Reply to: Tories plan for £100m cap on government IT contracts

[portseven]

Some people say the same about switching between versions of Office...

Now where was that thingie in this version?

That's why when I install OpenOffice.org for people, I just rename the icons Word, Excel and Powerpoint, set the default document format to be the Microsoft ones and just tell them I have upgraded them to the new version of Microsoft Office. They are happy as bunnies.

[Mich the Tester]

And increase the size and complexity of the PMO. Someone said something about chiefs and indians once which seems quite pertinent...

More projects means more testers, more DBAs, more coders, more designers and more project managers. In other words, more contractors. BOOMED!

[minestrone]

That is an astonishing story - many thanks Minestrone.

Would you mind if I send this for the attention of an old friend of mine who now happens to be in the Tory Cabinet ?

He would find this fascinating.

He used to be a Doctor as well so he is pretty au fait with the NHS too.

This one was a few years ago and already hit the papers, I can try to find it, it was a pc plod system.

[AlfredJPruffock]

The problem is that we would have our new NHS system being used in Bongo Bongo land. The average Joe in the street would not be able to understand why we were giving a way our software for free.

In all honesty if they formed an open source group they would have finished the project by now and probably would have spent only a few million but then how many of you are getting paid good money to work on this project?

Also from my experience of working on public sector it is often the end users that demand daft things that screw the project. I worked on a very large system that was meant to replace an old mainframe terminal system with a web based system running of Apache to save maintenance costs. The spec was for it to look and behave exactly like the old system so that there would be no retraining to the new system. They had to use java script to map all the action key strokes then when they had finished that bit they worked out that many of the users were using opera or firefox and not just IE as first stated. It was total murder.

Rather than write an intuitive web system that anyone could have picked up in an hour they tried to copy the old system with is hundreds of shortcuts. It should have taken 3 months but they kept flogging this thing for 5 years until it got canned.

They were not happy when I told them they should have just run a mainframe emulator on the new boxes and the job would have been finished in 2 hours. Why anyone never thought of that in the first place is a sign they should not have been near the job

That is an astonishing story - many thanks Minestrone.

Would you mind if I send this for the attention of an old friend of mine who now happens to be in the Tory Cabinet ?

He would find this fascinating.

He used to be a Doctor as well so he is pretty au fait with the NHS too.

[ratewhore]

Splitting a £1bn project into ten £100m projects would at least make the projects more manageable. Divide and conquer, and all that.

And increase the size and complexity of the PMO. Someone said something about chiefs and indians once which seems quite pertinent...

[swamp]

Splitting a £1bn project into ten £100m projects would at least make the projects more manageable. Divide and conquer, and all that.

Interesting story about public sector minestrone. Reminds me why domain driven design is so popular these days... Customers get so hung up on superficial and cosmetic front-end requirements, it's better to spend your time modelling their business properly so when they finally understand what fancy GUI they want you're in a position to support it.

[ratewhore]

Also from my experience of working on public sector it is often the end users that demand daft things that screw the project.

Ain't that the truth...

[minestrone]

The problem is that we would have our new NHS system being used in Bongo Bongo land. The average Joe in the street would not be able to understand why we were giving a way our software for free.

In all honesty if they formed an open source group they would have finished the project by now and probably would have spent only a few million but then how many of you are getting paid good money to work on this project?

Also from my experience of working on public sector it is often the end users that demand daft things that screw the project. I worked on a very large system that was meant to replace an old mainframe terminal system with a web based system running of Apache to save maintenance costs. The spec was for it to look and behave exactly like the old system so that there would be no retraining to the new system. They had to use java script to map all the action key strokes then when they had finished that bit they worked out that many of the users were using opera or firefox and not just IE as first stated. It was total murder.

Rather than write an intuitive web system that anyone could have picked up in an hour they tried to copy the old system with is hundreds of shortcuts. It should have taken 3 months but they kept flogging this thing for 5 years until it got canned.

They were not happy when I told them they should have just run a mainframe emulator on the new boxes and the job would have been finished in 2 hours. Why anyone never thought of that in the first place is a sign they should not have been near the job

[ratewhore]

As a security specialist this gets my vote. More work for me...

[portseven]

I think there is more to Open Source than 'License Free' and cost savings (though its not a bad thing!)

Having open auditable code, especially for public services is a better selling point.

Also I think open data formats, for both files and data interchange are things that government should be adopting. Locking data away in formats that only a private company have the keys to is madness.

[bobspud]

They need to take the budget for IT away from the separate departments and set up a department that only handles IT budgets and projects Then make rationalisation of business processes and reduction in headcount a mandatory requirement for any new project.

Then poach the best IT guys from the private sector so that they have a level playing field at bid stage.

[Mich the Tester]

Isn’t this actually a bit of a cop-out? You just split huge projects into smaller project budgets of max 100 million and get round the promise. Not difficult, just a bookkeeping trick and in some cases probably more expensive.

[Mich the Tester]

And they'll need an IT system to track everything.

An open source IT system to track everything!

[Purple Dalek]

The goverment will need to set up a new department to monitor IT contracts. Mmmmm more work.

And they'll need an IT system to track everything.

[Paddy]

The goverment will need to set up a new department to monitor IT contracts. Mmmmm more work.