# Your Country Your Call - have you checked it out yet?



## RMCF (3 May 2010)

I was just having a read through some of the entries in the competition and to be honest there is some amount of rubbish in it 

I mean this competition was meant to be about finding 2 things that would kickstart this country, or provide a major change to our lives.

Personally I think we should go for:

1) Floating soaps

2) A rail link between St Stephens Green and O'Connell Street.

Sweet Lord

I have read through a few hundred entries and most of them fall into one of 3 categories:

- incredibly difficult/near impossible to do
- just plain daft
- very wishy-washy and tree-huggy


----------



## corkgal (3 May 2010)

My ones are great!! I'm hoping for the 100,000 prize soon.


----------



## RMCF (4 May 2010)

corkgal said:


> My ones are great!! I'm hoping for the 100,000 prize soon.



Please share them with us.


----------



## corkgal (4 May 2010)

I'll announce them after I win. 
I thought it was to be decided in April, now its September. I'll have to wait for the money!!


----------



## RMCF (4 May 2010)

Ah, go on, tell us them. 

All of them are actually published on the website anyway. Not as if its a secret.

Your's isn't the floating soap is it?


----------



## Purple (4 May 2010)

I thought the whole thing was a stupid idea from the start. Nobody in their right mind would enter it.


----------



## mathepac (4 May 2010)

Purple said:


> .... Nobody in their right mind would enter it.


Scrolling through the dross, it appears that nobody in their right mind has.


----------



## corkgal (4 May 2010)

Oy, I am in my right mind. Why not enter and try to win 100,000 when the standard of entries is so bad. Your contribution should stand out as genius.


----------



## Sue Ellen (4 May 2010)

mathepac said:


> scrolling through the dross, it appears that nobody in their right mind has.



[broken link removed]


----------



## csirl (4 May 2010)

I thought that this was a competition to find a way of making money to get us out of recession. Most of the proposals appear to be expenditure proposals rather than revenue generation proposals?


----------



## RMCF (4 May 2010)

I agree that the vast majority of them are just clean useless, and someone might win if they have come up with any sort of idea thats not bad.

I spent about 30mins reading thru plenty of the entries from all the sections and there were so many vague ones with no details like,

"we should make Ireland a hub for IT in Europe"

"we should make Ireland the China of Europe" (yeah like our workers will work for €1/hr)

"we should make Ireland the world centre of producing electric cars for the world" (like we have a history of car making)

"we should make Ireland the world leader in green technology"

All these things mean nothing really if you don't provide details of what exactly you mean and how it would be implemented.


----------



## Purple (4 May 2010)

My idea is to legalise drugs and prostitution on the Aran Islands and charge €10'000 for the ferry out there (ban all other boats) and €12'000 for a flight. The drugs and whores can be taxed heavily as well.

Do ya thing I should enter?


----------



## Seagull (4 May 2010)

Purple said:


> My idea is to legalise drugs and prostitution on the Aran Islands and charge €10'000 for the ferry out there (ban all other boats) and €12'000 for a flight. The drugs and whores can be taxed heavily as well.
> 
> Do ya thing I should enter?


 
You need to be cheaper than a trip to Amsterdam.


----------



## truthseeker (4 May 2010)

I am in my right mind - most of the time - and I submitted a few ideas - had forgotten all about it to be honest - but had a look there and one of my ideas is way up high in terms of popularity and activity! 

corkgal - theres gonna be fierce competition between you and me for the prize money!!


----------



## Howitzer (4 May 2010)

RMCF said:


> I agree that the vast majority of them are just clean useless, and someone might win if they have come up with any sort of idea thats not bad.
> 
> I spent about 30mins reading thru plenty of the entries from all the sections and there were so many vague ones with no details like,
> 
> ...


My fear is that one of these will be the winner.

The Sunday Times has a column called Think Tank whereby punters post their solution to a problem. Most of the published ones generally make sense, are presented articulately (real word?) and are doable. And that's the thing, most of the time all you should be aiming for IS the low hanging fruit. Like taking 1/2 cent coins out of circulation.

Here's a pretty good example. 

