[Gllug] Dealing with "Word-Only" organisations

[Philip Hands]

On Mon, 8 Nov 2010 10:03:13 +0000, John Hearns <hearnsj at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 8 November 2010 08:32, Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> wrote:
> > Government should instead concentrate on standardising data interchange
> > formats, such as specifying the format that all health systems in the
> > country be capable of import/exporting and let individual organisations
> > buy whatever they like, as long as the vendor provides something that is
> > capable of interacting with the (preferably Free Software) reference
> > system(s).
> 
> Phil, were it biologically possible, can I have your babies?

LOL -- of course darling :-)

> (I've been saying the same thing for years. But the Govt would rather
> emply retired rear-admirals)

OK, so how do we fix this ongoing cock-up?

Apart from the fact that qangos are not flavour of the month, it seems
we need some sort of backstop for Gvmt projects who's job is simply to
tell almost all of them:  NO!

Given the current financial situation, it ought to be possible to find a
sympathetic ear in parliament for this idea, simply because it'll involve
money not being spent, but I've no idea how one might get to talk to the
right people, and I'm pretty sure that writing to my MP will be mildly
entertaining, but largely pointless.

Perhaps the government tendering process could be opened up, and bounties
offered for tracking down pointless projects and providing cogent
criticism of them -- the thing is that civil servants are bound to find
ways of dressing up projects in a way that makes them sound more useful
than they are.

Of course, most of the experts that government are talking to are trying
to sell stuff, so they tend to end up with unrealistic expectations.
They obviously need some grumpy old sysadmins to tell them what's what. ;-)

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
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