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26 Jan 2012
The government is wasting "an obscene amount of public money" because it lacks insight on market prices for IT, according to a new report by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC).
The PASC first published a report in July 2011 that listed its concerns on the government's IT procurement strategy and the latest report looked to to assess how far the government has gone to address the issues raised.
In the document the PASC claims that a lack of up-to-date and accurate information about IT prices is obstructing the government's cost reduction programme.
"Government IT procurement strategy is still lacking in its commitment to independent benchmarking of contracts with transparent data [and is] failing to understand the risks of legacy systems," it said in its report.
"[It also] remains unclear about how to address the IT skills gap with sufficiently senior and experienced people, and must move faster to implement 'digital by default' to design better IT services."
The PASC advised the government to work with independent advisors and the National Audit Office (NAO) to collect accurate spending data from government departments, to set benchmarks for future spend and identify future investment that will be needed to replace legacy systems.
The PASC also recommended an investigation into allegations of "cartel-like behaviour among suppliers" and registered its concern that the government lacks the skills needed to manage procurement contracts.
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Employees warned the NHS project of failure
Employees warned the NHS NPfIT project of failure. The bodged american software simply wouldn't work, and despite feeding back negative user trials for 3 years, they still went ahead and tried to launch. Fujitsu couldn't cope with the unworkable software, the Hospital staff rejected it and GP's refused to use it. Despite a £6.1 billion investment, when I attended my own Eye Hospital - they had resorted to torn scraps of paper to trace patients. I was one of the NPfIT trainers and a senior clinical staff member; yet I could not persuade staff to use it - and as a health professional I felt for them, what took a minute now took 20. Literally. When it went live I had to swipe boxes of tissues from supplies for the staff who were crying with frustration. Of course we were all made redundant - so the phrase 'not enough experienced IT staff just makes my pee my pants with laughter. Initiated and procured by fools with zero real experience, ie NHS management.
Posted by: chris 27 Jan 2012
Experts needed
As an engineer and retired Civil Servant I can assure people that PASC has got it right. The problem started before I retired 20 years ago. It does not only apply to IT projects. There were allegedly too many Civil Servants so the administrators got rid of virtually all professionals. They then spent vast sums on consultants to write specifications of requirements without knowing enough to brief them properly. Consultants did the best they could to follow these briefs and produced useless solutions. They then spent more on correcting the errors. This will continue in all fields until real experts are part of the Civil Service with enough power to control procurement.
Posted by: misceng 27 Jan 2012
Idiots in power
Didnt the current idiots lambast the previous idiots over the vast amounts of money wasted on its IT updates? Maybe they should teach IT at Eton instead of enough education for a political or banking future
Posted by: Lardilicious 27 Jan 2012