London fire brigade outsources 999 control centre to Capita

I overheard a Crapita manager explaining their recruitment policy.

"We prefer to employ people who have been out of work for years, desperate people are more likely to do anything you tell them."

So good luck London, you're going to need it.

Consultancies

According to the London fire brigade, the contract will allow the service to focus on its core business of putting out fires and saving lives.

Every manager that believes that is a moron.

IT isn't something that gives you manufacturing scale or can be easily slotted in and out like the supplier of paperclips or company cars. Software development doesn't scale much beyond a dozen people.

It's like the arteries of a modern organisation. Get it wrong and little by little, you'll slow up the organisation.

That also means changing it as your organisation changes. And once you have a separate company, it all has to be done through a formal process because of the contract, and frequently, these guys will shaft you. But worst of all, they won't innovate beyond the contract in a way that saves the company money.

I was once working in a company and spotted that they were manually transcribing a load of data from one system to another. I suggested they gave me the file and I take a look. Within 3 days, we had an automated system lashed together and the staff doing the transcription were doing something more useful and less boring. You'll NEVER get that with consultancies. The "client contacts" are nothing but oily, dishonest salesmen and the staff are well hidden behind them.

It staggers me that despite just how much we do with IT in companies (almost nothing is done on paper now), blind ignorance of IT is acceptable, and the way people cover up for their ignorance is to hire in the consultants. My own experience with them is that other than a few that have specific domain knowledge, they are total shysters that I would not let onto any of my sites if I was in charge.

Burghers, buy buckets!

see title

Why are they writing a new system?

The software on the ICCS was rock solid. There was a competing system that also worked.

Crapita

Some time ago Crapita, in their role as outsourced administrator of TV Licensing, decided they would like to persuade me to pay my TV licence by direct debit.

I was disappointed at how long it took me to persuade their call centre supervisor that 10 cold calls in 7 days was actually somewhat excessive.