What’s Another Year?

Well, for Minister Howlin and staff in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, 2014 was a year of agreements and awards, milestones and landmarks, and of course, expenditure and reform. This post aims to take you on a whistle-stop tour of some of many of the many goals delivered on by Minister Howlin and staff in the Department throughout 2014.

Up first, legislation. The total number of pieces of legislation enacted now stands at 19:

1. Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 2011

2. Appropriation Act 2011

3. Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Amendment) Act 2011

4. Statute Law Revision Act 2012

5. Public Service Pensions (Single Scheme and Other Provisions) Act 2012

6. Ombudsman (Amendment) Act 2012

7. Appropriation Act 2012

8. Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2012

9. Houses of the Oireachtas Commission (Amendment) Act 2013

10. National Lottery Act 2013

11. Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2013

12. Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act 2013

13. Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privilege and Procedures) Act 2013

14. Construction Contracts Act 2013

15. Appropriation Act 2013

16. Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Act 004 (Amendment) Act 2013

17. Oireachtas (Ministerial & Parliamentary Offices) Amendment Act 2014

18. Protected Disclosures Act 2014

19. Freedom of Information Act 2014.

In February, the Government agreed to proceed to the next stage of a Financial Management Shared Services Project for the Civil Service, Defence and Justice sectors. Shared Services is a key enabler in helping us to deliver better services to more people. It is crucial that we build capacity and flexibility into the way we currently operate and take advantage of the latest innovative technologies and methods for running back office service delivery. On 17 December the Minister travelled to Tullamore to launch the Payroll Shared Service Centre

Spring also saw the granting of the National Lottery Licence to Premier Lotteries Ireland delivering €405 million to the Irish citizen. Half of the sum is being used to help fund a number of job-rich projects including the development of the Wild Atlantic Way Driving Route, 1916 Commemoration Projects and the Unfinished Housing Estate Resolution Pilot Project.

The second instalment is being used to help fund the construction of the New Children’s Hospital. The New Children’s Hospital is the largest, most complex and significant capital investment project ever undertaken in healthcare in Ireland bringing together as it does the three existing children’s hospitals; Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin, Temple Street Children’s University Hospital, and the National Children’s Hospital at Tallaght Hospital. The New Children’s Hospital will be tri-located on one campus with St James’s Hospital and a planned maternity hospital ensuring the best outcomes for our children and young people, for mothers and for infants.

As Summer started, so did Phase 4 Infrastructure Stimulus funded from the sale of State assets (BGÉ and ESB).The Minister announced additional Exchequer investment of €200m to fund new projects in a range of sectors including new road schemes, social housing to meet acute needs arising in that area and a range of tourist related works to help support long term jobs. Since July 2012, Minister Howlin has made a series of announcements in relation to additional capital investment as part of a stimulus package to help support investment in infrastructure and jobs. This additional investment has supplemented the €17 billion Exchequer capital programme and has been primarily focused on projects with a high employment impact and which can benefit local economies throughout the State.

We hosted the hugely successful Open Government Partnership (OGP) Regional Meeting for Europe in Dublin Castle in May.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

In July, the Department published Ireland’s first Open Government Partnership National Action Plan.

Continuing his commitment to whistleblowers in all sectors, in May the Minister extended the protections of the Protected Disclosures Act to members of An Garda Síochána. Now, members of the Force will have the same rights as any other worker including the right to access the Rights Commissioner Service and the Labour Court for any claim for redress for having been penalised for having made a protected disclosure. This change builds on that earlier secured by the Minister on 24 February 2014, which allowed members of An Garda Síochána to make protected disclosures to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission.

In June the landmark Registration of Lobbying Bill was published. The first of its kind in Ireland, the legislation proposes the creation of a register of lobbyists, brining greater transparency to the matter of who is contacting whom, and about what. The aim of the legislation is to bring lobbying out into the open, throwing light on the interaction between the political system and those who seek to shape and influence policy, from all sectors in society.

Later the same month, Minister Howlin published the report of the Independent Panel on Strengthening Civil Service Accountability and Performance.

The Independent Panel was established by Minister Howlin in January last to develop recommendations to strengthen Civil Service accountability and performance. Following an extensive public consultation process, and its own assessment, the Independent Panel has made ten recommendations for a stronger performing and more accountable Civil Service. These include establishing an Accountability Board for the Civil Service with external membership. The recommendations formed part of the Civil Service Renewal Plan, published in October.

