UPDATE: I lost what little shred of confidence I had in getting an honest answer from the city of Sioux Falls IT department

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UPDATE: The webcam is now working in several browsers (12:30 PM, 7/22/2015) when I posted this over an hour ago it was not.

paintitblack

This is what the indoor aquatic center construction looks like at night, and during the day to.

A few months ago I ran into a guy at my neighborhood watering hole, he introduced himself and said, “You’re that South DaCola guy.” Then he proceeded to tell me a long story about how he worked for the city of Sioux Falls IT department. He quit after a short period of time because his manager accused him of being ‘too ambitious’ on a project he was assigned, because he was actually solving problems and doing it in a very timely manner. He basically concluded to me he couldn’t work in that kind of environment. See programmers are SUPPOSED to be doing exactly that, solving problems. Apparently they go by a different philosophy working in the city’s IT department.

Last night at the informational meeting one of the supervisors came up to explain the problems with SIRE and that a new operating system should be working by August 4th. Great news. He also told us that the webcam for the indoor aquatic center construction site IS working, but may not work on all devices.

It’s not working on any device. After the meeting I tried it on a PC and a MAC and an I-Phone. I used several web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Explorer & Safari). No luck. The webcam is working on city computers (I’m assuming because it is hooked up through the intranet network with the city, but they haven’t created a stream out of the firewall for the internet). Wouldn’t a web programmer check that before going live with it?

Also, the gentleman was questioned about the editing of SIRE videos. He said that they have not edited any videos. Yet we have shown that one of the recent videos was edited/altered or corrupted twice. Either that or they really have some issues with data storage, and funny how the ‘hiccups’ in the video happened at the exact same time.

It worries me a little that people of this kind of incompetence are running our city’s IT department. They are in charge of more things then just council meeting videos and webcams. They have to make sure the city’s public safety, accounting, traffic control and building services systems are working. If they can’t get a simple webcam to work, one wonders how these other systems are working?

Posted in: SF City Council, Sioux Falls

5 Thoughts on “UPDATE: I lost what little shred of confidence I had in getting an honest answer from the city of Sioux Falls IT department”

  1. Johnny Roastbeef on July 22, 2015 at 12:15 pm said:

    This wasn’t working for me a few days ago, but now it’s working for me now on a Mac with all three browsers.

    Doesn’t work on my iPhone though.

  2. l3wis on July 22, 2015 at 12:28 pm said:

    It works for me now to, I updated the post.

  3. The Daily Spin on July 22, 2015 at 4:06 pm said:

    Coincidentally, I encountered an IT friend last night who worked with someone at Avera that’s since been hired by the city. His words ‘doesn’t like the job because he’s told to keep it down and incompatible’.

    With SIRE not working, there’s no constitutionally mandated public record. If deliberate, it’s serious consequences.

  4. The Daily Spin on July 22, 2015 at 4:16 pm said:

    Isn’t it amazing that there’s always weekly informal Mayor’s Listen & Learn video? How come important city business videos involving major contracts and millions of dollars are always doctored, corrupted, lost, or mysteriously incompatable with accepted formats?

  5. Helga on July 22, 2015 at 5:59 pm said:

    Not working when I looked. The bigger question, for me, is why have a camera there and the Phillips cam and the Falls cam are no longer working?

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