A Hasselblad camera said to have been used by an American astronaut made a mint at an auction last month. Now itu2019s Russiau2019s turn. Two cameras built for Soviet cosmonauts in the 1960s are set to go on sale in Berkshire on 30 April.
The Prototype Russian Lunar Surface Camera is believed to be one of two models built for a Soviet programme to put a cosmonaut on the moon between 1969-1974.
It is due to go under the hammer at the Special Auction Services sale in Newbury.
The 35mm camera was supposed to be used with a 'wire-frame viewfinder' that would have been built into a spacesuit worn by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
It was made at the Ukrainian defence factory in 1968-1969 and marked 'top secret'.
Despite being told to destroy the two cameras when the Soviet moon landing programme was abandoned, camera designer Leonid Karchnoy took one home with him, according to the auction catalogue.
The camera is expected to raise £8,000-£12,000 and features three lenses: one for landscape shots, the other two for stereo photography.
The current owner said he first became aware of it in 2004, when it was detailed in information sheets distributed to members of the Russian Camera Collectors Club.
Also on sale will be the Gomz Leningrad Space Model II Camera, which was built to be used in orbit for photographing subjects like the moon. It is thought to date from around 1967.
The camera (pictured above) is expected to fetch up to £20,000, even though auctioneers were unable to confirm to AP whether it was actually used on any missions.
It features large dials and extended controls, designed to help cosmonauts operate the camera while wearing gloves.
Aperture was controlled via an external arm – allowing the user to choose apertures of f/11, f/5.6 or f/2.8.
Last month, a Hasselblad camera believed to have been used on the moon in 1971 fetched more than £550,000 at an auction in Austria.


Come out to our a special Adult Recital in Pyatt Hall on April 27th! The recital will have a party atmosphere to celebrate and foster a sense of community and sociability and we want you there to support our adult students! A reception will follow the concert. Tickets are FREE, but we encourage you to register using the link on this page or by calling the school at 604-915-9300 to reserve your seats. We hope to see you there!


The 2009 Scion xB is a good choice for urban dwellers who need a smaller vehicle for easy parking and maneuverability, yet also need decent fuel efficiency, more cargo space than the typical small car, and a back seat comfortable enough for adults. As with the other Scion models, the xB comes extremely well equipped--including electronic stability control and a number of safety features--and there are no factory options, with a line of dealer-installed accessories aimed at those who want to customize.
Distinctive shape; roomy interior; wide range of standard features; customization options.
The 2009 Scion xB maintains the status quo from last year's major redesign. Still standard is a 2.4L 4-cylinder engine with Variable Valve Timing with intelligence (VVT-i). The engine is also found in the Scion tC and Toyota's Camry, and it makes a sprightly 158 horsepower. It is paired with either a 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic transmission. All xBs are front-wheel drive.
The xB delivers a good, well-controlled ride combined with responsive, nimble handling. Brakes are especially notable, and four-wheel antilock discs, with ventilated discs up front, are standard. Safety is also one of the xB's strong point; stability control, front seat-mounted side air bags, and side curtain bags are all standard.
The interior offers a surprisingly roomy back seat good for two adults, or three in a pinch. They're split 60/40 and can fold flat to expand the already-large 21.7-cubic-foot space to handle larger loads. There's a hidden storage tray beneath the back seat for small items like laptops. In front, there are several storage boxes and trays, a driver's armrest, and the front seats can fully recline. A multi-information display with trip computer functions is included, along with orange-lit gauges.
The standard 160-watt Pioneer audio system features MP3 and WMA compatibility, digital media player connectivity, and a mini-jack input. It is also one of the few units that displays the device's track, artist, and album information. In addition, the xB includes steering-wheel audio controls. A premium audio system is available as a dealer-installed accessory, and it brings an electroluminescent screen that has customizable "skins" and can play short video clips and images.
Scions are sold differently when compared to most car brands. The xB comes in a single specification, with no factory options (except manual or automatic transmission), but there are a number of dealer-installed options aimed at customizing the vehicle for customer needs. For example, among many possible options, these may include a short-shift kit, flashier wheels, or customized interior lighting.
The distinctive, boxy 2009 Scion xB is little changed from its major redesign last year. In fact, the only difference comes in a single exterior color change: Stingray Metallic replaces Nautical Blue Metallic.
Get up-to-date information on the 2009 Scion xB. Read in depth about this model's features, specs, performance, and much more. Let Bestride.com be your guide to finding your next car.


I am also accepting shadows.
Yeh because I'm vt. Good job.
My first normal, this will be fun!!
HF can we be friends?
PS me and holyflare can't both be scum, discuss.
I also agree that's the most odd post ever.
@HF who are your townreads.
Oh and btw Wubby is 100% town.
I'm not sure if you're right on Damdred. I'm sure you're wrong on wave. I agree about Ruxx. The big thing though is that you're wrong on Wave. He's town.
What do you think about Clarity not wanting to lynch you?
That's fine, just don't lynch HF or myself today and reevaluate tomorrow. Moving on.
WoS gave me a townread for being tryhard, whereas there's 3 people somewhat leaning towards me or whatever.
So is WoS just better than you guys, or is he scum?
I know? Seems like a perfectly reasonable conclusion.


Randeep Hooda finally found his dream girl!
For those who thought Randeep Hooda doesn't have an interesting life, well, his is much better than yours!
The actor may have had his share of link-ups and break-ups, but he has finally found his dream girl.
But wait, it isn't a human. He got a beautiful female horse whom he calls his dream girl.
This love indeed would be pure and beautiful!


text:
Der Distrikt Quichuas liegt in der Provinz Tayacaja in der Region Huancavelica im Südwesten von Zentral-Peru. Der Distrikt wurde am 14. November 2014 aus Teilen des Distrikts Colcabamba gebildet. Der Distrikt Quichuas besitzt eine Fläche von 119 km². Beim Zensus 2017 wurden 4166 Einwohner gezählt. Sitz der Distriktverwaltung ist die etwa  hoch gelegene Ortschaft Quichuas mit 715 Einwohnern (Stand 2017). Quichuas befindet sich 13,5 km südöstlich der Provinzhauptstadt Pampas. 2 km nordwestlich von Quichuas befindet sich am Río Mantaro die Talsperre Tablachaca, von welcher ein Großteil des Flusswassers durch das Gebirge nach Osten umgeleitet wird.

Geographische Lage
Der Distrikt Quichuas liegt in der peruanischen Zentralkordillere im Südosten der Provinz Tayacaja. Die Längsausdehnung in WNW-OSO-Richtung beträgt 23 km, die Breite liegt bei etwa 6 km. Der Distrikt erstreckt sich entlang dem linken Flussufer des nach Südosten strömenden Río Mantaro.

Der Distrikt Quichuas grenzt im Südwesten an den Distrikt Acoria (Provinz Huancavelica), im Osten an die Distrikte Pampas und Daniel Hernández, im Norden und im Nordosten an den Distrikt Colcabamba, im Osten an den Distrikt Chinchihuasi (Provinz Churcampa) sowie im Südosten an den Distrikt Cosme (ebenfalls in der Provinz Churcampa).

Ortschaften
Im Distrikt gibt es neben dem Hauptort folgende größere Ortschaften:
 Colca (439 Einwohner)
 La Florida (236 Einwohner)
 San José
 Santa Rosa de Mallma (213 Einwohner)
 Violetas Accoyanca (262 Einwohner)

Weblinks
 Peru: Region Huancavelica (Provinzen und Bezirke) bei www.citypopulation.de
 INEI Perú

Distrikt in der Provinz Tayacaja
Distrikt in Peru

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


How many times have you ordered coffee and instantly got what you wanted?
Not often, I'd bet. That's not surprising, since there are 80,0000 ways to drink coffee at the world's largest chain of coffee shops. Given that, how is the server supposed to know which one you want?
The world of heat control isn't that complex but it also isn't simple. However, armed with some knowledge and general rules you can make sure that you get what you want.
Before going over the guidelines, though, let's first define the problem. In seven out of ten cases for our customers the reason for heating is to get rid of condensation in an enclosure.