One of the most exciting developments this Summer in PER was the commencement of the Protected Disclosures Act, 2014. This legislation sets a new standard in terms of international best practice for whistleblower protection. It sends out a very clear message that whistleblowers’ concerns must be listened to and acted on and those who make such reports should not be penalised for doing so.

In September the Minister announced his intention to revoke approximately 4,500 pre-independence Government regulations and orders, the largest repealing measure ever announced in the history of the State in his Statute Law Revision Programme.

The obsolete orders listed for removal include:

A Proclamation of 1690 prohibiting officers and soldiers from engaging in duels
A Proclamation of 1661 prohibiting drunkenness, cursing, swearing and profaning on the Lords’ Day,
A Proclamation of 1676 which concerned the hearing of claim of persons transplanted to Connaught and Clare,
A Proclamation of 1668 offering a pardon and reward for taking dead or alive named rebels who fail to surrender by a designated date,
A Proclamation of 1665 appointing the first Wednesday of every month as a day of fasting & humiliation on account of the bubonic plague in London.

In October, the Taoiseach and the Minister launched The Civil Service Renewal Plan – A vision and three year action plan for the Civil Service. The plan delivers a central Programme for Government commitment and represents a fundamentally new direction for the Civil Service.

The Civil Service Renewal Plan is the product of a year-long engagement process involving almost 2,000 staff and stakeholders. The Plan outlines a vision for the Civil Service and practical changes that will create a more unified, professional, responsive, open and accountable Civil Service, providing a world-class service to the State and to the people of Ireland. It contains 25 actions and a commitment to complete all actions within 3 years.

Also, in October the Minister was pleased to announce that Mr. Liam Sloyan accepted an offer of appointment as the first Regulator of the National Lottery, a position provided for in the National Lottery Act, 2013, following an open recruitment process administered by the Public Appointments Service. Mr. Sloyan took up his appointment on 17 November 2014.

The new Freedom of Information Act came into force on 14 October 2014. It provides for the commitments in relation to freedom of information contained in the Programme for Government by removing the main substantive restrictions in access to official information introduced in 2003, extending FOI to all public bodies unless specifically exempt in whole or in part and providing a framework for the extension of FOI to non-public bodies in receipt of significant funding from the Exchequer. The legislation also provided an opportunity for a necessary consolidation modernisation and updating of the legislation. The Freedom of Information Acts 1997 and 2003 are repealed under the new Act.

After 6 years and 7 Austerity Budgets, we were finally in a position to signify that both politics and economics are, and will continue to normalise, with Budget 2015.

We have restored a sustainable economic future for the Country. The decisions taken heretofore were necessary and prudent, not risky.

After our work over the last 3 years, people can look forward with hope as in January, every worker in the country will see an increase in net take home pay due to the impact of Budget 2015. The most vulnerable have been protected, child benefit increased, and expenditure rightly steered towards Education, Health and the Gardaí.

2014 finished on a high note with Government Chief Procurement Officer, Paul Quinn, named Procurement Leader of the Year 2014. The reform of public procurement is a challenging and ambitious programme, aiming to deliver sustainable procurement savings for the tax payer by optimising value for money across the public service.

Áine Griffin

Press Officer

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Nollaig 23rd, 2014|As PER Blog

