[Gllug] Open Source lobbying meeting - UKUUG London Thurs 19th

[John G Walker]

On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 14:34:52 +0100 Christopher Hunter
<chrisehunter at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

> > With regard to Government I.T., one has to remember surely that
> > Governments are basically incapable on managing *anything* properly?
> 
> Absolutely - appointment at senior level in Whitehall (both in the
> Civil Service and within Parliament) has nothing to do with ability
> or knowledge, but is entirely decided by either nepotism or the "old
> boy network".  This is the fundamental reason that NO government IT
> project has ever worked properly or completed within budget.

I'd be interested to know if things were radically different these
days in the private sector. Certainly, when I was working in the IT
departments of various multinationals between 1969 and 1989, the same
things happened. No IT projects were finished on time, and when they
were "completed" it turned out that they'd been misspecified and were
full of bugs. And no one had properly considered the running costs of
any of them.

The main problem in every case was that projects were run by managers
who had no or little experience in IT, but who thought they knew better
than IT professionals. In any case, the managers got promoted on the
basis of how much cost-cutting they achieved, not whether anything
actually worked. So there was absolutely no incentive for them to
produce working systems.

A familiar story? Or did something magical happen to business in the
1990s?

-- 
 All the best,
 John
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