Reply to: Oh Dear: Fire Service Control Rooms IT Project canned...

[Churchill]

The guilty party in all this is Cassidian, formerly EADS. They were the "System Integrators"

[AlfredJPruffock]

Heres another out of control Government Spending binge ...

The true cost of the UK's involvement in the Libya conflict could be as high as £1.75bn – almost seven times more than government estimates, according to a new study. Research by a respected defence analyst suggests that the government has given a misleading picture of the costs of supporting the military operation, now in its seventh month, leading to demands for a proper spending breakdo

[Freamon]

Another one costing an awful lot of wonga

it's only your money..



I worked on this back in the late 90s with Siemens & it was pants then

Not to mention the binning of the IPS (ID cards) scheme, and the failure of the (related, but distinct) eBorders programme.

[Troll]

Another one costing an awful lot of wonga

it's only your money..

Passport Agency IT Project Costs Quadruple
The cost of a multi-million pound Government IT project has more than quadrupled, it has emerged.

The 10-year deal signed by the Passport Agency, part of the Home Office , was supposed to cost between £80m and £100m.

But new figures reveal the final bill for the contract with hi-tech firm Siemens is £365m - more than four times the initial quote.

I worked on this back in the late 90s with Siemens & it was pants then

[thunderlizard]

The poorly designed IT contract lacked early milestones or mechanisms to effectively manage prime or sub-contractor performance. The Department allowed the contractor to deviate from the agreed approach, and when problems did emerge, it did not take timely corrective action.

i.e. the one thing that their shiny PRINCE2 should actually have helped them with. Firetwerps.

[Zoiderman]

I was involved in the project from across the bridge, brought in 6 years after the project started, as they'd not designed in my area for testing properly. I quit a lucrative contract in Scotland, to join the project, as I really had some faith in an idea that gestated in 2000 working for another company, so had a real urge to join the project.

On the night of my first day, I phoned my wife and told her, that there was no way, in hell, this project would run to term, as one day, someone will audit the application/designs and realise that whoever designed it, knew 10% of nothing about IT and GIS, in particular. After 2 weeks, I told my manager this, which she agreed.

That it went on another 4 months still staggers me.

But, this is, for me, the clincher, do you know something? Once Pickles canned it, the 'company' decided to continue developing it internally, at their own cost. I sold shares in them immediately.


Now, as an aside, as a GIS practitioner, you get to understand the GI knowledge/understanding of an organisation pretty quickly by looking at their processes and data. Their model for representing a polygon was based on a grid of 100,000 kilometres, on positive and negative axis, so a depiction of a polygon anywhere in the United kingdom was based on projection, a grid of 200,000km, by 200,000 km.

They still use this... Best rate I ever got though

[milanbenes]

nice one Mitch

Milan.

[Mich the Tester]

[milanbenes]

as a colleague here said a couple of months ago...


where there's chaos there's cash


and that's way aha aha we like it aha aha

Milan.

[Project Monkey]

It always comes back to the clients head-in-the-sand approach and neglegent attitude to project and contract management.

The big suppliers/consultancies make money out of chaos just as most of us do.

[Project Monkey]

Sadly there won't be any lawsuits to reclaim the money wasted by the various consulting companies.

Wasted by various consulting companies? The clients choose spend tax payers' money, not the consultants. If the consulting company didn't deliver or delivered something that wasn't fit for purpose, why did the client pay?

[lilelvis2000]

I'd like to scream 'UNBELIEVABLE!', but sadly it isn't. This sort of thing happens all the time and its not just public sector projects. The anoying thing is the press always blame these evil 'IT Consultants' for ripping off the tax payer.

Sadly there won't be any lawsuits to reclaim the money wasted by the various consulting companies.

[perplexed]

perhaps.

Definitely in my case, as I was contracting there, but on a different project.

[Project Monkey]

I'd like to scream 'UNBELIEVABLE!', but sadly it isn't. This sort of thing happens all the time and its not just public sector projects. The anoying thing is the press always blame these evil 'IT Consultants' for ripping off the tax payer.

[scooterscot]

LOL. So you know the uk company involved with this as well then?

perhaps.