MoJ halves consultancy spending The Ministry of Justice reduced its consultancy spending from £20.7m in 2007-08 to £10.5m in 2008-09, despite the failure of other departments to meet government cost-cutting targets. According to a parliamentary written answer from Lord Bach, consultancy and technology company Accenture suffered from a particularly big fall. …
Instead of government departments giving piles of cash to consultants, only to be told that the solution is to give the consultants even more cash, the money might get spent on things that are actually needed, as identified by front-line staff. Or even used to fund a tax rebate? Sorry, that last sentence was just my little joke!
I think you over estimate the intelligence of most government departments... they may have an idea of what they want (potentially), but no idea what they need to achieve it. Would front line staff really know what kind of database they need to hold x million records, accessible from x hundred locations, securely etc. How it should be designed, server types, DR, WAN links etc. etc....
Hence why they need consultants...
Although you may hate consultants dont forget they are just average Joe's working for a living, rather than living off benefits and paying tax and buying stuff that keeps others in jobs. etc
"Would front line staff really know what kind of database they need to hold x million records, accessible from x hundred locations, securely etc. How it should be designed, server types, DR, WAN links etc. etc...."
Nope but they could identify the need for one without any outside help from consultants. My experiences of consultants is that when brought in to identify areas where savings could be made, they ask a few department heads "where do you think savings could be made?" before presenting the same answers to the board.
Don't forget that government employees are "just average Joe's working for a living" rather than brainless idiots sitting behind desks all day and only doing what they are told. They're perfectly capable of identifying areas that could be improved - what's more they have the experience of working in these areas every day...
Since the early day of New Labour there has been a drive to "privatise" services. Now you can see what was really going on. By privatising civil servants, the clever ones jumped for better salary, so extracting the knowledge from the civil service required to take any intelligent decision (I take it as read you cannot expect that from most politicians). Ergo, a HUGE boost for consultancy because they need them to decide what to do, and I don't think you need to guess what the answer is from any consultancy: hire more consultants!
This is also why I keep laughing about the IDcard fiasco: anyone with half an ounce of intelligence knows that the Chinese walls in a consultancy are at partner level more like Japanese walls: paper thin and not very effective.
I think the spending cuts are a good idea, but too late - the obvious aim is to leave the Tories short-handed when they come in. Well, nuke IR35 and get contractors instead. None of the overhead but plenty of skills as they cannot float one the "we're so big we probably have people that know everything" myth..
totally correct sir, but will never happen.
Why I hear you ask.
I'll tell you why sir, it's not security clearance, thats just a euphimism for a backhander.
To put it in plain terms, good old fashioned bribery, or at least the quantity of it involved.
Do you really need to ask why so many government IT projects go over budget, and why there are so many poor (euphimism fo rich) Government ministers and ex Ministers. Perhaps El Reg could do some digging on those "Bastards" if we didn't live in a police state.
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