03.21.21
Gemini version available ♊︎Almost 100 Pages of Self-Congratulatory Marketing Isn’t a Case of Informing the Administrative Council of the EPO But Misleading It Using Fluff and Buzzwords
And pictures like the one below:
Summary: The video above quickly runs through nearly 100 pages of self-promotional fluff; the Administrative Council of the EPO, which meets in a few days, is being misled or shamelessly lied to by the Office
YESTERDAY we showed that it is notoriously hard to find documents associated with meetings of the Administrative Council of the EPO, so we’ve made available here a recent document and this addendum (CA/40/20 and CA/40/20 Add. 5, respectively).
“What’s worth noting (and seeing; it’s covered hurriedly in the video above) is how the Office exploits “diversity” (which it is patently lacking) and greenwashing tactics to paint itself as ethical, still pretending to have a real dialogue with the union (SUEPO), misleading about “quality”, and bragging about bribing the media for lots of puff pieces and TV ‘air time’…”They’re both PDF files, outlined as followed:
CA/40/20
Munich, 12.06.2020
SUBJECT: Annual Review 2019
SUBMITTED BY: President of the European Patent Office
ADDRESSEES: Administrative Council (for information)
CA/40/20 Add. 5
Munich, 12.06.2020
SUBJECT: IT Report 2019 – Driving digital transformation
SUBMITTED BY: President of the European Patent Office
ADDRESSEES: Administrative Council (for information)
One can find the original at https://www.epo.org/about-us/annual-reports-statistics/annual-report/2019/deeper-look/it.html but it takes some efforts to locate because the search facility at epo.org is mostly broken (we demonstrated this in a video one day ago). “Some other interesting EPO documents,” as a source noted to us, show just how little the Administrative Council of the EPO is being told about the real situation at the Office. “Two more interesting EPO documents which are publicly available are these ones which contain information about the ongoing “digital transformation” for the information of the Administrative Council…”
Let’s take a look at the part about “IT” (a direct link to “Deeper look at: IT – driving digital transformation” (warning: epo.org link) is possible to reach through navigation menus).
“These documents were submitted to the Administrative Council “for information” in June 2020 by the Office Administration,” a source said. “The “IT Report 2019 – Driving digital transformation” is full of buzzwords like “fasttrack digitalisation”, “IT delivery highway”, “Kubernetes” and “migrating to cloud-native architectures”.”
In the video above (towards the end) we examine key pages.
Page 3 of 19 says:
Accelerating delivery via a new highway
Based on a new reference architecture (Kubernetes), we launched a technical platform for streamlined continuous delivery (an IT delivery “highway”). After building cross-functional teams and improving co-operation with all areas of the EPO, we began to prepare several pilots and create product teams. These initiatives were designed to pave the way for fasttrack digitalisation and paperless solutions for the patent granting process (PGP).
PGP would typically be associated with encryption, but not at the EPO.
Page 4 of 19 says:
Migrating to cloud-native architectures
One of our goals is to simplify our overly-complex application landscape, replacing it with a harmonised, open source IT architecture. We embarked upon this journey in 2019 by beginning to decommission obsolete hardware and software, and roll out state-of-the-art alternatives. Going forward, we intend to decouple from our legacy systems and migrate to cloud-native architectures. This will positively impact information security, lower operating costs and ensure that our key applications are future-ready.
We’ve looked at nearly 100 pages and didn’t see Microsoft mentioned except in relation to Vista 10 and OOXML. The report is long and full of pictures/charts. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything about the issue of GDPR compliance or any attempt to address the potential risks in outsourcing data processing to US-based multinationals like Microsoft,” our source emphasised. “Also the annual audit reports from the Board of Auditors don’t appear to contain any meaningful analysis of these issues. So it seems that the Administrative Council is not being properly briefed about what is happening to the EPO’s infrastructure.”
In the next part (tomorrow) we shall look at more internal documents. What’s worth noting (and seeing; it’s covered hurriedly in the video above) is how the Office exploits “diversity” (which it is patently lacking) and greenwashing tactics to paint itself as ethical, still pretending to have a real dialogue with the union (SUEPO), misleading about “quality”, and bragging about bribing the media for lots of puff pieces and TV ‘air time’… █
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