[Gllug] Government IT projects and wasted money

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 17 June 2011 10:30, Jon Fautley <jon.fautley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 17 Jun 2011, at 09:49, Bruce Richardson wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 08:46:46AM +0100, Jon Fautley 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
>>
>> Read Alistair's reply to find out why that will not happen, whether or
>> not the work is done in house.
>
> Agreed - I wasn't suggesting the system works ;)
>
>>> and the government can leverage the
>>> skills and resources not typically available to them for the reasons
>>> you listed above.
>>
>> 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.
>
> For clarification, I wasn't suggesting that outsourcing was a fix for the problem, or even a particularly good idea for a lot of government projects - just that the issues raised in the OPs mail aren't really perceived as a problem because "the government is already doing all it can by outsourcing". Fixing the problem for good would require a major culture shift in government IT, and that simply isn't likely to happen :(
>

Maybe I did not make myself clear.
I will make up an example to illustrate my point.
Project aim: Moving from Desktop PCs to Thin Client and Citrix virtual desktops.
Project A uses Linux Thin Client locked down and just running a web
browser to display the Citrix apps. The Linux Thin client also runs
the citrix client so that when the user clicks on one of the apps, it
runs the citrix client and the app is streamed to the client and
displayed to the user.
Project B uses Windows This Client locked down and just running a web
browser to display the Citrix apps. The Windows thin client also runs
citrix client so that when the user clicks on one of the apps, it runs
the citrix client and the app is streamed to the client and displayed
to the user.
Project C uses a Sun Ray thin client locked down and just running a
web browser to display the Citrix apps.The Sun Ray thin client also
runs citrix client so that when the user clicks on one of the apps, it
runs the citrix client and the app is streamed to the client and
displayed to the user.

Why not just use the same thin client OS for all three projects?
They all do the same function, but require difference documentation to
detail how to configure the client.
You cannot say which of the 3 solutions is best, apart from the cost,
with the Linux Thin client happening to be the cheapest (costing taken
from WYSE and ORACLE web site on a per seat costing.)

If each of the above projects could have produced a single side of A4
documenting what they are doing at a high level and made it
unclassified, all three projects might have used the same thin client.
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