[Gllug] Government IT projects and wasted money

[John G Walker]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:46:46 +0100 Jon Fautley <jon.fautley at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That's one of the big arguments for the Government outsourcing as
> much as possible to the private sector.
> 
> The grand idea is that by passing the work to the private sector,
> existing work can be reused, and the government can leverage the
> skills and resources not typically available to them for the reasons
> you listed above.
> 
> Unfortunately, what sounds like a good idea in practise rarely is due
> to the ineptitude of Government procurement, contracts, etc. It's
> also far too easy for the private sector to rip off the government :(

It also duplicates the problem, since private companies do not share
their code with one another. So company A has a problem and produces a
solution, but does not  let its  competitors know  what it has done.
When company B has the same problem it has to start again from scratch.

The problem is basic to the capitalist system. This was one of the
reasons that it used to be argued that state ownership was more
efficient than private ownership. But, of course, as the OP pointed
out, the practice is very different to the theory,

-- 
 All the best,
 John
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