Condensation is often a concern for facilities that shut down for the night. As the heat inside an enclosure drains away, dew can form. Also, if the cabinet is outdoors in an area where relative humidity is 70% or greater, then the risk that inner metallic surfaces will hit the dew point is high.
What about the other 30% of customers? Well, sometimes the reason for heating is to fight the cold, with this a concern when temperatures range from 5 to 15o C (41 to 59o F). When conditions are even colder, there's often some other form of heating protection for the electronics. But even then, heating inside the cabinet may be required.
As for solutions, here's a basic guideline to keep in mind. In general, you need to know the environmental specifications for the electronics and other components you're protecting. You can find the working temperature and humidity ranges in equipment manuals and other documentation. That will tell you what conditions the inside of the cabinet must satisfy.
Aluminum resistance heater. These consume 10-150 watts and provide heat in all directions. However, their heating speed is slow.
Insulated resistance heater. These also use 10-150 W and also offer a slow heating speed. But, because they're insulated, they predominantly provide heating in one direction only.
Insulated and aluminum resistance heater with fan. These can guzzle up to 400 W and offer fast, multidirectional heating.
Ultrathin resistance heater. These require anywhere from 10 to 200 W and provide multidirectional heating. As for speed, they're average, falling between the first two and the third types above.
To give you an idea how these technologies might be applied, let's look at some examples. Take the case where installation is in cold country, with variable speed drives moving a crane around and requiring rapid heating. Then heaters with a fan combined with an accurate electronic thermostat provide a good solution, one that can handle temperatures as low as -40o C (-40o F).
For another example, consider equipment located close to salt and marine environments. Then my recommendation would to be to go with a Spacial CRS (commonly known as an ultrathin resistance heater) teamed up with a humidity measuring hygrostat or humidistat as a controller.
A variation of the same problem can sometimes appear in very specific areas, such as metal parts, trays and so on. The solution there is to make surface temperature measurements on the problem spots and warm them up as needed with an ultrathin resistance heater.
A final example is a situation where sensitive equipment sits are various spots in a large control cabinet. Here, use insulated resistance heaters in those specific spots. That protects the sensitive gear without heating up the entire enclosure.
A final solution tip is that you use our free ProClima thermal calculation software. It will help you determine which heat resistance approach and what control device is most appropriate for your particular situation.
In the end, making the right choice of heater can be as satisfying as getting the right cup of coffee. For more information on the leading cause for heater use, please read our "Technical Guide-Preventing Condensation" and visit our ClimaSys CR solutions page.


text:
Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Philippines News: August 30, 2019 -- Philippines upholds the religion of Islam : PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has signed Republic Act (RA) 11439 that allows the establishment of Islamic banks in the country in an effort to create opportunities for greater financial inclusion, especially for the "underserved" Muslim population. (Again the Philippines puts the religion of Islam above all). .... More
Barangays (43) of Batac City in the Ilocos Norte province within Region 1(Ilocos Region) of The Philippines
Ablan • Acosta • Aglipay • Baay • Baligat • Baoa East • Baoa West • Barani • Ben-agan • Bil-loca • Biningan • Bungon • Callaguip • Camandingan • Camguidan • Cangrunaan • Capacuan • Caunayan • Colo • Dariwdiw • Lacub • Mabaleng • Magnuang • Maipalig • Nagbacalan • Naguirangan • Palongpong • Palpalicong • Parangopong • Payao • Pimentel • Quiling Norte • Quiling Sur • Quiom • Rayuray • Ricarte • San Julian • San Mateo • San Pedro • Suabit • Sumader • Tabug • Valdez
Philippines, is the only country in the world which is 85% Catholic that created FIVE(5) national laws "favoring", "respecting" and "financing" the religion of ISLAM.
Then made it unlawful to finance all other religions.
The only country in the world that has a government commission that caters to Muslims only, for the hajj, for madrasas, and the spread of Islam at government's expense PAID by the taxes of Non-Muslims.
Religion is always good for the people but it should never be embraced or financed by government. Tax exemption is not tantamount to financing. Every non-profit organization is tax-exempt.
Adopt this webpage. Help your community get more exposure to TOURISTS and INVESTORS. Help us improve this webpage.
List of the 21 Municipalities in the Ilocos Norte Province within Region I in the Republic of The Philippines
Adams | Bacarra | Badoc | Bangui | Banna | Burgos | Carasi | Currimao | Dingras | Dumalneg | Marcos | Nueva Era | Pagudpud | Paoay | Pasuquin | Piddig | Pinili | San Nicolas | Sarrat | Solsona | Vintar
Cities in the province of Ilocos Norte: Batac City • Laoag City (Capital)
Batac City Photo Gallery
Batac City Realty
Philippine News Headlines
Seal of Batac City
Interactive Google Satellite Map of Batac City, Philippines
Batac City within Ilocos Norte Map
Map of Ilocos Norte Province in the Island of Luzon
Batac City Hall
Please Upload Picture
Batac City,
Ilocos Norte Province, Philippines
Batac City has a total of 43 barangays
Registered Voters of Batac City as of (2010) = 28,877
Population of Batac City (as of Aug 1, 2007) = 50,675
Land Area of Batac City (as of 2007, in hectares) = 16,106
Batac City is a ? class City and Partially Urban.
Batac City is in the Ilocos Norte province and within Region_I in the northern island of Luzon
1 Geography of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
2 Location of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
3 History of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
4 People of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
5 Elected Government Officials of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
5.1 Barangay's power and authority
6 Businesses in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
7 Real Estate for Sale or lease in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
8 Churches, Mosques, or Places of Worship in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
9 Schools in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
10 Economy of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
10.1 Jobs in Batac City
11 Natural Resources of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
12 Tourists Attractions of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
13 Festivals, Fiestas and Traditions of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
14 Featured News of The Philippines
15 Your Story about Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
16 The oldest man or woman in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
17 Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines supports Philippine Cycling
18 Batac City, Philippiness Photo Gallery
Geography of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Batac City Land Area (as of 2007, in hectares)= 16,106
Batac City is located in the mid southwestern portion of the province of Ilocos Norte. It lies approximately within altitude 17º17' north and longitude 120º28' east. Its boundaries include the Municipality of San Nicolas on the north; Municipality of Sarrat on the northeast; Municipality of Marcos on the east-northeast; Municipality of Banna on the east; Municipality of Pinili on the southeast; Municipality of Currimao on the southwest; and the Municipality of Paoay on the west. It is about 472 kilometers north of Metro Manila, about 18 km. south of Laoag City, the capital of the province; 275 km. north of San Fernando City, the regional center of Ilocos Region and 11.2 km east of the eastern shore of South China Sea.
Travel time by motor vehicle at this time is very convenient because of well paved roads and is 15 – 20 minutes to Laoag City and 8 – 9 hours to Metro Manila.
Batac City has a total land area of 16, 101 hectares. The terrain of the municipality ranges from flat to rolling and hilly and to very steep. The broad valleys are mostly located in the poblacion with a slope of 0-8%. All the rural barangays except those in the eastern part have a slope of 0 -30%. There are various soil types that are poorly drained due to the heavy texture of most of the subsoil. There are two rivers that cut across Batac, the Quiaoit River (Pagdanuman) and the Garasgas River.
Batac City lies within the tropical rain forest climate zone (Köppenzone Af), and experiences two distinct seasons. From the later part of May to October is the wet season, with an annual average rainfall of 114.07 inches (PAG-ASA, 2000). The dry season lasts from November to April.
Location of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
18.0500° N, 120.5667° E - Batac, Coordinates
Batac City is in the Ilocos Norte province.
Ilocos Norte is within Region I in the island of luzon
History of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
In 1998, Municipality of Batac qualified to become a city. Nine years later, Republic Act 9407, the law that converted the Municipality of Batac into a component city in the Province of Ilocos Norte, to be known as Batac City, was overwhelmingly ratified by the people in a plebiscite conducted on June 23, 2007.
However, Batac lost its cityhood, along with 15 other cities, after the Supreme Court of the Philippines granted a petition filed by the League of Cities of the Philippines, and declared the cityhood law (RA 9389) which allowed the town to acquire its city status, unconstitutional. The said cities, the court ruled, did not meet the requirements for cityhood, as mandated by Republic Act 9009, which increased the income requirements for prospective cities.
