Here we go again. Deeeeeeeep sigh.

COTS is a fallacy.

Unless there is a package in a box called "Child Maintenance and Enforcement for dummies" or "Microsoft Child Maintenance and Enforcement Pro Deluxe" it is always going to be holding a massive coding component - using the term COTS (Commercial OFF THE SHELF) is seriously misleading.

What is needed is some intelligent problem definition and project management skills, combined with a very high "STAY CLEAR" labelled walls against politicians - I've been in enough Gov IT projects to know that getting a politician too close to it when he/she needs headlines is just about as dangerous as not having a clue what you're doing.

Oh, and get someone to lead the NAO who is NOT an ex consultant so it doesn't become an insider job again. What happened inside ID Cards should have come out during audit - that it didn't told me all there was to know.

It CAN be done. And at sensible prices.

I've worked with TCS for the past couple of years, and on the whole they have no ability to take initiative and do what's needed to get a job done. Unless it's written exactly in a spec which they can follow to the letter, it simply doesn't get done.

They have no idea about taking acceptable risks, and will simply back out any change even if something very small doesn't go to plan.

Also, with a few exceptions, their "consultants" really don't have a clue, and have a very poor command of English.

Good luck with that.

So they think they have learned the lessons of the recent past? It amazes me that they feel the need to collect the money in this fashion in any event. Why not simply take it via the parents tax code? There is already a super efficient system for collection, you can't exactly stop your employer from taking tax from you, and the Inland Revenue have the experience and power to chase you beyond the grave it seems if you owe them any money.

This is yet another gravy train, this time an opportunity for an offshore company to make a fortune at the tax payers expense.

"The commission said its new system will incorporate Oracle's Siebel customer relationship management system, Tata's BaNCS banking system and products from Experian, Genysys, IBM and Oracle."

The "glue" holding this all together is not COTS and the interoperability between the systems is where the majority of risk and complexity is located.

If Tata are following the 70-20-10 rule it will be 70% COTS, 20% configuration and 10% bespoke integration work - but I wonder just how much integration is required - especially with links to existing DWP and HMRC systems. I think it'll be a lot more bespoke work required.

"The commission said its new system will incorporate Oracle's Siebel customer relationship management system, Tata's BaNCS banking system and products from Experian, Genysys, IBM and Oracle"

COTS over custom built is no longer the panacea. It has taken two decades, but technology illiterate business types have started to discover that COTS projects where more than 20% (or even less) of the system has to be "customized" do not represent any savings from custom built apps.

The reasons are simple. In one hand, those 20% of customizations are usually done by fighting to bend some part of the product that was not intended for the purpose. The cost of working around the package is simply higher than to write from scratch.

In the other hand, modern app platforms provide already a good set of frameworks. DIY no longer needs to bear with the limitations of the development staff in the knowledge of a lot of different standards and technologies, they can leverage a lot of already built components that provide out of the box a lot of functionality and at the same time, produce an exact fit for purpose.

And let's not even start talking about maintenance costs. Those that believe that COTS is cheaper to support or maintain have forgotten that the 20% that is "customized", not being part of the standard package, has the same resource requirements as if it were a custom built component. And it's going to be that part that is going to eat the 80% of the support cost.

Oh, yes, I see a continuous profit stream for Tata just for the cost of interfacing all those things together and for continually keep changing the standard packages. But I'd like to see the business logic behind the decision.

They appear to have left out a few rather important details like the reasons why TATA got the contract in the first place. All of the usual suspects (including EDS) all pulled out of the bidding process because they knew what the DWP were asking for was unworkable and will only end in tears.

A word of warning to the DWP: If companies like EDS don't want your money, then you're in serious trouble.

How many UK Govt contracts have gone to TCS? On the basis that the more they screw up, the more they'll be in to grab more.... (following in others footsteps).

As for COTS vs. custom coding: %ages can't be specified to begin with because I doubt if the whiteboarding to nail the initial 'gotchas' was done; you'll only figure that out if and when the end result matches the total requirement spec.

Leveraging COTS: yeah for the simple stuff - whereas satisfying *all* the mandatory requirements falls into the PFM* category ('Pure Frikin Magic' - that wonderful cloud in a Powerpoint), and that can be Pure F.. Murder to accomplish, if it's at all possible.

*politicos and public servants think it means David Copperfield or Harry Potter is on board

Pardon my ignorance, but how "off the shelf" is the software part of a COTS-based project?

Would adding a few forms to an Access database mean it's no longer COTS?

A VB front-end to an SQL server database?

An Excel spreadsheet with a few macros?

Even the largest custom projects leverage some pre-built components (even if it's just the operating system it runs on and the compiler used to build it), and outside of niche-industry "Pro Dentist Contact Manager" style apps most off the shelf software will be extended a little with macros/forms/templates to meet a particular task.

What's the crossover point from COTS to Custom?