Maryrose Lyons blogging since 2003...

Dept of Communications A Shambles

February 11, 2008 at 9:58 am

Damien Mulley casts a light on the latest debacle involving ComReg and the Dept of Communications. ComReg I’ve always thought of as a sorry bunch of losers with no cojones. If you’ve ever had a problem with your broadband provider and in desperation contact ComReg to see what they can do, you’ll find the answer is a big fat NOTHING. I don’t really understand their point – apart from publishing stats on numbers of mobile users in this country – and for any serious stats they get Amarach to do the work for them.

Anyway, the latest shambles is to do with the Dept of Communications hiring a college work experience student to work on the hugely important National Broadband Scheme. Her and one person from ComReg are going to be looking after a multi-million euro project that will determine thousands of people’s access to broadband throughout the country.

The job wasn’t advertised. And this little young one is certainly not the most qualified person in the country to look after this. The reason, it seems, is because the Dept of Communications is totally under-resourced and new hires can only come from Cavan. It would almost be funny, except that it’s so seriously sad.

I had such high hopes for poster-boy Ryan. At the pre-election event Dublin Chamber event, I posed the question to a group of politicians from all parties about broadband and their party’s specific policies for this and Ryan’s answer was the most radical:

Encourage competition between cable, mobile and fixed line providers. Encourage more competition between the three. If that doesn’t work, buy the network back!

Ireland as a hotbed of technology? Ireland as a knowledge based economy? Enough of the stinking hyperbole from politicians please.

Let’s have some action:

1. Read Mulley’s post which provides more detail on the specific hiring practices that are so objectionable
2. Pause for a moment and reflect on the difficulty you have experienced getting a good broadband service.
3. Think of your friends and family based outside the main cities and their experiences.
4. Keep an image of oily fat politicians smarming over technology companies and lauding the Government’s commitment to technology in this country.
5. Now, get up off your ass and email Minister Ryan and tell him why you object to a recent graduate being appointed to the National Broadband Scheme project.

If you’re in a hurry, you can borrow from this text!:

Dear Minister Ryan,

I would like to find out more about the reason why a new graduate has been appointed to the National Broadband Scheme.
I find it very hard to believe that she is the most qualified person in the country to undertake this very valuable work.
If the job had been advertised on the e-tenders website, you would have had plenty of applicants, many of whom have been working in this area for years and understand the issues and know the people in the industry on both the government and non-government sides.

I am deeply disappointed that such a key role has been allocated to an inexperienced external consultant. I would appreciate if you would respond to this email with an explanation for your decision to appoint a junior person to an issue of national importance.

Posted in Business Culture Ireland | 1 Comment