More than a year later, on December 22, 2009, acting on the appeal of the so-called "League of 16 Cities" (of which Batac is a part of), the Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling as it ruled that "at the end of the day, the passage of the amendatory law (regarding the criteria for cityhood as set by Congress) is no different from the enactment of a law, i.e., the cityhood laws specifically exempting a particular political subdivision from the criteria earlier mentioned. Congress, in enacting the exempting law/s, effectively decreased the already codified indicators." As such, the cityhood status of Batac is effectively restored.
On February 17, 2011, the supreme court upheld for the 3rd time the cityhood of Batac.
below is a brief history per the LGU of Ilocos Norte: http://inorte.org/
Batac is bounded on the north by San Nicolas and Sarrat; on the east by the Laoag River and the Cordillera; on the south by Badoc; and on the west by Paoay. There are several small lakes within the territory and the soil is very fertile, The town has a land area of 161,06 square kilometers, with a population of 45,534 in 1995.
The first inhabitants of the town were Malays whose descendants are the Tingguians of Bangui and Nueva Era. The word Batac in the dialect means cooperative and helpful. Legends say that the name Batac was given to this place because long before it became a town, the natives were very helpful and cooperative, especially in the pursuit of common welfare.
Batac was formerly an encomienda of the Spanish King under the stewardship of Gaspara Perez. It was founded by the Augustinians in 1587. The town served the visita of Paoay in 1593 to 1689, and of Dingras in 1589 and 1603. It became the center of missionary activities in Ilocos Norte. Like the early Filipino communities, Batac passed through the encomienda system, which succeeded the barangay as a form of government with the advent of the Spanish regime.
The Municipality of Batac had its share of the fighting's and bloodsheds during the Philippines struggle for independence. Its people have been known to resist foreign aggression and dominion, as demonstrated by its illustrious sons, namely; Bishop Gregorio Aglipay, a former ecclesiastical Governor of the diocese of Nueva Segovia, who founded the Philippine Independent Church; and General Artemio Ricarte, the valiant, old soldier who remained an exile to Japan for the rest if his life than to bow the American might. Batac is also the ancestral home of the Marcoses, although the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos, known to be the most beloved and worthy son of Batac, was born in Sarrat.
Farming is the most important occupation of the people. Rice is the principal agricultural crop. However, the shift to the raising of Virginia leaf tobacco brought some changes in the local economy. Encouraged by the government's subsidy and price support, many farmers shifted to the growing of Virginia tobacco. In a relatively short period of time, tobacco became the major cash crop of the town and the other parts of Ilocos Norte, Batac is now the leading tobacco grower.
The people also raise cattle, poultry, swine and other domestic animals. In Batac, the weaving cloth for apparel and blankets, mat-making and pottery are well-developed industries.
People of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Batac City Population as 2015 census: 55,201
Batac City Population (as of May 1, 2010 Census) = 53,542
Batac City Registered Voters (COMELEC 2010) = 32,621
Batac City Population (as of Aug 1, 2007 Census) = 50,675
Elected Government Officials of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
The Sangguniang Panlungsod is composed of the City (Municipality) Vice-Mayor as Presiding Officer, regular Sanggunian members (Councilors), the President of the Association of Barangay Captains and the President of the Sangguniang Kabataan.
They shall exercise and perform the legislative powers and duties as provided for under Republic Act No. 7160, otherwise known as the Local Government Code of 1991. Shall consider and conduct thorough study all matters brought to their attention and consequently pass resolutions, enact ordinances and to introduce recommendations.
Budget of Municipalities and Cities: The Philippine budget formulation system is not centralized. It has been decentralized since 1991. It is the responsibility of each LGU to submit their budgetary needs for review. Failure to submit is the problem. "IMPERIAL MANILA IS A MYTH!".
Absolutely NO need for FEDERALISM. It is a ploy to give the Bangsamoro an Islamic State and finance the religion of Islam. It violates the constitution's "separation of church and state". We need a representation of a MINIMUM of one SENATOR per REGION..
Contrary to Pres. Duterte's ranting (July 2019): Elected public officials can't be suspended by the DILG or the office of the president. Republic Act 7160 chapter 4.
Elected officials of Batac City for the term of 2019-2022
Mayor of Batac City: Albert Chua
Vice-Mayor of Batac City: CHUA, WINDELL
Councilors of Batac City:
QUIDANG, BISMARK ANGELO
GAOAT, RAMON
CRISOSTOMO, GIAN
PUNGTILAN, KICHEL
AGUINALDO, MACARTHUR
TANAGON, JAIME SR.
MARDERS, BERNARDO
NALUPTA, EUGENIA VIOLETA
LAGMAY, CHRISTOPHER
BUNYE, LUCKY RENE
Vice-Mayor of Batac City: Jeffrey Nalupta
Winet Quidang
Medeldorf Gaoat
Joel Garcia
Elmer Pungtilan
Jed Nalupta
Bubot Crisostomo
Macarthur Aguinaldo
Bernan Marders
Jaime Tanagon
Columbia Cajigal
Mayor of Batac City: Jeffrey Jubal Castro Nalupta - LIBERAL PARTY
Vice-Mayor of Batac City: Ronald Allan Marders Nalupta - LIBERAL PARTY
QUIDANG, WINET	INDEPENDENT	8914	11.06%
NALUPTA, VIOLY (LP)	LIBERAL PARTY	8778	10.89%
GAOAT, MEDELDORF (LP)	LIBERAL PARTY	8310	10.31%
AGUINALDO, MACARTHUR (NP)	NACIONALISTA PARTY	6738	8.36%
LAUD, INCIONG (LP)	LIBERAL PARTY	6469	8.02%
PUNGTILAN, ELMER (NP)	NACIONALISTA PARTY	5364	6.65%
TANAGON, JIMMY	INDEPENDENT	5355	6.64%
CRISOSTOMO, AVELARD IBARRA(NP)	NACIONALISTA PARTY	5216	6.47%
BUNYE, LUCKY RENE (NP)	NACIONALISTA PARTY	5115	6.34%
ABELLON, AMABLE (NP)	NACIONALISTA PARTY	4846	6.01%
Mayor of Batac City: Jeffrey Jubal Castro Nalupta
Vice-Mayor of Batac City: Ronald Allan Marders Nalupta
Bismark Angelo Arcangel Quidang
Eugenia Violeta Daradar Nalupta
Medeldorf Manarpiis Gaoat
Bernardo Ku Marders
Florencio Piñol Laud
Orlando Concha Mangapit
Mary Coleen C. Lumang Cajigal
Avelard Ibarra Franco Crisostomo
Elmer Dela Cruz Pungtilan
Amable Arcangel Abellon
Barangay's power and authority
This is the "Barangay Code of the Philippines".
The barangay has power and authority over its domain. The improvement of the barangay rests on the barangay officials. The barangay chairman, the barangay council and the local businessmen forge the prosperity of the barangay. Not the president of the Philippines, senate, nor congress, not the governor of the province, not the mayor nor council of the municipality or city. Poor barangays stay poor because of weak and/or ignorant(uninformed) barangay leaders.
When roads need to be built or any infrastructure within the barangay is needed, all the barangay officials have to do is make a resolution and demand for it from the city or municipality council. The resolution will force the city/municipal council or responsible government office to hear the legitimate demands. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."
Practically anything that has to do with the barangay, the barangay officials have a say on it and most likely the authority over it. The majority of the barangay officials are not aware of their duties and power. They depend on the city council or mayor. The elected barangay officials are afraid of the mayor and city/municipality's "Sangguniang Panlungsod". They are in fear of being ousted or removed from office. The truth is, "Sangguniang Panlungsod" does not have the power to remove any elected barangay officials from office. Only the COURT OF LAW can do this (judicial branch of the government). Information is power. Be informed.
The control of traffic is not up to the city council or chief of police. It is controlled by the barangay. If the barangay needs traffic enforcers, the barangay can make a resolution to demand it from the city or municipality council. When the electric coop or the water district do not maintain their lines, the barangay can directly demand for the maintenance from the utility companies. No need to wait for city council.
The citizens also has the power to make demands to the barangay officials. In case the officials get blinded. Simply file an official complaint with the barangay secretary naming the Punong barangay as the respondent representing the barangay.