IP Stresser

With the increasing preponderance of large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites around the world, applying long-term DDoS defense that will defy these potentially incapacitating assaults is of extreme importance. But, how do you understand your defensive steps will in fact be helpful in a situation? Normally, choosing the right ip address stresser (another title to get a booter) is an occupation that is easier stated than done provided the wide array of products and providers accessible on the web in a number of different price points. Booters come in shapes and numerous sizes, and picking the best one for your needs can be a time consuming undertaking. This is the the reason why we have compiled this special record just for you individually to help you to find the best stresser for the needs that are electronic. Before we dive into the minutiae of choosing from among the very best booters out there, we would like to dissect a ddos-attack functions. The motives behind DDoS attacks are as varied as may be, but they all reveal one principle in keeping: To remove the target site stopping other (legitimate) consumers from obtaining its assets. This denial of service is understood via the use of applications that were unique that floods the device that was targeted hence compelling with web requests, the target to allocate assets apart from legitimate statements. Thus, additional consumers attempting to enter into the goal will encounter exceedingly slow surgery or problem messages. Normally, the host may be overloaded and crash if it is not right optimized to take care of high-pressure and high -load system conditions. They're usually executed with an external or internal assault vector even though numerous forms can be taken by DDoS assaults. An attack vector that is an inside generally takes the type of malicious software which uses the physical hardware assets of the service equipment up, thus making it gradual, incompetent at providing a regular answer to any inbound requests that are external from valid traffic and customers, and treacherous. An attack vector that is outside takes the form of undesirable traffic developed either via a dispersed collection of devices that are networked (additionally called a bot-net) or through actual human beings (such as using a software like LOIC). For this guide's intentions, we'll focus on the attack family that is exterior. Protecting your hosts from inner attacks may require the usage of antimalware applications that's at night scope of the guide. Instead, we will give attention to the kinds of pressure that is different screening alternatives offered to about the net personally to you now, and the best method to pick the right one for the Skype resolver that is distinctive and personal wants. One choice might be to use a main firewall managing program to be able to block incoming requests from various IP addresses that are questionable. Obviously, this option is comparatively fundamental and improbable to be suitable in hit situations which can be more difficult. Also, firewalls mightn't maintain the correct network level as a means to intercept this kind of destructive traffic. Together with DNS solutions and its conventional CDN, CloudFlare also supplies a high tech alternative by leveraging avenue strike boxes in the supply points of the strike and an internationally distributed data center network that will disperse, for protecting your system and server resources. You might think as a distributed protect against a dispersed strike of services like CloudFlare. As a means to assess whether your defensive actions probably will be productive within a a realworld strike in your server resources, you're do-ing to wish to analyze in a managed environment outside those defenses yourself. Many companies all around the globe provide ip address booting services to work as if they are a real world DDoS attack on your own system, to help you perform this testing test which is managed. By analyzing how your defenses respond to the simulated test, you could possibly observe for yourself if your current DDoS defenses are sufficient. All things considered, the worst thing you could do is wait until your system is under attack to gauge the effectiveness of your mitigation option. That is a recipe for catastrophe that individuals desire to allow you to use a skype resolver to stop.. Then let's examine how you will get the IP increaser that is perfect on your equipment and software configuration. Remember the points we touched on above when you see pick a certain merchandise. Based on your personal distinctive settings, many others might be worse than specific products. There is an extensive number of different stress tools that are not inaccessible out there nowadays. They each have distinct capacities, strengths, and weaknesses, to selecting the best one to your testing needs, thereby necessitating an in-depth guide. What types of features would you should attempt to find in the IP stressers you're considering utilizing? We ought to recognize the common features shared among booters that are first rate and notice those are optimal for the particular usecase, to answer this query. To best provide your DDoS rights a run for their money, you're likely to desire to throw at them just as much traffic as possible. Since DDoS assaults can happen on multiple layers, it is necessary to evaluate in case a given stresser is really capable of mimicking these varied forms of strikes. In the minimum, youwill need to make certain that there is a stated booter capable of mimicking attacks on Layer 4 and Layer 7, and that it could run numerous types of programs (such as SYN or RUDY) on those layers. Then you definitely might want to hunt elsewhere, if your nominee service cannot do attacks in this manner. You are also going to want to guarantee that the IP booter you're considering is not incompetent at handling an extreme traffic result over your testing time frame. At a bare minimum, the support may want devoted servers which can be souped up and capable of managing the sorts of extreme demands you will subject it to throughout the testing process. On Layer 4 and Layer 7 DDoS assaults, there are several amplification methods that could be used, including amplification, SSDP amplification, and amplification. The point that is crucial here is that you want to model in the most practical manner possible a realworld attack on your own infrastructure. You'll be when you go to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of your defenses the more amplification tools which are furnished, the better off. A great user interface is essential to plenty of of reasons, particularly when you are coping with a numbers-extensive program like an IP stresser. The booters that are very best will have user interfaces that are geared for fresh customers towards efficiency and availability. Additionally, you might need prior to making a buy choice to drive to get a demonstration to determine how the software looks and operates for you. The best stressers concerning the market will provide customer service that is second to none to you. To test away how efficient a specified business may likely be in providing you top-notch help, we advise that you merely reach out to them via email to find out how lengthy it requires to get an answer, and when that answer provides comprehensive, relevant advice regarding your issue or request advice. Applying this method, you'll have the opportunity to get a rough approximation of how well the firm is getting proper care of current clients and their potentiality. The top booters available on the market will likely let you try up and bring out their assaults economically and immediately. The power for confirmed IP stresser to start several concurrent assaults on your own defenses is an effective strategy to learn how well your systems are designed for the load over long trips. You're going to desire to discover at what price point just how several concurrent connections your ip address booter that is prospective can manage, and that performance is not unavailable for you. The types that are best is planning to have the opportunity to size and handle numerous strikes simultaneously. Another important feature of ip address stressers is the ability to allow them to browse around defensive mechanisms. The best booters around the net HTTP source titles for sites that solutions that are distributed protect is certainly going to are able to solve domain names and for instance CloudFlare. This performance could possibly be a terrific means to fix find out how nicely your dispersed protection service (for instance CloudFlare) can manage attacks that attempt to resolve domains. Let's summarize what we have protected here. Firstly, you discovered how DDoS attacks function, and many of the common characteristics shared among all of their their different types. Afterward, we took a quick look in the different preventative mechanisms that are not accessible unavailable on the market. We analyzed later an ip address booter's crucial, and the way by asking several questions that were critical to obtain the best one for your requirements. Another stage for you personally is in order that it is possible to choose on an ip address stresser which is best suited for your digital and budgetary needs to do your research and due-diligence. There are lots of booters available on the market, and you also are bound to discover one that satisfies with your exceptional usecase as well as both your budget.

