Simple Typo Causes Million Dollar Budget Problems
from the safeguards? dept
We're always amazed when a lack of any kind of safeguard allows simple mistakes to cause such big problems. There was the trading typo in Taiwan that caused someone to accidentally buy $251 million in shares and the swapped monetary amount and share numbers that caused a Japanese firm to lose nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. In both cases, you have to wonder how come no one thought to put in any electronic safeguards that would notice something was amiss. It's not just in stock trading where this kind of thing happens, either. The latest story is that a town in Indiana is facing all sorts of budgetary problems due to someone (probably not employed by the city) who incorrectly entered a computer system and valued a $122k house at $400 million. The city used the valuations to estimate tax revenue for the year, and the difference boosted this homeowner's expected taxes from $1,500 to $8 million. Without any safeguards or any humans checking into what was going on, much of that $8 million got allocated to local schools and various city projects. They then spent the expected money, only to discover last week that it doesn't exist. Again, shouldn't any computer system like this send up an alarm when a $100k house is suddenly valued at $400 million? Heck, shouldn't it send up an alarm when any house is valued at $400 million, no matter what it's previous value was? Admittedly, it was caught in some parts of the system -- but the fact that it was allowed to go through to other parts of the system would appear to be a pretty big problem. Another oddity in the story is the claim that the program where the typo was entered was "no longer in use." If that's the case, then (1) how did someone get to it and (2) why should it matter if they made a change?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Greed.
If your bank makes an error and deposits extra money into your account, most sane people will realize the error and NOT spend it since they know the bank will want thier funds back.
Hopefully those in that area will vote, and vote thier pockets if not thier hearts. All most everyone does now is vote with thier race, politcal party, or what thier "friends" do.
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Human Error
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Re: Human Error
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Re: Human Error
"surely similar safeguards should exist for other financial systems"
You over-estimate the power of a good mainframe database. :) I'm sure that county's database is so messed up that they can't make heads or tails from it.
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No Subject Given
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$400m house
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deus ex machina
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Re: deus ex machina
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Common Sense
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No Subject Given
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Most people would go to jail for things like this.
Where's the heading hat's fair and partial that says "Cheney shoots hunting companion?"
Legislators are immune from the law it seems.
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Re: Most people would go to jail for things like t
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No Subject Given
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Unfortunately, probably was a city employee
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Well there is nothing common about commonsense
The only way to have an automated system to check for these sorts of things is to have some sort of context that systems are aware of. And I don't just mean a database with some "If this and this then ERROR" lines. I mean an AI with "understanding" of the human context. I mean that sci-fi stuff, where your machine tells you "There are several opportunities that might interest you this morning sir..."
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What's the incentive to evaluate value increases?
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funny...
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