Cleaning the shorelines, drainage systems, streets, rivers, and parks within your barangay is YOUR responsibility. You are accountable for this. It is not the responsibility of the City/Municipality officials. The citizens and officials of the barangay are responsible.
BUDGET: As far as the preparation for the budget expenditures, it starts at the barangay level, then moves on to cities, municipalities, provinces and regions. The barangays need to exercise their authority. They need to put their yearly budget together for their administration and future projects. The majority of the barangays leave this job to the municipality and city. This is so wrong. Then when the budget doesn't come or is lacking, they complain.
The budget for the barangays does go to the City or Municipality, but simply for holding and later distribution. The city or municipality DOES NOT approve the budget. It was already approved by congress. The city or municipality simply "distributes" the approved budget.
The bureau of internal revenue is in cahoots to subdue the barangays, municipalities and provinces. They call the rightful shares to the taxes collected as "Internal Revenue Allotment Dependency". It is not a dependency. It is the lawful and rightful share of the LGU as specified in "TITLE III, SHARES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT UNITS IN THE PROCEEDS OF NATIONAL TAXES, CHAPTER I, Allotment of Internal Revenue Taxes, Section 284."
Imperial Manila does not exist anymore. Budgetary planning has been "DECENTRALIZED since 1991.".
DURING ELECTIONS: Where do City and Municipality politicians go to campaign? They seek the support of the Barangay officials. They plead to the barangay folks for the votes. After the election they forget you. Do not ever forget the power of the barangay.
Ignorance keeps the pinoys thinking that Manila rules. Be informed, be educated and make your barangay prosper.
Absolutely NO need for FEDERALISM. It is a ploy to give the Bangsamoro an Islamic State where the religion of Islam is financed by the Philippine government. Bangsamoro will be a HOMELAND not for all Filipinos but for only the Muslim Filipinos. It violates the constitution's "separation of church and state". Religion is always good for the people but it should never be embraced or financed by government. Tax exemption is not tantamount to financing. Every non-profit organization is tax-exempt.
Businesses in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Real Estate for Sale or lease in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
If you have real estate property, whether its commercial, residential, farm land, or just an empty lot in Batac City, you can list that property for free.
Click to VIEW, EDIT or ADD Realty Listings.
If you are a real estate developer, you can list your subdivision, condominiums, high rises, apartment complexes, shopping strips or malls, open market developments FOR FREE.
Churches, Mosques, or Places of Worship in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Schools in Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
The name of your school in Batac City can be listed here. You can list it like this:
Name of School. Private or Public. It can be an elementary school, high school, college.
Address of your school
Principal of the school
Baay-Bungon National High School
Batac National High School
Economy of Batac City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
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Featured News of The Philippines
6% growth target stays
Monday, Septembe 16, 2019
The Department of Finance (DOF) said the government is maintaining its growth target of six percent or higher this year, even as the economy settled at only 5.5 percent growth in the first semester given the delay in the enactment of the 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Carlos Dominguez, finance secretary, also said to avoid a repeat of the 2019 budget delay, leaders of both the Senate and the House of Representatives are meeting every month to monitor the progress on the budget and the 25 priority bills enumerated in the 4th State-of-the-Nation Address ........... Full Story»
Stocks up, peso stronger
Share prices ended higher yesterday as investors tracked overseas leads to trade the market.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) was up 70.20 points to 7,858.65, a 0.9 percent hike ........... Full Story»
Festivals in the month of November in the philippines
Adivay: November : La Trinidad, Benquet ★ Banaag Festival: November 1 : Anilao, Iloilo ★ P'yagsawitan Festival: November 3rd week: Maragusan Compostela Valley ★ Binabayani Festival: November Last week: Olongapo, Zamboales ★ Tan-OK ni Ilocano Festival: November third week: Ilocos Norte ★ Crown Festival: November 3rd week: Taytay, Rizal ★ Tumba (Candle) Festival: November 2: San Luis, Batangas ★ Pinta Flores Festival: November 3 to 5: San Carlos City, Negros Occidental ★ San Carlos City Fiesta: November 4: San Carlos City, Negros Occidental ★ Angono Arts Festival: November 5 to 25: Angono, Rizal ★
Inaugural triathlon at New Clark City set
Monday, August 16, 2019 12:00 am
MANILA, Philippines — All is set for the New Clark City Triathlon which is the first triathlon event to be held at the New Clark City Sports Complex in Capas, Tarlac on Oct. 19-20.
GoClark Sports and Events has partnered with presenting sponsor Robinsons Land Corp. in this triathlon featuring the swim event at the Aquatics Center, the 20km bike in the newly built New Clark City-SCTex connecting road and the run course in the sports complex, including the warm-up athletic track, the river park and a finish lap around the 20,000-seater Athletics Stadium ............................... Full Story»
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15 minute read 07 December 2021
IT, disrupt thyself: Automating at scale
Future-forward IT organizations are modernizing the "IT back office" to a proactive model of self-service and engineered automation
Kacy Clarke
Managing Director | Deloitte Consulting LLP
Kacy Clarke is a technology strategist and enterprise architect leading major public cloud implementations in Deloitte's Cloud Engineering practice. Clarke brings 35 years of technical leadership experience in consulting, product development, and internal IT to bear when advising clients on cloud strategy, architecture, design patterns, technology, organizational transformation, DevSecOps, and cloud operating models. Her global clients in cloud transformation over the last 10 years have been able to move thousands of workloads and petabytes of data to the cloud safely and manageably, leveraging the cloud for digital innovation and deep insights.
kaclarke@deloitte.com
Ken Corless
Principal | Deloitte Consulting LLP
Ken Corless is a managing director with Deloitte Consulting LLP in Deloitte's Cloud practice. Corless's experience brings together digital, cloud, and emerging technologies to help clients create breakaway products, services, and processes. He has received industry accolades for his leadership, innovative solutions to business problems, and bold approaches to disruption, including being named to Computerworld Premier's "100 IT Leaders" and CIO Magazine's "Ones to Watch." Corless has also written several articles for the Wall Street Journal CIO Edition.
kcorless@deloitte.com
Glen Rodrigues
Foundry Services Market Leader
Glen is a Principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and leads our Foundry Services Market Offering for US Core Technology Operations (CTO). He has been responsible for leading and closing large transactions; including joint ventures and acquisitions, managing large business process transformation, design, and development through global implementations of complex systems for multinational companies. In addition, Glen has been instrumental leading numerous AMS and Cloud Managed Service operate projects that have helped our clients transform their IT organizations through modernization and innovation. Core Technology Operations offers differentiated operate services for our clients with solutions to help organizations scale and optimize critical operations, drive speed to outcome, deliver business transformation, and build resilience in an uncertain future.
grodrigues@deloitte.com
Lars Cromley
Technology fellow
Lars Cromley is a technology fellow with Deloitte Cloud Consulting practice. He has more than 10 years of experience working with cloud-native technologies and their implementations. Cromley works with engineers and product teams to adopt cloud native technologies, drive cultural change, solve client delivery issues, and speed up the delivery of business value. His focus lies on driving quality, well-architected solutions that automate business process and eliminate waste. Prior to Deloitte, Cromley was a director at a cloud consultancy and has served several industries, including airlines and transportation, beverage and hospitality, financial services, technology, and pharmaceuticals.
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Future-forward IT organizations are modernizing the "IT back office," moving away from humans reacting to tickets and assignments to a proactive model of self-service and engineered automation.
Tech Trends 2022
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There is still an enormous amount of repeatable work done by people in many established organizations. Think of administration, monitoring, reviews, and responding to tickets among other tasks. Over the last decade, cloud vendors have demonstrated how automating processes that remove repetitive work can help increase overall efficiency. Automated processes are consistent and auditable, which can help reduce errors and improve quality. It can also free skilled tech talent to focus on higher value-added tasks.
IT leaders, for various reasons, have been slow to pursue these opportunities. This, however, is beginning to change. In what we recognize as an emerging trend, some CIOs are disrupting their organizations and the army of technologists that currently execute many manual tasks and handoffs across systems, architecture, development, and deployment.
