"Nobody has been held responsible for FiReControl's failures"
Indeed, those responsible (on both the govt and contractor sides) have probably done very well out of it. Until that changes, these disasters will carry on happening.
Whitehall's waste of £470m on a botched attempt to modernise fire service control rooms in England begs questions about what UK plc is doing to prevent a similar haemorrhage of money in the future. A scathing report on FiReControl by parliament's public accounts committee said the project was flawed from the outset and blamed …
That could be the problem right there - the figure is far too high.
BCS are no longer a relevant organisation in IT - nobody asks for (or wants) BCS qualifications as they are an outdated dinosaur (tautology!). They are too much like academia.
Also, learning IT at school is a great idea but they must try to not concentrate on specific products too much. School curricula take too long to change and cannot keep up with changes in IT - a fundamental grounding in IT technology areas would suffice; after which students can do more specific training on technologies/products outside of school (in institutions or organisations that can change quickly). BCS do not fit into that category.
Good idea - but the mention of BCS just makes me laugh.
This has been ongoing for some time, and the Government has proven to be quite well practised at it. It largely involves making your internal techies redundant, slashing their pay or outsourcing their responsibilities. This has ensured a steady flow of skilled workers from the public sector into new jobs. Don't see much flowing back the other way, though.
The government had exactly what they are now looking for - google CCTA.
Twenty years ago CCTA operated as a central government consultancy, staffed by expert civil service IT staff, supporting all other departments' projects. In those days the projects were run properly and came in on time and to budget.
Then, 10 years ago, the IT industry lobbied the government to close CCTA down, arguing that it was unfair competition for the big 5 consultancies to have departments getting 'free' consultancy internally. And that was done.
At the time CCTA staff warned what would happen. And it did. Now someone has had the bright idea of bringing CCTA back...