Denial of Service or denial of common sense? Either way, it's led to a denial of public confidence and of prime ministerial goodwill.
In the great census debacle of 2016, there are denials all 'round.
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Census heads front the media
I am angry: Turnbull
Potential attacks on the ABS site should have been better prepared for according to the PM as the Government readies for more attacks when the census is back online. Courtesy ABC News 24.
Understandably, Malcolm Turnbull is incensed. Nick Xenophon feels vindicated.
Their respective positions reflect their recent luck with uncanny accuracy.
The X-man, whose numerical power has just quadrupled, had campaigned noisily against the census, warning that its retention of names would vastly enrich the data set and increase the risk of security breaches.
The Prime Minister, who gladly defended the online survey and proudly Tweeted his own easy completion just minutes before it all collapsed, has been embarrassed.
Right now, his government has the Midas touch in reverse: everything it comes into contact with turns to manure.
Even its July 2 election victory felt like a defeat, especially when a shell-shocked Turnbull stepped up to complain about Labor lies and gullible voters.
Then came untidy Rudd/UN messaging and the royal commission into NT youth detention, which through unnecessary haste, nearly collapsed within days of commencement.
The tech-literate Turnbull makes no secret of feeling let down, describing Tuesday's DOS attacks as "absolutely predictable". His message to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and IBM could not be clearer: This is your fault - you knew this would happen and failed to cater for it.
Yet background factors are also in play including the impact of past ABS budget cuts and the government's anaemic pre-census publicity effort.
Most pressing is a timely explanation of what just happened. Who orchestrated these attacks - a state actor like China or Russia - or some spotty internet geek being clever?
Census back online after outage
It's still not clear who attacked the website but the PM says heads will roll in the wake of the debacle.
The fact that there have been three responsible ministers in the pre-census year is a recipe for disjointed governance: three responsible ministers and yet none so far to take responsibility.
Other things compute even less. Turnbull told reporters on Thursday that the purpose-built system was designed (with IBM) to handle a maximum of 260 form returns per second, but that the number actually submitted on Tuesday never exceeded 150 per second.
He also said there was inadequate redundancy (excess capacity) built in while otherwise noting that at no time did the DOS attacks themselves crash the system. Rather it was taken offline out of caution. This requires further explanation.
It seems pretty obvious that some systemic pressures could have been ameliorated. Why design it so that nearly everyone would attempt to submit their online forms on the same day and most of these, after dinner?
With all this digital dithering, it will take more than just the Prime Minister pulling his finger out to make this right.
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