Beyond leveraging investments made by cloud providers to accelerate their journeys, CIOs are following the cloud providers' playbook to identify and standardize processes. They are attacking opportunities in infrastructure, software components, security, and applications. Once their enhancements mature, CIOs and their teams optimize the new service delivery and automation using advanced techniques such as AI and ML.
Early participants in this trend have already seen gains in efficiency and lower labor costs. In a recent survey of IT and engineering leaders, 74% of respondents said that automation has helped their workforce work more efficiently. Fifty-nine percent reported cost reductions of up to 30% on teams that have embraced process automation.1 Add to this noticeable increases in quality and security, and it becomes clear why 95% of respondents are prioritizing process automation, with 21% saying it's a high priority.2
The pace of change only continues to increase. The business is asking for more, and they want it more quickly than ever before. The talent market is white hot, with growing demand for advanced skill sets (that are in perpetually short supply.) Everyone is trying to do more with less.
The time to (finally) disrupt IT is now.
Disruptive journeys
The journey from manual to automated activities isn't new. Indeed, in previous Tech Trends reports, we have examined this transition in areas such as cybersecurity, advanced networking, and the dynamic provisioning of hardware and software. So, what is different this year? Simply put, competition. The pandemic is upending the labor market. Perhaps more importantly, it's in digital natives' DNA to push automation to its limits. Hence, startups can achieve greater scalability, reliability, resilience, and efficiency at lower costs than their established counterparts. They hold an additional advantage in that they aren't held back by technical debt or organizational compromises that require handoffs and manual interventions. For digital natives, such old-school actions become a last resort rather than the norm. This approach is fundamentally different from those often taken by established organizations. Today's competitive marketplace requires a more robust IT posture, which can translate into a competitive advantage.
Organizations looking for opportunities to disrupt their status quo can focus their efforts in three areas:
Standardize and automate on-premises infrastructure
The first leg of an automation journey involves enabling all infrastructure and management functions to be controlled by code. Programmatic control of resources makes it possible to apply policies consistently and to store previously manual configurations in automated code and configuration files. These solutions require deploying some mix of compute (containers, virtualized servers, and functions), networking (software-defined), and storage.
For automation to scale, processes must be executed consistently across the enterprise. However, if you look at the operational landscapes of many organizations today, you will find a mixed bag of processes, applications, and workarounds. When processes work in one fashion on server A and another on server B; when environments do not have parity; or when networks behave differently, then operations become more costly and inefficient.
If this sounds familiar, consider creating a standard, common approach to developing, deploying, and maintaining your solutions and components. Cloud vendors realized early on that the more you can programmatically control resources, the easier it becomes to treat environments as a program to be managed. Many of today's infrastructure-as-code platforms trace their roots to early cloud-based automation initiatives.
As organizations explored infrastructure-as-code, they recognized they could also deploy security-as-code or operations-as-code, controlling them all with configuration or code files. The goal of "as-code" is to push toward an environment in which everything—even bespoke systems—aligns on a set of optimized rules. With rules in place, a single engineer can control a large pool of resources that would have taken several administrators to manage. This frees infrastructure teams to work like the cloud providers: automating, taking advantage of opportunities for self-service, and getting out of the way.3
As organizations streamline operations and management with automation, they should also revisit their initiation processes. Historically, creating new infrastructure involved elaborate procurement exercises with escalating approval levels. In today's world, adding another virtual instance may not warrant any level of prior approvals. Identifying and automating (or eliminating) similar handoffs and approvals that made sense in a legacy environment can help streamline operations, augment developer productivity, and provide much sought-after organizational agility.
When approached methodically and strategically, automation can deliver significant economies of scale. It offers other benefits as well:
Greater accuracy. Individuals will no longer be subjectively interpreting documents, queries, and forms.
Increased security and resilience. Rules will be applied more consistently. It's worth noting that a nascent "security-as-code" trend is gaining momentum.
Improved reliability. Problems fixed in the code typically won't reoccur.
We offer a word of warning for those using the providers' "as code" services. Make sure you have organized your processes and operations to get the most out of those capabilities. If you don't, you may reproduce existing limitations in a modern environment.
Standardize and automate software, management tools, and applications
Leading-edge IT organizations no longer manage infrastructure; they now develop code that manages infrastructure, an approach that can boost scalability, efficiency, and consistency. This same approach can apply to software components, management tools, and a variety of applications. Modern IT organizations manage software code that, in turn, manages aspects of development, maintenance, operations, and security. Ultimately, it is easier to manage a single piece of code than an array of manually configured solutions. For example, infrastructure-as-code enables us to bring the agility of software development to infrastructure management. From a deployment perspective, it is possible to manage full-stack solutions rather than separate components that several teams must coordinate.
Like infrastructure, a few on-premises software components are prime candidates for automating. For example, database management, integration tools, security, systems management, and O/S patching can be easily virtualized and abstracted.
For organizations using cloud infrastructure, vendors offer an expanding menu of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) options that feature enhanced automation, programming interfaces, integrated middleware, and management capabilities. Maturing PaaS offerings may also provide enhanced developer self-service, programming interfaces, and more tightly integrated middleware and management capabilities.
How can you decide where to start? First, identify the "user journeys" of those trying to deliver functionality to end users, and the points of friction these users encounter. Ruthlessly prune unnecessary approvals and handoffs and then automate or create self-service options for the steps that stand between developed code and production deployments. Finally, once your automation journey is underway, old performance metrics may no longer apply. It's important at this point to incentivize an "automation culture" by defining metrics for the organization you want to become.
Optimize automation with ML and rules
Typically, a first pass at automation is rules-based. For example, "if process x doesn't respond, restart the process." Over time, IT staff members can identify issues that cause outages and malfunctions and optimize automation tools to address them, just as cloud providers demonstrated a decade ago. Eventually, you can move beyond rules-based to machine learning–based automation. An automation journey that begins immaturely can subsequently grow in terms of sophistication.
Many types of ML—predictive, capacity modeling, action response, outage recovery, among others—support different IT activities. Yet for most organizations, identifying outages early and harnessing predictive modeling to prevent future outages is a top ML priority. By focusing on these areas, ML-enabled teams can measurably improve uptime and decrease outage severity. Moreover, a growing number of PaaS offerings feature embedded ML capabilities. For example, PaaS offerings often use ML to maintain and optimize routine operations that were previously managed manually by developers, administrators, and engineers. The net effect is that development and operations can run in higher gears.
Another optimization technique involves applying rules consistently. Consider this: Enterprise architecture is a set of decisions around what you can use and how. The resulting rules represent an optimum approach to architecture design and function. As part of your automation journey, consider prioritizing consistency. Do this by methodically embedding these rules into systems and processes across the enterprise. Consistency delivers optimum performance.
For CIOs and other leaders who are exploring automation opportunities, time is of the essence. In today's rapid-fire innovation climate, there is not a lot of business value to be found in paying humans to maintain servers and data centers. As CIOs disrupt their IT organizations with automation, there will be ripe opportunities to shift employees' focus from patching, monitoring, and measuring to higher-value engineering activities. More broadly, automation's possibilities extend to areas such as development, deployment, maintenance, and security, thus making it possible to gain efficiency and consistency across more of IT's operations.
The journey from managing things to managing code that manages things won't happen overnight. For example, there may be some cultural resistance from tech workers and the C-suite, or legacy systems may have manually configured components that make automation difficult. Finally, change is hard, even for the nimblest IT teams. People accustomed to handoffs and human-to-human interaction may adapt slowly to self-service and automated provisioning. For organizations just getting started, it may be helpful to create a dedicated team that develops and deploys automation and self-service to standard processes. This team can methodically broaden its approach, transforming more processes over time as they climb the stack.
Luckily, some needed automation is readily available in the form of cloud-based solutions. The rest is achievable through engineering and a deliberate, consistent focus on building an automated future.
View section
Lessons from the front lines
Automating in the cloud unleashes developer agility and speed of innovation
Back in 2015, Capital One stated all new applications would be built and run in the cloud and all existing applications would be migrated to the cloud. This may have seemed like an ambitious goal at the time given the scale of the enterprise's on-premises infrastructure and the fact that it's rare for any business to operate entirely in the cloud. But the financial services firm hit its target, becoming the first US bank to report that it has exited legacy data centers and gone all-in on the public cloud.4 This has delivered several benefits, but among the most important is the increased opportunity for automation and the rapid scaling that comes with it.
