific British Standard called “Tick It” for software design, writing, implementation. It was pretty straight forward and logical to use. We used it to upgrade/ develop systems for Quality Management in our company, either bespoke in-house or bought in.
The end user who made this error shouldn’t have been able to make the errors described. Safeguards were clearly not in place. Clear parallel testing of the new versus old should be in a way to isolate them from live access until the new version passed tests to check its accuracy and fitness for purpose.

I have not heard of TickIT in the private sector for many years. Mid 90’s.

Wasnt it a public sector methodology from the pre windows days in the same manner as PROMPT and latterly PRINCE2 for project management?

Edited by Hol on Thursday 9th September 09:25

[anonymous-user]

Hol said:

I have not heard of TickIT in the private sector for many years. Mid 90’s.

Wasnt it a public sector methodology from the pre windows days in the same manner as PROMPT and latterly PRINCE2 for project management?

Edited by Hol on Thursday 9th September 09:25

Never heard of it myself and have been in IT for 20 years looking it seems to be basically ISO 9001 with a bit of 27001 I think

Anyone who's worked on SW knows this shouldn't have happened, anyone who's worked on SW knows this stuff does sometimes happen these guys were just unlucky enough to do a very public one

[98elise]

bmwmike said:

Why did the tester have creds for the production system in the first place?

I used to deliver security testing services into various councils around the UK. This incident doesn't surprise me in the slightest, nor does the bureaucracy required to unwind it. Biggest bunch of money-wasting losers you'd ever meet - they literally never gave a toss about security issues, nothing got fixed, all of it was just a tick box exercise.

They might be a production user. Often the best way to test a system is to use people who know how to use it rather than testers reading from a script.

[bmwmike]

98elise said:

bmwmike said:

Why did the tester have creds for the production system in the first place?

I used to deliver security testing services into various councils around the UK. This incident doesn't surprise me in the slightest, nor does the bureaucracy required to unwind it. Biggest bunch of money-wasting losers you'd ever meet - they literally never gave a toss about security issues, nothing got fixed, all of it was just a tick box exercise.

They might be a production user. Often the best way to test a system is to use people who know how to use it rather than testers reading from a script.

If they were a production user, they would know the data is real, wouldn't they? And presumably not same creds for test vs production. Either way, stupid incident to have and bet its not the first time.

Edited by bmwmike on Thursday 9th September 09:56

[98elise]

bmwmike said:

98elise said:

bmwmike said:

Why did the tester have creds for the production system in the first place?

I used to deliver security testing services into various councils around the UK. This incident doesn't surprise me in the slightest, nor does the bureaucracy required to unwind it. Biggest bunch of money-wasting losers you'd ever meet - they literally never gave a toss about security issues, nothing got fixed, all of it was just a tick box exercise.

They might be a production user. Often the best way to test a system is to use people who know how to use it rather than testers reading from a script.

If they were a production user, they would know the data is real, wouldn't they? And presumably not same creds for test vs production. Either way, stupid incident to have and bet its not the first time.

Edited by bmwmike on Thursday 9th September 09:56

Everywhere I've worked, live, development, and test environments/data are virtually indistinguishable. The test environment is a copy from live at a fixed/recent point in time.

Ideally you would set up test users, however every time you refresh the test environment you have to recreate them up as they don't exist in the production environment (from which it's copied).

What I've done in the past is to script a systemwide password change in the test system so that the user should be clear that they are logging into test, but it wouldn't take much for them to forget and log into live.

It's not the first time something like this has happened, and it won't be the last. IT systems are constantly being changed and updated. So much so that there are standard change management processes dedicated to it.

Even when administering a single system I'll probably have 3 or 4 system changes working their way through the development and test cycle at any one time, and that's on top of system patches. All of those changes will need a business user to log into test and confirm that the change is doing what they expect it to.

[Escort3500]

Equus said:

blueg33 said:

It is insane that an admin error can’t be reversed. But it could have easily been prevented with a system that requires the case officer to review before it’s published.

But we have to have a system where planning decisions can’t be altered due to change of mind and delegated decisions are the most vulnerable to this.

Under normal circumstances, of course, only the Case Officer would be issuing the decision, and even their decision is reviewed and signed off by a Senior Planner.

The oddity, perhaps, is that an approval can be relatively easily altered or revoked by the LPA themselves (using Sections 97-99 of the T&CPA).

But the wording of Section 97 means that it can't be used for refusals and I can see no really good reason for this - it's just an anomaly resulting from the wording used in the Act (which refers to revoking or modifying 'permission' rather than 'a decision').

We had to do this when I worked at an LPA in the ‘80s. A junior and relatively inexperienced case officer (fortunately not me!) recommended an awful looking domestic two-storey, flat-roofed side extension for approval. It got to the head of DC (as it was in those days ) to be signed off. He explained why he couldn’t, and the recommendation was changed to refusal. However, the decision notice granted permission. It was quickly revoked and a refusal issued. The incandescent applicant lost his subsequent appeal, and even the Ombudsman didn’t find any maladministration. Salutary lesson for the department and we then introduced much tighter procedures.