MPs question value of canning Raytheon from e-borders MPs have questioned the value of terminating the Home Office's £500m e-borders contract with its supplier Raytheon, with questions remaining as to whether the £303m spent on its in-house successor programme will deliver. In March the Home Office finally agreed to hand over £150m to defence company Raytheon over the dispute …
Early on there was a difference in expectations in how contract would have run
Yes, the government had an expectation (not based on experience) that the system would work. Raytheon had an expectation that they could ream out the tax payer whilst delivering nothing.
And here's a thought for the arseholes responsible: If the £1.1bn was generally spent on people (given there's diddly squat hardware), and the average salary of all involved were £60k, then there has been EIGHTEEN FUCKING THOUSAND MAN YEARS pissed up the wall, with nothing to show for it.
Bring back the death penalty, say I.
"maybe we should have spent more time understanding HO and how they operated. Early on there was a difference in expectations in how contract would have run."
What, when they're only paying you a few measly hundred million for the project? Gee, they's have to pay me at least £2billion before I was prepared to go to the customer and truly understand the project, you're too much of a soft touch.
Does a supplier go into a large government project thinking about the delivery of a fully working system that meets all requirements or do they go in thinking about how long it will take for the contract to be aborted and penalties claim?
A serious but rhetorical question.
"However, Flint noted that given the costs of writing off the contract, the legal fees and the subsequent costs paid to Raytheon, restructuring the programme rather than terminating it may have been more in the taxpayer's interest.
Homer said the reason the Raytheon contract was terminated rather reset was due to the costs involved of doing so, a move which risked taking the lifetime costs beyond the Treasury envelope of £1.1bn."
Unfortunately Raytheon wasn't on one of our controlling MP's buddies list, so they scrapped it and gave it to one of their mates.
Not our money after all.
My own theory is that Lin Homer is a secretly officially designated 'professional scapegoat', or at least is seen as someone willing to take all the flak for whatever she is assigned to.
And I have absolutely no idea if that is a compliment or an insult but I suspect I mean it as a bit of both but not in the way that involves a zombie cat in a box.
Mr Specs cos it's teknikle theory stuff and a clever quantum z-nation crossover thingy.
Then surely the smart thing to do is spin up an entirely new company for the duration of the project? Hire a project manager, get them to hire a senior staff, get them to recruit some programmers. Do absolutely everything in-house and if it does all go sideways you can just dissolve the company and make everyone redundant without it costing 35 million in lawyers and hundreds more million in "Contract termination fees"
Who the hell is negotiating these contracts anyway?
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