As Capital One was moving more data and applications to the cloud, the technology team members knew they didn't want to simply replicate their existing systems and processes. They wanted to take advantage of the cloud's full range of possibilities for building a more modern technology stack. This included adopting leading trends like microservices, automation, real-time data, and machine learning.
"Compute and storage are just the tip of the iceberg with cloud," says Chris Nims, senior vice president for cloud and productivity engineering in the technology division at Capital One.5 "If you just forklift your applications to the cloud, you don't get the full range of benefits.
Capital One now increasingly leverages a serverless computing model to make sure developers don't have to worry about finding compute resources, combined with containers to deliver applications, and necessary libraries and other dependencies. The team also built a rules engine that it open-sourced that helps organizations define policies to better manage their cloud environments with automated governance, security, compliance, and efficiency.
All these moving parts may look complicated, but the team found it has led to better uptime. Part of utilizing the modern tech stack means it's able to deploy automated monitoring tools. Machine learning applications monitor real-time server data and system applications to ensure they're running smoothly and alert technicians to problems before most users notice them.
"The parts have gotten smaller, and we knew the old way of manually doing monitoring wasn't going to scale," says Arjun Dugal, CTO of the financial services division at Capital One.6 "We've had to reinvent how we monitor our applications ecosystem by leaning on advanced cloud-native monitoring tools and leveraging machine learning–based anomaly detection. Our strategy has paid off—incidents have actually gone down even as the number of potential points of failure has dramatically increased."
Automating infrastructure has made Capital One a more attractive player in the battle for tech talent. Nims says most people who go to school for computer engineering do so because they like the challenge of solving hard problems. When they graduate, they don't want to spend their time seeking approvals, monitoring server performance, or maintaining outdated databases. Automating these things lets engineers spend their time on more impactful projects, which gives Capital One a leg up in hiring.
"Great engineers want to work on modern infrastructure," Nims says. "They want to be at the forefront of technology. So much of this goes back to allowing our engineers to spend their time on the most important things."
Improving the job satisfaction of developers isn't just about attracting talent. It's also about business value. Dugal says Capital One employs 11,000 technologists, 85% of whom are developers, so even marginal increases in their agility scales to major benefits for the company.
"This is about getting the mechanics out of the way so they can focus on the highest value things," he says. "Greater developer agility translates directly to a big boost in customer benefits and speed of innovation."
UiPath paves the way to IT automation success
UiPath, a leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA) platforms since 2005, has been enabling customer automation journeys by starting with an ambitious strategic vision for what automation can deliver. It then creates an operating model that ensures automation continuously improves and brings value to customers.7 According to Jay Snyder, senior vice president of customer strategy and solutions at UiPath: "Automation is empowered and governed by IT but enabled by the business. That's where the chocolate and peanut butter all comes together."
Having helped hundreds of organizations automate business processes, UiPath is increasingly turning its expertise toward the business of IT. According to Eddie O'Brien, senior vice president of operations and partners, more involvement from senior leaders in IT can help an organization scale its automation efforts within IT departments: "Often, people put their feet in the water with automation, but don't know where to go next. Closer engagement with IT can bring about more digital transformation."
When used properly in IT, says Snyder, teams not only control the automation platform but can also turn it inward to automate IT processes such as ticket creation, license management, or cybersecurity response. Even beyond individual processes, the vision is to enable zero-touch IT by automating high-impact IT services such as DevOps and data management. Snyder's team works with IT departments to create playbooks of automation use cases, prioritizing the highest-volume, lowest-value tasks. Team members also create IT personas, such as a system admin persona, to teach their RPA platform how to accomplish a set of tasks across various business processes or departments, just as an IT employee would. In doing so, an organization's IT staff can focus on performing higher-value tasks or designing further automations. "People often focus on reducing staff through automation, but we've seen that the true benefit is in multiplying productivity," says Snyder.
The result is a cycle of automation that continues growing in IT departments. As more employees are empowered by digital assistants, team members generate more automation ideas, and robots are further incorporated into IT processes. In addition, the AI/ML in the platform analyzes an organization's automations and can recommend improvements or expansions. According to O'Brien, the key to achieving ongoing IT automation is to start with the right strategy in place. The goal is to create end-to-end automation that drives digital and business transformation. Says O'Brien, "When we bring our vision of the fully automated enterprise to fruition, we can have a major impact on the efficiency of IT and how it's managed today."
Automation helps Anthem stay ahead of insurance industry turbulence
Anthem, Inc., provides health insurance to about 40 million people across the United States, and connecting these members to care is its top priority. That's why in recent years the company has reoriented its IT department to serve its member-focused mission by automating large segments of its core infrastructure, allowing engineers to spend time on projects that are closer to business priorities.
"The industry has moved from managing things to building things," says Srinivas Yamujala, staff vice president of the cloud center of excellence at Anthem.8 "In order for Anthem to stay competitive, we had to be more digital and nimble. In support of our transformation initiatives, our focus has been on end-to-end automation to simplify and expedite delivery of infrastructure services and shared platforms so that we can build and release applications and products more quickly."
One of the areas of focus as part of this journey has been to enable cloud. Anthem was relying on traditional infrastructure delivery based on manual, cumbersome processes to acquire and provision infrastructure, Yamujala says. If onboarding a new customer called for increased server capacity, it could take three to six months to acquire and fully configure the hardware. But now, Anthem has most of its business processes in the cloud, and this formerly months-long process takes as little as two hours. It has developed a patent pending orchestration and provisioning automation platform that is secure and compliant with health care domain regulatory and security policies. This, in turn, has enabled the application development teams to provision resources on demand in minutes.
To support innovation and transformation initiatives, Anthem took its cloud vendor services and hardened them with Anthem's rigorous security protocols. These preconfigured services are assembled into a service catalog, providing application developers with the capability to use several native cloud vendor services that already meet legal and security compliance standards. In the past, each development team wanting to use a particular service would have to build guardrails for these services themselves, resulting in disparate approaches and redundant implementations. In addition, while working on applications, developers previously had to submit tickets with security teams to open specific firewall ports so that their applications could communicate with other systems and applications. Now, Anthem has baked all that into its automated platform using microservices and APIs. The need for developers to manage cumbersome firewall changes has been minimized, and Anthem is working toward eliminating it altogether using zero-trust capabilities. This has improved its developer community productivity tremendously, which is anticipated to get even better in the future.
"We want to empower our developer community," says Yamujala. "Most of our automation efforts are about simplifying application development and deployment. A lot of automation you see today is about infrastructure as code, but we're going beyond that to think about what enables developers to address business needs more quickly."
An additional benefit of automating all of this is that it's helped improve system uptime. Maintaining on-premises infrastructure forces engineers to monitor servers and the applications they host. With all the interdependencies between applications and hardware configurations, engineers had a hard time staying ahead of issues, Yamujala says. Now that complexity is handled by cloud services, and system performance has improved.
The move to automate core infrastructure and platforms, as well as aspects of application development and deployment, has had benefits far beyond IT. Yamujala says the broader business is now in a better position to respond quickly to evolving business needs and customer expectations.
"Our ability to respond to changing industry needs, to customer needs, and to sustain business in changing conditions has become even more nimble, agile, and fast," Yamujala says.
Bill McDermott, president and CEO of ServiceNow, and C.J. Desai, chief operating officer at ServiceNow
At ServiceNow, we think of our platform as the control tower for digital transformation across the enterprise. In today's digital world, IT architecture is business architecture, and developing a coherent approach to automation across your technology infrastructure has never been more important.
We know this because at ServiceNow, we are "client zero." Everything we put out into the world we use internally first. This helps us see the impact of automation and understand the benefits of coordinating our digital activities. It has also helped us understand how automation needs to work in a modern IT organization, one that supports the digital transformation vision of the entire enterprise.
When our platform started out, we supported prescriptive workflows, and our initial use case was IT service management. Over time, clients began using the platform for other use cases, such as cybersecurity operations, HR onboarding and offboarding, and customer service, to name a few. And our platform has grown to support machine learning–enabled automation and will soon offer RPA capabilities for systems that lack clean interfaces.