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IP Stresser
With the increasing preponderance of large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites around the world, applying long-term DDoS defense that will defy these potentially incapacitating assaults is of extreme importance. But, how do you understand your defensive steps will in fact be helpful in a situation? Normally, choosing the right ip address stresser (another title to get a booter) is an occupation that is easier stated than done provided the wide array of products and providers accessible on the web in a number of different price points. Booters come in shapes and numerous sizes, and picking the best one for your needs can be a time consuming undertaking. This is the the reason why we have compiled this special record just for you individually to help you to find the best stresser for the needs that are electronic. Before we dive into the minutiae of choosing from among the very best booters out there, we would like to dissect a ddos-attack functions. The motives behind DDoS attacks are as varied as may be, but they all reveal one principle in keeping: To remove the target site stopping other (legitimate) consumers from obtaining its assets. This denial of service is understood via the use of applications that were unique that floods the device that was targeted hence compelling with web requests, the target to allocate assets apart from legitimate statements. Thus, additional consumers attempting to enter into the goal will encounter exceedingly slow surgery or problem messages. Normally, the host may be overloaded and crash if it is not right optimized to take care of high-pressure and high -load system conditions. They're usually executed with an external or internal assault vector even though numerous forms can be taken by DDoS assaults. An attack vector that is an inside generally takes the type of malicious software which uses the physical hardware assets of the service equipment up, thus making it gradual, incompetent at providing a regular answer to any inbound requests that are external from valid traffic and customers, and treacherous. An attack vector that is outside takes the form of undesirable traffic developed either via a dispersed collection of devices that are networked (additionally called a bot-net) or through actual human beings (such as using a software like LOIC). For this guide's intentions, we'll focus on the attack family that is exterior. Protecting your hosts from inner attacks may require the usage of antimalware applications that's at night scope of the guide. Instead, we will give attention to the kinds of pressure that is different screening alternatives offered to about the net personally to you now, and the best method to pick the right one for the Skype resolver that is distinctive and personal wants. One choice might be to use a main firewall managing program to be able to block incoming requests from various IP addresses that are questionable. Obviously, this option is comparatively fundamental and improbable to be suitable in hit situations which can be more difficult. Also, firewalls mightn't maintain the correct network level as a means to intercept this kind of destructive traffic. Together with DNS solutions and its conventional CDN, CloudFlare also supplies a high tech alternative by leveraging avenue strike boxes in the supply points of the strike and an internationally distributed data center network that will disperse, for protecting your system and server resources. You might think as a distributed protect against a dispersed strike of services like CloudFlare. As a means to assess whether your defensive actions probably will be productive within a a realworld strike in your server resources, you're do-ing to wish to analyze in a managed environment outside those defenses yourself. Many companies all around the globe provide ip address booting services to work as if they are a real world DDoS attack on your own system, to help you perform this testing test which is managed. By analyzing how your defenses respond to the simulated test, you could possibly observe for yourself if your current DDoS defenses are sufficient. All things considered, the worst thing you could do is wait until your system is under attack to gauge the effectiveness of your mitigation option. That is a recipe for catastrophe that individuals desire to allow you to use a skype resolver to stop.. Then let's examine how you will get the IP increaser that is perfect on your equipment and software configuration. Remember the points we touched on above when you see pick a certain merchandise. Based on your personal distinctive settings, many others might be worse than specific products. There is an extensive number of different stress tools that are not inaccessible out there nowadays. They each have distinct