John Linton
.......it appears the same can't be said for the NSW Government.
Exetel is responding to a NSW Government tender to allow the company, if successful, to be included on the list of approved providers so that we can tender for the communications requirements of the various NSW State government departments as they arise. We haven't bothered applying for State Government, or Federal Government accreditation before because we didn't have the required 'longevity' or appropriate revenue/profit results over the required periods....maybe we still don't.
I am not personally involved in answering the tender but I was asked to respond to the question regarding the requirement to have an ISO9000 series "quality assurance" accreditation and that made my mind 'flash back' to the 1980s when governments, all round the world apparently, somehow came to the conclusion that it could only allow companies with an "internationally recognised system of quality control" to bid for their business. This was the question:
"(A) Quality Assurance/ Quality Management Process
The Applicant is to attach details of quality management system certification if available. If not quality certified, please describe any quality processes undertaken for delivery of ICT Services ( to maximum 300 words)."
I well remember the ISO and their Australian equivalents (AS) quality standards and the accreditation processes required to obtain them. It was the sheerest nonsense that had as much relevance in ensuring a company produced a high quality product, or service, as a speed limit sign on a freeway has to ensuring no vehicle exceeds the speed limit - none whatsoever. However the company I was associated with at that time derived almost 33% of its revenue from State governments and the Federal government so the long and pointless process of acquiring AS9001 (I think) was undertaken and after wasting thousands of man hours and spending $A50,000 on external 'standards consulting" fees - lo and behold - we received a piece of paper attesting that we made a quality product.
Stuff and nonsense.
Nothing had changed in anything we did before the process other than all our realistic documentation was turned into gobbledigook - however the gobbledigook did conform to exact gobbledigook standard layouts and paragraph headings and sub clauses. What a complete waste of time.
Since the Volvo experiment in the early 1970s followed by the Western Commercial world's long lasting love affair with the Japanese processes of Total Quality Management (now handily universally referred to as TQM) governments have been obsessed with their bureaucratic rights to insist that "Quality" is a key benchmark for the purchase of services using public money. Highly laudable (choruses of muffled "hear , hears" from the back benches of every parliament house in Australia). Pity it means damn all to the actual quality of the product or service 'manufactured' using an ISO standard.
I had been fortunate to go to Japan several times a year in the late 1970s and early 1980s accompanying large commercial and government prospective buyers for the then unheard of Facom (Fujitsu) mainframe computers. These trips involved visiting the Numazu, and other, plants where these 'huge' computers and their components were manufactured. Over a period of some three years I learned a lot about high quality manufacturing processes as the various Facom and Fujitsu executives briefed the prospective buyers on their processes and procedures that allowed them to manufacture main frame computers that had an MTBF of 60 months compared to IBM's 13 months (at that time). Even more importantly why the Facom computers had a post installation "Engineering Change" incidence of one per 48 months compared to IBM's one per two months.
The answer was not TQM it was "Zero Defect". Zero Defect was part Volvo experiment, part General Motors production line robot theory but most of all it was instilling the desire (not the requirement) for every person in every manufacturing unit to aim to produce not a "highest quality" product but a product that was perfect. And they did - not just for a time but over the time they made the product. It recognised human fallibility and human physical weakness (tiredness/illness) as well as recognising the 'unthinking nature' of computers and computer controlled robots and found a solution. It made ISO9001 look like a kindergarten drawing compared to a Matisse riverside cafe scene.
So we didn't put in a 9000 series quality assurance system when we created Exetel we put in ZD which I attempted to explain in 300 (actually 320) words:
The processes and procedures that Exetel Pty Ltd uses to manage its day to day and ongoing business have not been developed or certified against the ISO 9000 standards nor are they based on any codified TQM system.
Exetel Pty Ltd is run on world best practice standards which are achieved by top management commitment and the standard of ‘zero defect’ that is applied to every aspect of Exetel’s business processes and procedures.
This has been the case since ‘day one’ of Exetel’s existence and is embodied in the company standard of “automate everything as people, no matter how good and strong make mistakes and get sick on occasions”.
Virtually every interaction between a prospective and then an actual Exetel service customer is web based with every aspect of ordering, provisioning, advising a customer of provisioning progress, subsequent fault reporting, fault resolution, billing and accounts receivable requiring no human interaction at all.
The few situations that require Exetel personnel to either speak to a customer or respond to an email are strictly controlled via systems that measure time taken to resolve all issues against an established time standard for each separate type of issue.
The standards to be met are set by the directors of Exetel Pty Ltd and are managed by five zero defect groups within the company who meet on a regular (usually weekly) basis to discuss how to improve every aspect of the company’s performance and then implement those improvement programs.
The actual performance the company is achieving against each measurement standard is controlled by an overall computer system that measures some 300 separate key quality indicators (on a second by second basis) and also displays those results on individual manager’s computers as well as large screens around Exetel work places – both in terms of each department’s performance against it’s quality targets and also by each individual within each department."
I don't expect that a few words (300 or any other number) will satisfy anyone, but the fact is that unless something is fully automated and then cross checked by more than three different 'human' functions it isn't going to deliver the highest possible level of quality let alone a perfect 'product'. So, Exetel's - and any other company that aspires to 'perfect quality' will assiduously document what it is going to offer the marketplaces it aims to serve and then develop the computer systems and the 'human' cross checking that will allow that objective to be met - by eliminating as much human interaction as possible - not by creating manuals/procedure descriptions or paperwork of any kind.
I'm not sure that a government department responsible for understanding quality will ever understand the ZD concept that if a human being does something it can never be relied on, over time, to be done perfectly. Only automation is perfect - at least after the 7th or 8th time you fix the bugs.