El Reg procures OGC mousemat

Harumph...

Disappointed to find I bought that ITIL service management book with the old logo on, this is absolute genius...

PS Never mind what he's holding, what I want to know is why is he bow-legged?!

Ahhh the good ol OGC...

I remember quite clearly my foray into the world of Government IT and the OGC, what a travesty of government bureaucracy!

I believe the OGC is the world’s best example of how to take a really good idea and implement it so badly that it is impossible to get anything done. It brings back the pain of trying to explain in multiple 30+page documents as to why VMware was chosen without a full competitive bid, (at the time it was the only virtualised environment software on the market!).

Nice Logo though, I hope the taxpayer enjoys all the money that was spent by the OGC on this.

/Tongue out of cheek

Handjobs for the boys?

Of course if they really were delving value from their spending, they'd have moved to optical mice that don't get gummed up and junked and don't need a stupid mousemat.

@Christoph re. logo

Thanks for that Christoph, nice clean lines and a modern look to it :)

Here is a link to a classic 'unfortunate logo' (from a brazilian based school of oriental studies). I think the base of the pagoda looks too fussy and could be greatly improved.

http://www.wait-till-i.com/2005/05/06/how-not-to-design-a-logo/

Victorian japester

The term "spend" had more than one meaning a century ago, meaning something more along the lines of, uh, how can I put this over a work-monitored line... "to reach the end"? Strange but true. And don't ask me how I know (Alan Moore knows the score...)

Mine's the frockcoat with matching waistcoat and top hat.

Nice logo but.

they should have spent less money on that monster glass table and then, maybe, the budget would have stretched to a laptop for the woman. Or don't they count?

@ Dan

"PS Never mind what he's holding, what I want to know is why is he bow-legged?!"

Because he's been holding on too tight!!

In government, everything spawns a mousemat

When I joined MAFF, they had MAFF mousemats and also MAIDEN (MAFF Integrated Desktop Environment for the Nineties) mousemats. When we became Defra, there were Defra mousemats. Once they'd sorted out the new Zep-trefoil-that-could-be-turned-into-Rolf-Harris'-face logo, there were more mousemats. When our IT was contracted out to IBM, there were E-nabling Defra mousemats (yes, that's how it was branded). When the (unreliable, Oracle-driven) self-service personnel system 4-ME (!) was introduced, it got a mousemat. When the Veterinary Field Service became Animal Health (accompanied by a prodigious burst of whalesong), it naturally got a mousemat.

The only major initiative that didn't get a mousemat, as far as I am aware, was the UK presidency of the EU in 2005. That had to make do with a square scarf, pen, heavy metal key fob, glass paperweight, folder, ID lanyard, box of mints, rubber eraser, ceramic mug and three different notepads, all bound up in a branded goody bag. There were quite a few bags spare at the end of our presidency, so a few months later, they sent them out for reuse. I'm pretty sure every civil servant in London got one, and possibly in some of the regions as well.

@Roy Stilling

Mines a Trackball.

Mines the one with a ball in the pocket!

An excellent use of..

.. £2000 of our money! Huzzah! Long live the government!

Now where do I get one of those bottles of OGC Water I've heard about?

I say bring back Guy Fawkes he had some good ideas.

Paris because she doesn't need a quango to help her waste someone elses money.

A little bit of history....

The government used to have a competent central IT consultancy unit, called the 'Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency'. When it was involved with departments' IT projects, they were delivered on time and to budget.

During the Thatcher era, the word 'Agency' was used to denote an outsourced, profit-making, self-funding part of government. So the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency was asked to change it's name and get a new logo. £100,000 was set aside for this.

Director (CCTA) thought about this for a while, and then he announced that from henceforth the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency would change it's name to 'CCTA'. 'CCTA' was not to stand for anything, and specifically the 'A' was not to stand for 'Agency'.

Job done - £100,000 saved.

After a few decisions like this outside companies saw that they could make no money out of CCTA, and they lobbied for it to be closed down. OGC was put in it's place.....

@Natalie

No, as it is, it's the best value from the spending.

P.S. It took me quite awhile to realize what's so funny about that mouse pad. I must be getting blonde.

2 Things

1. You should adjust the whitebalance on your camera, it's way off!

2. Mousemats - just shows how out of date the UK Gov is.

Oh, and 3, Buy a Mac, they're better than windows machines.

Something I forgot.

If OGC is anything like Defra, then there are no optical mice. You can get ergonomic keyboards, dual-head and triple-head graphics setups, laptops, keydrives aplenty, but optical mice are still considered an expensive luxury.

I wonder how many mice have been binned because nobody could be bothered to ungunk them

makes me want to go self employed

So I can withold my tax from these legalised thieves.

I used to think tax exiles were the scum of the earth, now I completely understand them.

If our taxes weren't spent on this crap and things such as the white dome, we'd have the finest health service/police force/military in the world, I have no problem with paying taxes for that stuff but not for stupid mousemats, mugs and t-shirts.

I'd like my tax back please, you red box toting highwayman.

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.