start sacking civil servants for cock ups rather than paying them hugh amounts for them??

Having seen that project from up close (but thankfully never asked to work on it) this article contains no surprises.

Seems like a bargain then, only 24 million for some software that doesn't work is quite cheap in the grand scheme of government it projects. A pat on the back and bonus's all round chaps.

This is news to them? This is what happens when you parachute a load of managers into a department that works fine and tell them to reduce costs.

Case in point. Some beancounter wonders why you are paying for one IT bod running your AD clusters when you could get 2 indians for half the price.

So he gets canned, job offshored. Productivity goes down, manager hired or forced in to whip them into shape.

Manager believes that hard drives have something to do with golf. IT bod contracted back at twice the salary to be a "mentor" to the offshore indian team and do the important stuff.

Total cost=millions

Total bother=priceless

Yes, i'm bitter.

Elsewhere reported. The original plan was to spend 55 million and produce savings of 112 million. An overall net saving of 57 million.

It's actually ended up costing (and this is still a forecast - they're not finished yet) 121 million with savings dropping to 40 million. So the 81 million figure quoted is a net cost *including* the predicted savings.

1. Is there any indication on how they intend to recover this complete f**k-up?

2. To make up the cash deficit, is this why DVLA have been pimping our details to third parties?

Thanks.

That would be hysterically funny if it wasn't OUR money that these bumbling idiots are wasting. The public sector should be banned from undertaking any sort of project that involves computers or data management. It's a foregone conclusion that as soon as they start a project it will end with failure, go seriously over budget, or become dreadfully late, or a combination of 2 or all 3.

It's shameful that they didn't follow the correct procedure to offer the project out to tender. Quite possibly a reputable private company that could have delivered the desired saving has lost out.

Nicht!

"this article contains no surprises"

Having also seen the project on the ground I'm surprised that the report isn't more critical.

What is worrying is why neither the NAO nor PAC took a look at the project sooner. Two years ago when I spent three days in Swansea it was clear that it was badly managed. The timescales for the installation of the equipment were just dates in a chart and had no connection to reality. So people turned up to install and configure systems only to discover the boxes hadn't been delivered.

The only surprising thing about all of this is that anyone at all is surprised by it.

Alan old son, your idea:-

a) Is practical

b) Is simple

c) Costs nothing to implement

d) Is basic common sense

e) Would have an exceedingly positive effect.

so it MUST be obvious that the powers-that-be would never go for it.

"The DVLA began building the systems themselves with support from IBM"

Is that the complete picture?

I have seen a document on the web that suggests the system was developed by another well known supplier to central government and local authorities (as do the german error messages).

So now a bunch of DVLA civil servants will be invited to take early retirement with stupendous golden handshakes. Everyone wins but the powerless taxpayer, no wonder this just goes on and on and on...

so, the committee reckons it's, "one of the worst cases of project management seen" by them.... holy crap - there's some incredibly strong competition out there for that awespicious title; I too am well impressed... and all for just £24million eh?

easy... loadsa of consultants @ £500 per day

Those in government and the civil service have no idea of what the real cost of the money they are wasting in this case and countless others.

It is the equivalent of taking the tax paid by everyone in my company over their entire working lives, and setting fire to it, just for the hell of it.

You'd like to think that your taxes go to pay for hospitals, schools and even defence of the realm, but in reality a good proportion of us struggle throughout our lives to pay taxes only to fund gross incompetence and corruption.

£500/day? Yeh, right... Are they doing the afternoon for free, then?

... we now know JIMTHEBOSS works for the DfT

I don't think the Big Dig is a fair comparison. The massive cost overruns on the Big Dig did have some help from criminality. Billing for things you deliberately didn't deliver is in a different league from shipping systems that the DVLA lost in goods-inwards.

And anyway, the citizens of Boston got a nice new hole in the ground. And sometimes they can drive along it. The DfT systems are all internal and provide nothing to us citizens. In fact we'd be better off if they had merely spent the money on a huge party.

The DVLA computer suffered from water ingress, while it was on a bridge over a major dual-carriageway, looking menacing to passing motorists.

Re; failed Govt IT projects, has anyone got a running total of the :-

- projects failed

- money wasted

- companies involved

- Govt personnel involved

- lame-arse excuses and finger-pointing at the project wake

It should make a fantastic Saturday morning article on one of the newspapers...

Instead of paying out millions to a few overpaid monkeys with Microsoft certificates and BOFH excuse calendars they bought off eBay, use a small sum of it to hire a few of the newly-liberated (re: Unemployed), and do everything manually. Information can be transported from site-to-site by transit vans.

1) No more IT failures, as there's no IT involved

2) Slash jobless figures overnight

3) Increase motor vehicle sales, thus propping up automotive manufacturing

4)....

5)PROFIT!

Now accepting donations to my future overlord campaign.

I know a number of people at IBM who implement that large german system you are refering to, so I don't understand why you seem to think that the two are incompatible.

Remember, IBM sold off it's desktop/laptop business to enter the sevices sector years ago.

IBM =/= just hardware anymore

Not incompatible, but the original phrase could be taken to mean the only parties involved were the DVLA and IBM. I am surprised that while IBM is given a name check "the large german system" is not.

I have experience of another implementation of that system elsewhere (not by IBM in that instance) and it is a car crash there too.

Why are we all beating around the "SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP"...

SAP = great in theory, gets Fcked up in practice.

some one else who has seen those german errors but AC due to it being my employers latest endeavor!