Whitehall needs to dump 'unacceptable IT' – outbound G-Cloud chief

Put your money where your mouth is

Yet more mindless waffle from another government minion promising "IT procurement will change".

I'll believe it when I see it. Somehow, I think the old gravy train is not set to derail anytime in the next few decades..... the outgoing incumbent old suspects are not exactly going to just roll up and die ... they'll find all sorts of nifty ways to ensure their name stays on the contract paperwork together with the same old ludicrous early termination penalties.

I thought...

... that the idea is that 'cloud' services scale better than 'in house' i.e. The cost of heavy iron behind a service can be varied in proportion to use. If the service is already 'bloody massive' (tm) as is usually the case with a government IT project then the scaling problem is somewhat reduced and all you are doing is paying someone else to do some unnecessary admin. Add the fact that cloudy security is yet to be proved then surly it would be better for Government It to be better managed overall rather than just jumping on another band wagon.

Sounds like...

... failure to sell the gimmick to the yokels, er, esteemed colleagues elsewhere in government.

So he's handing out free scoops of "blame" instead. Good show, that man.

The thing is, of course, that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but as no civil servant outside of IT is at all interested in just what horrible mess underpins the not-working-very-well stuff he's supposed to rely on for the job, it's a bit of a hard sell, surprisingly. That is failure built right into the project from the start, good sir. No use blaming anyone else for that, thank you.

'Twould've been nice to be able to trust that someone in a senior government position be smart enough to figure out something besides running an ice cream van named technology failures and free blame. Anyhow, not getting paid enough to stick better approaches in the margin here, so pray sort it out yourself. Cheerio.

Burning comfort blanket analogies

Isn't he aware of what has been happening to the last organisation whose CEO made analogies like this?

Past mistakes are the legacy

We can't ignore history - as it is history that has created the world we live in today. Using the latest technology is not going to change a great deal unless definitive efforts are made to change the stuff that history has left us with - placing fancy wrapping around a turd does not transform the contents.

You can draw parallels with the tax system. it is in need of reform but all successive governments have done is tinker at the edges creating a catalogue of unintended consequences.

Whitehall can barely manage pen and paper systems.

I'd like to see unqualified government IT people kept away from computers until they can learn to use them responsibly.

Who's in charge ? ? ?

You wouldn’t put a painter in charge of an accountancy firm - even though he may do his own accounts. You wouldn’t put a mechanic in charge of a lingerie firm even though he may know all about his wife’s clothes. You wouldn’t put a lawyer in charge of a garage even though he drives a car.

So why do people always think they should be in charge of IT when they know nothing about it.

We’ve all seen it. The guy who has a PC at home and has created his first web page. Suddenly he is an IT Expert! He knows all about it and somewhere down the line he meets up with the MD who perhaps knows even less. The meeting results in our expert being put in charge of a major project. You can guess the rest.

I know of one top 100 Law Firm whose marketing department decided that they would purchase a CRM (Customer Relations Management) program. They listened to the guys who were selling the program - who surprisingly, were very positive about the product! No contact was made with the firm’s IT department. Bear in mind that Law Firms are supposed to be composed of intelligent people! The law firm bought the product and delivered the software to the IT Department and asked how long it would take to load this on to the system. When they had it explained to them that they would need to prepare / clean their data and that they would need to buy upgrades of their core operating systems, upgraded the licences, upgrade other interfacing programs and so on, they were very surprised! The cost added was around £250,000. The work was accomplished in due course and many man hours were incurred. Their (the lawyers and Marketing Department) excuse was that they didn’t understand the complex terminology used in IT. How is your Latin? Think about the language that Laywers use! What about these terms Res nulis, Coram non judice, Doli incapax, Uberrima fides etc. So on that basis we shouldn’t bother to consult a lawyer should we?

This is why government projects always go wrong, cost so much money and do not deliver. Incidentally, have you noticed how many MPs are Lawyers? There is a lesson there somewhere!

It is true that one doesn’t need detailed knowledge but the overall concept and principles MUST be present or projects will surely go awry.

There are very few out there who have the vision to see the final solution (big projects) and the way to get there. They are rare - very rare.

Let technical people make technical decisions.