Petition against recurring Government IT incompetence

Tuesday, 2 February 2010

Petition against recurring Government IT incompetence

Posted by Simon Baker

Isn’t it about time we started calling the Civil Service and the Government to account for the repeated failures and wasted money in Public IT projects? Don’t delay! Sign the petition to the PM.

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2 Comments

There are four ways to spend money. 1) spending your own money on yourself - you care about quality and value for money, 2) spending your own money on someone else - you care about value but perhaps let quality slide a little, 3) spending somebody else's money on yourself - you care about quality but don't care if it's expensive, 4) spending somebody else's money on someone else - who cares what it costs or if it's any good.

All government spending comes under 4.

Comment by Rob

Interesting petition, but a bit vague. No CSFs to show if the petition has been actioned. i.e. someone could say: 'yes we've reviewed it', and not have to explain exactly why (what criteria they used & why) they reach the decision that the current system is 'just fine'.

One of the things is that all the projects are set up with requirements for huge financial security of the main contractor. That guarantees that the contractor will be one of the $2.5K per person companies, and also guarantees that they will try to spin it out.

You could suspect that the large firms have lobbied to make the entry criteria for an RFI favour them.

A more concrete petition would ask for a review of both public & private projects to see if the measures (e.g. financial size of firm) have helped the projects either in terms of a) on time/budget delivery, b) recovery of costs in the event of a failure.

Secondly in line with the agile manifesto.. a similar comparison could be made for agile vs. BDUF projects.

Comment by Anonymous

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AGILE IN ACTION

Tuesday, 2 February 2010