My Big Fat Update

I know there's little excuse for not being able to update this blog often enough, I'm writing this in hopes of bringing it back on track so that I can continue to write short updates.

Before travelling to the UK for easter in March I was frantically trying to get as much as possible done on the database. In the last week before I travelled I was given the information that we would have to complete the data with UNITS information that we had decided were not part of the original Terms of Reference (ToR) that we use as the guideline for our contract. This was obviously a serious ommission from the ToR since it is seems now that they are entirely unable to generate these values themselves. The UNITS are used when a customer is paying a flat rate tariff every month instead of using a meter for their consumption.

The tariffs have already been issued and were part of the ToR so we had no problem including that in the data. It was already a compulsory requirement on the form. It basically splits the tariffs into fairly simple types. Industrial, Commercial, Academic and Domestic. Then these are further subdivided into different categories that mean different tariff rates will be applied. From the ToR we assumed that the Flat rate issued to each Tariff was the monthly bill issued. However what was not realised is that the flat rate is per-unit. This is perfectly logical, and the way we would have expected things to be done, but no reference was made in our ToR to the Units or how they are assessed. But now our client is insisting we provide the Units with the data before they can sign off on our contract.

Blessed with foresight, we added to the Phase 1 form at the start of the project, fields for collecting basic information about the property. Information such as the number of floors in the building, the number of workers in a factory, or the number of pupils in a school was collected for every property. This means that it should be possible to assess the property for number of units consumed without revisiting them all.

However, trying to get our client to give written documentation on how to calculate the units of consumption for each tariff proved a tremendous problem. It seems the majority of the units are calculated with subjective reasoning. The utility company field worker would go out to assess a building and write the number of units they feel are used. Now call me cynical but doesn't that leave a HUGE gaping hole for corruption? How can we be sure no gratuities changed hands before this assessment was made? What we have tried to force them to do is create a simple set of rules based on facts that an enumerator can collect, and which can be subsequently verified, such as number of floors, number of pupils, number of workers, number of hospital beds, number of hotel rooms. Simple stuff and easily verifiable.

Eventually they gave us something, but there were still huge problems. Many tariff codes still seemed to require interpretation on the part of the enumerator to assess the units. Eventually they gave in and promised to produce a list that we could use to calculate units objectively.

So We are back in my last week before Easter and I'm promised a copy of the information I need by Monday 21st March. It didn't arrive. I was flying out the next morning. Tuesday 22nd (I'd already delayed my trip by a week because my passport was still with Immigration having my Visa and Residence Permit renewed).

I had a great holiday, visiting family and even doing a bit of work for Tom. Mike faxed through the updated info from our client to me and I read through it. There were Still problems but it was much better. I'd just have to wait till I got back to Lagos to sit down with one of the people who actually know what's going on to show them my problems.
Dad was also in the UK at the same time as me, due to my ticket change, so I managed to get him to buy my ticket to come back to Nigeria. So on 5th April (“not a tax dodge honest guv”) we hired a car and dad dropped me off at the terminal with all the luggage then went to return the car. While I was waiting for him near the check-in desk I was looking out of a fire escape window at the bus lay by where he would be coming from and I witnessed something very strange.

A man dressed in Medieval costume was walking along the pavement of the loading area carrying a can of petrol. Hmm. I wish I'd remembered to take a photo with my phone. Shortly after that a stream of Police Vans and Airport Security vehicles came through apparently in the same direction as the medieval man. If I hadn't had a trolley full of suitcases to manage I would have tried to see a bit more of what was going on there.

Anyway, the flight was OK. The plane was equipped with modern entertainment facilities. it was possible to pause a Movie, rewind, or even stop it and watch something else. However to my annoyance I discovered that when I accidentally hit the stop button after getting out of my seat to let Dad visit the toilet, I had to start the Movie again and fast forward to where I was.

Touch down in Lagos was about 4:30 am, (I am glad we don't live on the flight path!) I hadn't had a wink of sleep so my world was getting very blurry. No problems with immigration and quite a long wait for our luggage and we were out. One thing to mention is that we did run into Sam Ayodele on the way, an old friend who we first new when he worked for British Airways, but was head-hunted by Virgin Atlantic to head their ground staff when they started operating in Nigeria. He got me a free upgrade to Premium Economy once, but the flight crew seemed to treat me in a slightly off hand way as if they knew I wasn't supposed to be there.

Back at home I unpacked my cases and went to bed, waking up around 2 in the afternoon.

Since then I've done a fair bit of work. I've upgraded our server from a 1Ghz Pentium 3 with 256Mb of RAM to a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 with 1Gb of RAM. I also upgraded the OS. We are now running Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 'sarge' prior to release but after tests I found it to be easily stable enough for us and provided many software updates since the previous ~2000 Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 'woody' release. (Debian name their releases after Toy Story Characters – I run 'Sid' on my laptop this is the 'almost cutting edge' continuously updated release. So I get the latest software but also run into more problems than I would running a standard release. 'Sid' is a good name, in Toy Story, Sid was the boy next door who loved breaking all his toys. Others have said Sid is an paradoxical acronym meaning SID IS DANGEROUS. However, I've yet to be dismembered or have any other serious issues.)

This past week We've had meetings with World Bank representatives keen to find out what's delaying our progress and collect information from us that they can use in preparation for projects they will be announcing soon. I find it interesting that our client has to refer them (WB) to us to provide accurate information about customers. What is far more interesting is that we've also been asked to supply them information about their own equipment, including how much it costs to install new equipment. Surely somebody in our clients office could give that information? Isn't that what they do for a living? The World Bank people are equally bemused as to why they have to ask us for that information, but they are very grateful that we are able to provide it.

I hope our openness to them shows that we are not just along for the ride and we are doing our best to make the data work.
I managed to get a test script working on Friday that identified problems in calculating these units for the properties in Lagos. I found that initially 80% passed! That's good news, most of the problems arose where the tariff code for Mixed Use was used, or State and Federal Government properties. It shouldn't be too hard to calculate the units for the remaining few.

That brings me up to last weekend, I took Nanayah out for a pizza on Saturday, Bad for my diet I know but we'd been watching people eating pizza on a programme on TV and it gave us both cravings for it. One of the people from World Bank called several times trying to find out a bit more information on the data we have collected and he wanted to alter the data we had got for him on the installed equipment in Lagos state. Unfortunately the project office was being fumigated along with the rest of our clients building so there was no way to get more information until Monday. He made me promise to get the data by Monday 10 am which I said should be possible although it would not be me that will be doing it.

In the afternoon I spent some time working on the scripts for Units and after further tests I tweaked the script for some extra tariff types and managed to produce a result of 95.2% success! However, this still means there's about 5000 or so problems so I've got some work to do!

Sunday I thought about going to the beach but instead I caught up with some reading and watched some DVDs.

Today, Because I couldn't sleep well due to a fault with my A/C I didn't feel awake enough until 10am. so I came down and did some work until about 12:30 when I went with Dad to our project office. He had a meeting with a couple of guys there and I had a few bits of maintenance to do like update anti-virus definitions and the like. While Dad was in his meeting a reporter from The Independent (The London Newspaper) came in to look around at what we are doing. I can't remember his name, he had an Australian/New Zealand accent and he did seem to know a bit about our project which was interesting but he wasn't recording what we were saying so I think it's safe to assume we won't be mentioned personally, He was later going to be interviewing the CEO of our client. So I guess he was interested in the privatisation scheme that we are part of. I'll keep my eyes skinned on the independent website for any stories mentioning us.

I hope that I've got everything up to date now, and I should be able to start 'almost daily' updates without that nagging feeling that I've skipped a month or so.