Denise McDonagh
Who?
Former G-Cloud supremo Denise McDonagh was handed a CBE in Her Maj's birthday honours list at the weekend for services to the IT services industry. McDonagh climbed onto the cloudy bandwagon roughly 14 months ago as programme director for the G-Cloud framework, replacing her rather more outspoken predecessor Chris Chant, who …
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I don't know what reasons will be officially recorded for not using the G-cloud, but the real reasons are likely to be:
What we need isn't actually available on G-cloud
It costs more than popping down to Rymans or even PC World to buy basic stuff like printer paper
We can't wait the 3-6 months processing period for all orders made through G-cloud
The system can't handle anything that's not completely standard in every way.
No I've never seen the system, I just have many years experience of government IT (both sides of the table)
I don't know what reasons will be officially recorded for using the G-cloud, but the real reasons are likely to be:
Mandation
We were told to
CO wouldn't approve the project if we didn't
'Friends' of 'friends' of 'friends' said so
You want us to use pretty fonts and colours - more shades of gray.
Reasons for not using it:
What is available doesn't meet the requirements
If we did buy from G Cloud we'll have to spend more money later
We were hacked because we bought from G Cloud rather than getting our preferred technology
Home Office CIO is incompetence led from the top. Let's look at failures in which Denise and her team were involved:
* Schengen Information System II - Failed, quietly brushed under carpet
* e-Borders - Failed - in litigation
* G-Cloud - Doesn't work - branded as 'Success', people are using the framework to buy contract consultants, not hosted cloud services
* Police National Database - Years late, delivered less than the original requirement, cost more
Not to mention the catalogue of errors of mismanagement that have allowed Government IT suppliers to pick clean the Home Office IT budget and the budgets of several other departments for which Home Office IT has oversight.