Yet automating discrete front-end processes is not the ultimate objective in any digital transformation effort. The real goal is to clean up the messy middle and back-end systems and integrate islands of automation on the front end. Over the years, businesses have spent billions of dollars making sure their digital front ends and customer experiences shine. Yet many have invested much less in the back-end systems and supporting technologies, which remain replete with manual processes. This slows operations down and minimizes the benefit of great front-end customer experiences.
Customers won't accept this—they want what they want, when they want it. They expect visibility. You may have a great ordering system, but if customers can't track the status of their orders, the overall customer experience is lacking.
This is why we advocate moving away from the older system of record models to a more modern "system of action" approach. You need to connect with your customers throughout the entire sales process, not just on the front end. Manual efforts don't scale. Automation does.
Automation isn't just about meeting customer expectations. It's also important for improving the employee experience. Few workers want to do the same rote tasks every day. This is especially true for developers and engineers, who would rather spend their time solving high-value, complex problems than doing basic system monitoring. At the same time, businesses across industries are struggling to find the talent they need. The talent war is real, and most enterprises are having a hard time keeping up. Automating low-value tasks frees your employees to work on higher-value problems, which is one of the best ways to improve the talent experience and boost retention.
Ultimately, this is all about increasing speed to value. Whether the goal is connecting with your customers or empowering employees to work on higher-value tasks, a coordinated approach to automation helps your business realize gains much more quickly. Once you've automated your operations, the time to value ranges from weeks to months, rather than months to years.
Which of your infrastructure and management functions currently require manual intervention? Of these, which can you standardize and automate?
What is the lowest value activity performed by each of your employees? Can it be automated or eliminated?
Which of your automated functions are candidates for optimization? How are you moving beyond rules-based decision-making to explore ML optimizations?
Download the trend to explore more insights, including the "Executive perspectives" that illuminate the strategy, finance, and risk implications of each trend. And check out these links for related content:
NoOps in a serverless world. Read on to see how the hyperautomation of cloud computing has created a NoOps environment to help drive business outcomes.
Enterprise IT: Thriving in disruptive times with cloud and as-a-service. Read the 2021 edition of the Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) Study and see how adopters are benefiting from the XaaS model.
Digital transformation collection. Explore latest insights driving efficiencies, powering new products and services, and enabling new business models.
| IT, disrupt thyself: Automation at scale
Salesforce, IT leaders fueling productivity with process automation , accessed November 9, 2021.View in Article
Ibid.View in Article
David Linthicum et al., The future of cloud-enabled work infrastructure: Making virtual business infrastructure work , Deloitte Insights, September 23, 2020.View in Article
How Capital One Moved Its Data Analytics to the Cloud ," Harvard Business Review , February 23, 2021.View in Article
Chris Nims (senior vice president for cloud and productivity engineering in the technology division, Capital One), interview, October 25, 2021.View in Article
Arjun Dugal (CTO of the financial services division, Capital One), interview, October 25, 2021.View in Article
Jay Snyder (SVP customer strategy and solutions, UiPath) and Eddie O'Brien (SVP operations and partners, UiPath), interview, October 27, 2021.View in Article
Interview with Srinivas Yamujala, staff vice president of cloud center of excellence, Anthem, Inc., November 5, 2021.View in Article
Senior contributors
Julien Kopp
Partner | Deloitte France
Andreas Zachariou
Director | Deloitte MCS Limited
Alice Doyne
Senior manager | Deloitte MCS Limited
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The crowd laughed nervously, and the tension was broken… just a little.
I want to consider here the very good German film Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (Uli Edel, 2008), which screened last night and which recounts in whirlwind style the rise of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. The film gets a lot of things right, not least in its casting (Moritz Bleibtreu finally succeeds in driving his repellent Manni – from Lola rennt – out of my head after almost a decade). Its recreation of the period is immersive, obsessively detailed, and utterly convincing. Its intensity and its brutality are never forced, never overplayed, and feel absolutely genuine. And, perhaps most impressively, it refuses to turn its portrait of 1960s political radicalism into facile hagiography, a tendency still pervasive in contemporary culture. What is less impressive is that the RAF's actual ideology is given such short shrift. We learn a good deal about their actions, but very little about what motivated those actions. Though we do get the occasional glimpse of the sorts of things the RAF sought to tackle – prison conditions for political prisoners, the US-led war in Vietnam, the Israeli occupation of Palestine – it would be difficult for a viewer without at least some knowledge of the history of guerilla socialist movements to really gather much of an impression of their arguments and aims; indeed, the RAF's central trio, Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, and Gudrun Ensslin, often come across in the film as little more than invective-shouting blowhards or endlessly equivocating academics. Adding some genuine ideological reflection into the film would admittedly be a daunting task, not least in that dramatising complex philosophies on screen is exceedingly difficult. Doing this also places any film in immediate danger of being dismissed as either invective or as overly intellectual (particularly problematic in highly anti-intellectual places like New Zealand). This leads me to what I suppose is my main point here; film critics need to be as careful with and as conscious of ideology as anyone else.
If you lived through the 70s as an adult (or young adult), you will remember the name, Baader Meinhof, also known as the Red Army Faction. Perhaps like me, you'll have forgotten what they stood for. This film reminds us that they didn't really stand for anything much more than anarchy, even though they – eventually – dressed it up as a desire to 'free the oppressed' and destroy US imperialism, as they saw it. They wanted world peace, if you like, even it meant waging war and slaughtering civilians to get it … Perhaps the most important function of a movie about the Baader Meinhofs of this world is to reveal their hollow morality, their arrogance and their cruelty; nothing romantic here to entice youngsters to kill innocent civilians in pursuit of peace and freedom. In this respect, the film highlights the absolute failure of politically driven terrorism as an agent of socio-political change. Real, and really valuable change, can be bought about by societies without large scale slaughter – as they were with the fall of corrupt and greedy President Marcos of the Philippines, and the fall of European communism.
These creations of terror are done not to achieve a strategic goal but to make a symbolic statement. By calling acts of religious terrorism 'symbolic', I mean that they are intended to illustrate or refer to something beyond their immediate target: a grander conquest, for instance, or a struggle more awesome than meets the eye … Such explosive scenarios are not tactics directed toward an immediate, earthly, or strategic goal, but dramatic events intended to impress for their symbolic significance (pp. 125-126).
This leads me to my final point about textual criticism; it is dangerous to ignore the ideological content of films (and all text is ideological in one way or another). Nor, it must be mentioned, is there any need to make the opposite mistake, as the film critics at the World Socialist Website do on a regular basis, denigrating perfectly fine films for the flaw that they don't happen to agree wholeheartedly with the rather narrowly prescribed (and frankly outdated) Trotskyite socialism that the site represents. This is not to denigrate Trotsky and certainly not to dismiss Marx, but there can be little doubt that classical Marxism has proven itself unable to grapple with a number of contemporary developments, especially those involving religion. To judge the value of every single cultural artefact on the criteria of how well it supports one particular ideology is to in essence declare an end to ideological and political debate and to turn all art into propaganda. And, Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein aside, propaganda film tends to be rather banal (if you doubt this, go out and see any film by Michael Bay, who is little more than a propagandist for the United States military).
Proper criticism involves considering the text on its own merits as a cultural artefact and as an aesthetic object. The mark of a good film critic is being able to admit that a film is good even if the critic disapproves of the meaning that it may be trying to convey. As a scholar of film searching for this ever-elusive detachment, I want to recall a number of films that I have seen and admired – at times even deeply admired – whose moral or ideological structure I find repellent. Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone is one of these films. So is American Beauty. For the same reason, a good critic or analyst should be able to admire a filmmaker as an artist and at the same time find their films to be abhorrent – and here Lars van Trier comes immediately to mind (I am, in fact, avoiding a screening of van Trier's Antichrist at the Festival tonight for the simple reason that I can only make it through a van Trier film if I can pause it and walk away at intervals, perhaps to take a shower). Dismissing texts simply because we happen to disagree with them is the worst kind of criticism and smacks of a lack of conviction.
The Dunedin School wishes to remember Professor Graham Stanton, who passed away on 18 July 2009, aged 69. In the early 1960s, Graham Stanton began his academic studies in Dunedin, receiving an MA and BD from the University of Otago (Knox College). In 2000, he was awarded an honourary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Otago.