Council IT should be integrated



> ....
> There are 34 city and county councils in Ireland who must all provide roughly the same 150 services, including planning, housing and roads. While urban councils support traffic-control centres, even the smallest local authority must provide minimum ICT services such as disaster recovery/backups, financial management and council websites. The smallest IT sections offer about 70-80% of the services of larger ones, but with as few as 10 staff. Larger councils can have up to 80. There is minimal cooperation, and hence duplication of effort.
> ....
> Regionalising of ICT services is the most cost-effective way of providing eGovernment and the internal systems needed to run an efficient, modern public service. Staff need the means to coordinate in an efficient manner. All the parts are ready, they just need to be put together in a new way.
> _Richard Burke is an IT professional working in local government_


----------



## Towger (4 May 2010)

Howitzer said:


> Council IT should be integrated


 
We already have that, in the form of the LGCSB, aka the Local Government Computer Services Board. The problem is each Council can go off and do their own thing, they should be forced to standardise their systems. The HSE is another example of huge back office duplication...


----------



## Howitzer (4 May 2010)

Towger said:


> We already have that, in the form of the LGCSB, aka the Local Government Computer Services Board. The problem is each Council can go off and do their own thing, they should be forced to standardise their systems. The HSE is another example of huge back office duplication...


The LGCSB is a classic example of right idea, wrong solution.

What was created there was a centralised board tasked with developing IT solutions for all LAs. What was centralised was "software development". What you should centralise is the business knowledge.

It's incredibly rare that an IT service is required by an LA for which they don't already have some sort of solution. So the LGCSB mostly provides solutions of marginal benefit. (The one exception being the NPPR tax site which was an obvious fit)

I'm not going to regurgiatate your man's arguements but every single LA provides a  number of IT driven services - planning, housing allocation - which could be centralised - or regionalised - but certainly rationalised.


----------



## corkgal (4 May 2010)

truthseeker said:


> corkgal - theres gonna be fierce competition between you and me for the prize money!!



There are 2 prizes I think!!!

The site only lets you submit about 3 lines of text, so the lack of clarity on some of the proposals is understandable.


----------



## truthseeker (5 May 2010)

corkgal said:


> There are 2 prizes I think!!!


 
Best of luck - do come back and post if you win (make me jealous )


----------



## Purple (5 May 2010)

Seagull said:


> You need to be cheaper than a trip to Amsterdam.



They haven't legalised hard drugs. That's what I'm talking about.


----------



## csirl (5 May 2010)

Howitzer said:


> My fear is that one of these will be the winner.
> 
> The Sunday Times has a column called Think Tank whereby punters post their solution to a problem. Most of the published ones generally make sense, are presented articulately (real word?) and are doable. And that's the thing, most of the time all you should be aiming for IS the low hanging fruit. Like taking 1/2 cent coins out of circulation.
> 
> ...


 
This isnt a revenue generating idea - it isnt going to create anymore income for the country. Its simply an expenditure cut through rationalisation.


----------



## Howitzer (5 May 2010)

csirl said:


> This isnt a revenue generating idea - it isnt going to create anymore income for the country. Its simply an expenditure cut through rationalisation.


I would disagree. It depends what your goal is.

Is the goal to just create jobs - busy work - or is it to create world beating companies.

If it's busy work well that's easy to do, we've been doing that since the creation of the state. 

Bring back the Irish Sweepstakes. Use the income to bloat the admin and middle management of the HSE.
Make all unemployed people sweep the streets, effectively turning them into low paid Council employees. This will greatly improve the tourist industry.
All countries engage in some element of Keynesian economics. The US sends monkeys to the moon with the ultimate aim of developing world beating high technology companies. We subsidised the construction sector so we could have - God knows what.

The vague notion of having a green economy isn't bad because you hopefully spawn a load of companies, some of which become world beaters.

But you can also aspire to having world class Local Government IT systems and see what companies that spawns. 

For example, Curam Software is an Irish company that specialises is Social Security systems, though strangely enough they don't sell into the Irish market.


----------



## Howitzer (10 May 2010)

Towger said:


> We already have that, in the form of the LGCSB, aka the Local Government Computer Services Board. The problem is each Council can go off and do their own thing, they should be forced to standardise their systems. The HSE is another example of huge back office duplication...





Howitzer said:


> The LGCSB is a classic example of right idea, wrong solution.
> 
> What was created there was a centralised board tasked with developing IT solutions for all LAs. What was centralised was "software development". What you should centralise is the business knowledge.
> 
> ...


http://www.fxcentre.com/news.asp?2599738


> IT consultants and outsourcing firm, Version 1, today said they have won new contracts to the value of E5m.
> The deals include a Claims Management implementation for Irish Life and Permanent plc, an Application Support and Development contract for the Local Government Computer Services Board's *two* Housing Systems ...


[broken link removed]


----------

