Labour ordered IT 'to sound sexy'

[Sysman]

As long as it's done using Windows it's ok.

Reminds me of the bearded one's proposal to replace Camelot's National Lottery system with Windows.

(A colleague had been to a technical presentation on what went into Camelot's system - think response times and the number of terminals in shops up and down the land)

[SueEllen]

From my own experience in defence contracts I expect these companies had to cope with ill thought out specifications, constantly changing requirements and "quality reviews" by twits with no grasp of what was important.

As long as it's done using Windows it's ok.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I was asked by a primary school headmaster how he could get MS Word on his new MacBook Air.

The kids had to make do with 7 year old tulip RM's yet he'd managed to blow half the IT budget on a 2k 'sexy' laptop that he didn't know how to use.

I bet he was a labour supporter.

I went to another school where the headmaster had bought 5 iPads, the teachers didn't know how to implement them in the classroom so they used them to book holidays and do their shopping.

Yeah all the classic signs

[gingerjedi]

I was asked by a primary school headmaster how he could get MS Word on his new MacBook Air.

The kids had to make do with 7 year old tulip RM's yet he'd managed to blow half the IT budget on a 2k 'sexy' laptop that he didn't know how to use.

I bet he was a labour supporter.

I went to another school where the headmaster had bought 5 iPads, the teachers didn't know how to implement them in the classroom so they used them to book holidays and do their shopping.

[configman]

Nothing we didn't already know.

Edited highlights below. Full article here.

Must admit I made money from the incompetence of it all but had to resign from boredom after working on one of HMCE's projects after 8 months. Project Managers were taken of the dole, completed a 6 month training course then managed multi-million pound contracts. My job was to write one java class that accepted a message from the government gateway and basically ignored it - the government gateway kept hanging when it sent messages to HMCE which weren't read. My class accepted the message and replied "ignored" to stop the gateway hanging. HMCE didn't want to use the gateway but the gateway kept sending messages!!!!!!!

[AtW]

All the clever people changed at Crewe when they saw where the "spending" gravy train was going, now their all heading back where they came from on the "savings" train

I'd change at Wilmslow just before Manchester...

[Spacecadet]

Why didn't he resign or make his views public when Liebor were in office?

And would he be saying something like this when current Govt leaves?

All the clever people changed at Crewe when they saw where the "spending" gravy train was going, now their all heading back where they came from on the "savings" train

[lilelvis2000]

It did benefit many a IT consultant/contractor however - including the big five. Who also managed to bias the tendering process such that even tiny contracts were done by them.

[xoggoth]

From my own experience in defence contracts I expect these companies had to cope with ill thought out specifications, constantly changing requirements and "quality reviews" by twits with no grasp of what was important.

[AtW]

Why didn't he resign or make his views public when Liebor were in office?

And would he be saying something like this when current Govt leaves?

[Clippy]

Nothing we didn't already know.

Edited highlights below. Full article here.

Tony Blair's former IT chief has said Labour ministers ordered expensive computer projects because they wanted their policies to "sound sexy".

Ian Watmore - who is now in charge of a Whitehall efficiency drive - gave a scathing assessment of the previous government's IT record.

He told the public administration committee Labour's procurement had been over-ambitious and badly-managed.

Mr Watmore, who is permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said some of the high profile IT "fiascos" under the previous government had not been down to defective technology but to poor project management and badly-defined policies.

Too often, he told the Commons public administration committee, ministers simply ordered IT as an "after thought... or worse, there were people thinking they needed to have a piece of technology to make their policy sound sexy".

Mr Watmore became the head of Tony Blair's e-Government Unit in 2004 - at the height of Labour's IT procurement strategy - before going on to head the then Prime Minister's Delivery Unit.

But it was Mr Watmore's career before entering government, when he was managing director of IT consultancy giant Accenture, that came under the spotlight most during the two-hour grilling by MPs.

Committee chairman Bernard Jenkin told him: "You come from exactly the large corporate culture which has bedevilled IT procurement in government. Are you part of the cultural change the minister is looking for, or aren't you just part of the problem?"

Mr Watmore replied: "I am certainly not part of the problem and I would contest that the corporate industry of this country has caused the problems."

He said the "so-called IT disasters" of recent years were not down to technical problems but "over-ambitious projects" that were expected to deliver complex changes at a national level on a single day, "the so-called 'Big Bang' implementation".