capacities, strengths, and weaknesses, to selecting the best one to your testing needs, thereby necessitating an in-depth guide. What types of features would you should attempt to find in the IP stressers you're considering utilizing? We ought to recognize the common features shared among booters that are first rate and notice those are optimal for the particular usecase, to answer this query. To best provide your DDoS rights a run for their money, you're likely to desire to throw at them just as much traffic as possible. Since DDoS assaults can happen on multiple layers, it is necessary to evaluate in case a given stresser is really capable of mimicking these varied forms of strikes. In the minimum, youwill need to make certain that there is a stated booter capable of mimicking attacks on Layer 4 and Layer 7, and that it could run numerous types of programs (such as SYN or RUDY) on those layers. Then you definitely might want to hunt elsewhere, if your nominee service cannot do attacks in this manner. You are also going to want to guarantee that the IP booter you're considering is not incompetent at handling an extreme traffic result over your testing time frame. At a bare minimum, the support may want devoted servers which can be souped up and capable of managing the sorts of extreme demands you will subject it to throughout the testing process. On Layer 4 and Layer 7 DDoS assaults, there are several amplification methods that could be used, including amplification, SSDP amplification, and amplification. The point that is crucial here is that you want to model in the most practical manner possible a realworld attack on your own infrastructure. You'll be when you go to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of your defenses the more amplification tools which are furnished, the better off. A great user interface is essential to plenty of of reasons, particularly when you are coping with a numbers-extensive program like an IP stresser. The booters that are very best will have user interfaces that are geared for fresh customers towards efficiency and availability. Additionally, you might need prior to making a buy choice to drive to get a demonstration to determine how the software looks and operates for you. The best stressers concerning the market will provide customer service that is second to none to you. To test away how efficient a specified business may likely be in providing you top-notch help, we advise that you merely reach out to them via email to find out how lengthy it requires to get an answer, and when that answer provides comprehensive, relevant advice regarding your issue or request advice. Applying this method, you'll have the opportunity to get a rough approximation of how well the firm is getting proper care of current clients and their potentiality. The top booters available on the market will likely let you try up and bring out their assaults economically and immediately. The power for confirmed IP stresser to start several concurrent assaults on your own defenses is an effective strategy to learn how well your systems are designed for the load over long trips. You're going to desire to discover at what price point just how several concurrent connections your ip address booter that is prospective can manage, and that performance is not unavailable for you. The types that are best is planning to have the opportunity to size and handle numerous strikes simultaneously. Another important feature of ip address stressers is the ability to allow them to browse around defensive mechanisms. The best booters around the net HTTP source titles for sites that solutions that are distributed protect is certainly going to are able to solve domain names and for instance CloudFlare. This performance could possibly be a terrific means to fix find out how nicely your dispersed protection service (for instance CloudFlare) can manage attacks that attempt to resolve domains. Let's summarize what we have protected here. Firstly, you discovered how DDoS attacks function, and many of the common characteristics shared among all of their their different types. Afterward, we took a quick look in the different preventative mechanisms that are not accessible unavailable on the market. We analyzed later an ip address booter's crucial, and the way by asking several questions that were critical to obtain the best one for your requirements. Another stage for you personally is in order that it is possible to choose on an ip address stresser which is best suited for your digital and budgetary needs to do your research and due-diligence. There are lots of booters available on the market, and you also are bound to discover one that satisfies with your exceptional usecase as well as both your budget.

As PER Blog - Nollaig 23rd, 2014

What’s Another Year?

IP Stresser

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