£8 BILLION is locked into UK.gov's failing IT schemes, El Reg analysis reveals The UK government has £8bn locked into IT contracts which are at high risk of failure, according to an analysis of the Infrastructure Project Authority's accounts by The Register. Of 143 major projects representing £405bn of government spending, The Register identified 19 IT projects that were flagged as “red” or “amber/red” …
Shared services are a sensible idea when you've got transactional repetitive tasks that you want to be done well, but also realise economies of scale - stuff like non-specialist procurement, payroll, accounting, payables and receivables, basic HR administration. Done well they can actually be a real assistance to the operations they support, and they should be relatively cheap to implement. I know I've been part of the management team of a successful shared services operation for a large company.
Sadly, whenever you see the words "shared services" in connection with the public sector, you know that a complete screw up is unfolding, involving expensive and ineffective contractors, waste on IT systems that don't work, user dissatisfaction (though we generally don't hear much of that, users have to suffer in silence).
Between the MoJ, the Home Office and the IT spends of the various police forces, it might be cheaper to just let the criminals geton with it and pay compensation.
Curious though as to how many of these providers who are not providing, have 'interesting' connections to whoever hands out the contracts.
Having never worked directly for Govmt bodies (by choice) i assume at some point in the past they did all their 'computa tech stuffs' inhouse?
Why was it all originally outsourced? Was cost the primary reason? Is it still cheaper ? Did they have monumental fails before it was outsourced?
Do they even give a shit?
I used to work in IT in a Gov dept back in the 90's and they used to have various little IT depts dotted around the country who would come in, size up the situation. An exterior audit term would gather specs on what was needed. Then another dept would build the system. Finally another dept would come in to install the system , liasing with the other groups when it would obviously fail to work!
I moved into the private sector in the mid-90s when I saw what the Gov hired IT contractors were earning, never looked back!
Using the private sector means:
- senior civil servants can duck responsibility for failure;
- anything embarrassing becomes "commercial-in-confidence" and outwith the purview of the Freedom of Information Act;
- no need for civil service to employ experts who are simply not the right sort;
- expanded employment opportunities (for retiring senior civil servants).
So all in all a bit of a no-brainer.
Developing software that will never be delivered ... I can do that and I won't be greedy about it either, I'll do it for 100K per software.
But seriously, most contracts I've worked on specify deliverables as well as specifying penalties if you fail to deliver.
...because it is quite common in the public sector for those procuring IT services to not have have the competence or motivation to specify deliverables in a way that success or failure can be sufficiently measured, so that penalties can be applied. If you don't specify SMART objectives (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria ), then after inevitable failure, the cause of the car-crash can and will be disputed by the parties involved.
I wonder what this number would be if NHS, Police force, Local Council IT Failings where included in the figures.
I know of one large organisation who is paying £8m for a website and intranet which is built upon open source systems. Apparently its overdue, and chances are not suitable for use.
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