[Gllug] Government IT projects and wasted money

[Philip Hands]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:30:21 +0100, Jon Fautley <jon.fautley at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> > But look how much government work is already put out to tender, and how
> > much of the old civil service was privatised in the last 30 years (e.g.
> > Qinetic).  Ask yourself why private contractors should want to make the
> > process more efficient.  Duplication of work = duplication of fees.
> 
> Again, correct. It ties in with the fact that as you've mentioned, the
> government won't hold private contractors to account. 

Maybe they should outsource that bit too -- I'd be very cheerful about
giving BT a good kicking on pretty much any of the things I've ever seen
them do in local government, for instance, and I'd be even more cheerful
about it if I was being paid a percentage of the fees recovered.

It would make a change from them blaming me for doing things and me
having to repeatedly prove that they hadn't done their jobs and having
to clear up after their incompetence in unchargeable time.

It's bad enough that they get paid for doing a worthless job, but they
manage to externalise their costs by pushing the diagnostic work onto
the few competent people that happen to still work for the same
organisations, thus driving us away from doing work for the victims.

Sadly, the people that sign the cheques have no clue about what they
bought, so have no basis on which to judge whether a good job is being
done or not.

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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