Graham Stanton received his PhD at Cambridge in 1969. He later became a lecturer (from 1970) and then New Testament Professor (from 1977) at King's College, London until 1998. From 1998 until his death, he held the chair of Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, the University of Cambridge's oldest chair (est. 1502). Graham Stanton was also President of the Society for New Testament Studies in 1996-1997, editor of New Testament Studies, and a General Editor of the International Critical Commentaries.
Buried away in a footnote to Studies in the Cult of Yahweh (1996), Morton Smith laments the days – from about 100 years ago and before – in which Old Testament commentaries regularly examined Greek and Roman parallels to interpret the book of Genesis.
If we accept that "a text can be read only in connection with, and in opposition to other texts" (Gian Conte), then in effect Morton is saying that, for the last century, Old Testament scholars have largely missed the boat.
This is a matter that finds resonances far outside of biblical studies and religious fundamentalism. Indeed, it is possible to find evidence of our love of the simple tale in the ways in which we organise and understand ourselves. On the academic front, Paul Ricouer and Charles Taylor have convincingly argued that the ways in which we approach the world and even our own identities are fundamentally narrative in nature. That we love simple stories that iron out the bumps on the road of human progress and show us that what lurks in the shadows is an absolute other – or something we need not worry ourselves about – is also evident in the ways that certain academic or quasi-academic narratives make their way into the wider culture. Narratives that make the world simple – not to mention those that lay the blame for the world's problems on the shoulders of people who do not look or think like we do – are the ones that find the biggest audiences. Why else would we still be hearing about Joseph Campbell's (frankly idiotic) theory of the 'monomyth' more than sixty years after it first appeared? Why else would Bernard Lewis' and Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilisations' model, which has distinct narrative elements, have been accepted by so many people, and put to such repellent uses (such as justifying the drive for ethnically pure states in the former Yugoslavia)?
Herr Galbraith, in characteristic deadpan fashion (deeply offensive to a closet conservative like myself), concludes with what I suspect, without wishing to engage in too much pop psychologising, is the answer to my question: 'It's just easier to get by, I guess'. For those people who are merely interested in getting by, this would be fine; however, for the rest of us – including those of us in the Dunedin School – there needs to be something more. Intellectual and academic iconoclasm demands that we strive always to complicate stories, to at least be willing always to ask difficult questions: Is that all that happened? Are there other explanations? What if things had in reality been otherwise? Isn't it more likely that Jesus – and Muhammad for that matter – made mistakes? Would people be willing to sacrifice their lives and willingly embrace brutal, violent deaths simply because they hate freedom? And whose idea of freedom are we talking about here, anyway? Is this the freedom that comes from absolute submission to the divine, or is it the freedom to make a narrowly-prescribed choice in a national election?
There is as well a narrative dimension to this explanatory framework. In the United States, we begin the story by invoking a first-person narrative point of view, and telling what happened on September 11. It is that date and the unexpected and fully terrible experience of violence that propels the narrative. If someone tries to start the story earlier, there are only a few narrative options. We can narrate, for instance, what Mohammed Atta's family life was like, whether he was teased for looking like a girl, where he congregated in Hamburg, and what led, psychologically, to the moment in which he piloted the plane into the World Trade Center. Or what was din Laden's break from his family, and why is he so angry? That kind of story is interesting to a degree because it suggests that there is a personal pathology at work. It works as a plausible and engaging narrative in part because it resituates agency in terms of a subject, something we can understand, something that accords with our idea of personal responsibility, or with the theory of charismatic leadership that was popularized with Mussolini and Hitler in World War II.
Radical thought is at the violent intersection of meaning and non-meaning, of truth and non-truth, of the continuity of the world and the continuity of the nothing. It aspires to the status and power of illusion, restoring the non-veracity of facts, the non-signification of the world, and hunting down that nothing which runs beneath the apparent continuity of things … The world was given to us as something enigmatic and unintelligible, and the task of thought is to render it, if possible, even more enigmatic and unintelligible.
This of course does not mean that we need to reject offhand any simple narrative accounts of history, merely that we always be suspicious of stories, especially those comforting tales that we know and love best. If I may perhaps suggest a mission statement as we pursue the truth of the world through its stories (if indeed these last two are not one and the same): If a story is too simple, then it probably isn't true.
If you're supposed to die, could you tell me first?
Is this what you need to hear, Heaven's real and you'll make it there?
And when you do, could you put me and you plus two on the door?
 Judith Butler, Precarious Lives, 5.
 Jean Baudrillard, Impossible Exchange, 150-151.
Folk such as Philip Davies and Kurt Noll have been arguing for some time that Wilhelm De Wette's 1805 theory (that the "book of the law" found in Josiah's reign was the core of the book of Deuteronomy) is wrong. Not utterly wrong – it is true that there are obvious connections between the reforms of Josiah told in the book of Kings and the laws and preaching found in Deuteronomy. But historically wrong. The connections which De Wette observed are all only a part of the story told in Kings. The connections are based in the literary fiction told in Kings, not in history-in-itself (whatever that may be). That is, the story in Kings is an idealistic one (told about a king who follows what the priests and prophets have to say, and reforms his kingdom accordingly). Furthermore, the presentation in Kings of "the book of the law" as a document which is prescriptive for king and country is more historically explicable as a reactive description of ideals which were held in some quarters once Judah/Yehud had lost its king and was subject to the fantasies of priests and prophets.
Jean-François Lyotard advocates that we remain sensitive to the sound of actual events underneath the noise of meaning-making. We must remain sensitive to the "It happens" rather than the "What happens". "Reading is directed at the event in its singularity, its radical difference from all other events." We must not ask what is the case, but what a "case" is before it has been accounted for, before our pattern-seeking proclivities reduce it to a concept. If De Wette had followed Lyotard's advice (considerations of time aside), he might not have made his "error".
"I read Kant or Adorno or Aristotle not in order to detect the request [demande] they themselves tried to answer by writing, but in order to hear what they are requesting from me while I write or so that I write" (Lyotard, Diacritics 14 (1984): 19).
Of course, I'm a crypto-fundamentalist, too (most of the time). I'm a sucker for… patterned, textured wallpaper. It's just easier to get by, I guess.
An unusual piece of graffiti found near the Dunedin City Centre not too long ago (photograph by the author).
Though I have no way of competing with cannibals, I want to begin my first entry to this record – and I simply cannot bring myself to use the repellent word 'blog' – with an unusual idea related peripherally to my research into religion as it exists in the nooks and crannies of modernity. This image of hidden, marginal spaces can carry over into the physical world and, to me at least, suggests an interesting way to approach the landscape of the city. Though the surface level of the city is interesting enough as a text to be read, what really fascinates me (as both a site for the study of human cultures and as an aesthetic pleasure) is the unofficial city, to paraphrase the great New Zealand photographer Laurence Aberhart. While pretty much any human settlement of any size will do for this kind of exploration, a modern concrete-and-steel city is probably best, even better if it is a little run-down, lived-in, and has many strange interstitial places. The School's literal and spiritual home, Dunedin (on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island), incidentally, is a very fine city in this regard.
On the one hand, there is a differentiation and redistribution of the parts and functions of the city, as a result of inversions, displacements, accumulations, etc.: on the other there is a rejection of everything that is not capable of being dealt with in this way and so constitutes the 'waste products' of a functionalist administration (abnormality, deviance, illness, death, etc.) … if in discourse the city serves as a totalising and almost mythical landmark for socioeconomic and political strategies, urban life increasingly permits the re-emergence of the element that the urbanistic project excluded. The language of power is thus in itself 'urbanising' but the city is left prey to contradictory movements that counter-balance and combine themselves outside the reach of panoptic power.
De Certeau concludes, in a manner that recalls both Jean Baudrillard's work and my own thinking on reenchantment: 'There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can "invoke" or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in'.
So go out and haunt your city, inscribe into it the indelible work of being human. If we think (and act) in this way, there is no place that is truth disenchanted, no space so completely rationalised that there is no resisting its alienation.
 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 1, trans. by Steven Rendell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
 De Certeau, Practice I, 104-106.
 De Certeau, Practice I, 94-95.
 De Certeau, Practice I, 108.