back to article Met Police: Yes, outsourcing IT to Steria has 'risks'

The deputy commissioner of the Met Police, Craig Mackey, has acknowledged that the force's IT strategy, which includes slashing jobs in a mega outsourcing deal with Steria, is not without risk. Last year the Metropolitan Police announced it was cutting hundreds of jobs in a 10-year £216m mega deal with Sopra Steria, a cross- …

  1. hplasm
    Holmes

    YAGIF

    Yet Another Govt IT Foulup.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: YAGIF

      That's what you get when you use tax money to fund a process where the incapable lead the blind and the clueless without any shred of accountability. As long as this government doesn't learn that those who talk well haven generally mastered that because they haven't been busy developing any other skills it will continue to go wrong.

  2. M E H
    Stop

    Towers?

    Isn't "towers" just an other word for silos?

    I can see what the management theorist who came up with SIAM was thinking but in the real world it's hard enough when one organisation is trying to sort out the bun fight between different teams. When each team is provided by a different company all trying to prove that it isn't their fault and the work shouldn't go against their budget I can only foresee impasse and failure.

  3. Pen-y-gors

    Risk?

    "Risk" implies a certain level of unquantifiable uncertainty.

    There is absolutely no risk with this strategy. What there is is a CERTAINTY that it will go wrong in some expensive way, and will fail to deliver all that is required within cost and on time. After all, it's a massive outsourced government IT project

    1. asdf

      Re: Risk?

      Yep El Reg should only run articles on public sector IT projects that succeed in the UK. That more qualifies as news.

  4. Titus Aduxass
    FAIL

    "at least a 10 year journey"

    Yep. It'll take 'em that long to get back to the level of IT competancy they had with their in-house staff...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MET need investigating for the backhanders they will have took from crapita

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Penny & pound foolish.

    A bunch of people who don't understand their own IT requirements soliciting offers and bids from snake oil sales people from organisations solely interested in making money and who also have no idea & could not care less what the IT requirements are.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    It's win win for the outsourcer every time as the in house IT team have already lost their voice at the table while the outsourcer has the ear of the board and management who believe their every word. The invaluable knowledge, experience and intra organisation interoperability is then lost for ever.

  7. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "We won't be waving the flag of success until the project has been running for three-to-four years. We're not saying it is all easy and risk free."

    I guess they will be waving a white flag instead.

  8. Chika
    Trollface

    Yes, there are risks...

    Just ask Lincolnshire Council...

  9. Christian Berger

    In a way a problem of botched mass education

    Imagine everyone had some meaningful IT classes during their school career. Surely most would know nearly nothing about it when they start working, however you still have a basic idea about it in the heads of the people. Over all, it's likely they will get a feeling about what's easy to do and what's not.

    And this is the big problem about many software projects. People don't have a feeling for how hard something is. That's why they often choose unnecessarily hard ways to solve a problem. At least that's one problem, many programmers also try to cut the boredom by trying to make their work challenging, unfortunately usually beyond the point of their own abilities. The earlier you have started to program the more likely you are to be beyond this point and just write software as easy as you are able to.

  10. Frank Rysanek

    headcounts

    So... along with the outsourcing deal, they're downsizing in-house IT from 800 to 100 people. How big is the metropolitan police? How many people actually doing police work? How many PC's = user seats, how many user accounts in the system? How large is the "server back end" to take care of? With proper police IT, there tends to be a centralized system for "filing the records by individual cases". There will also be some in-house bookkeeping, purchasing, HR etc. - not unlike an ERP system, if the organization is big enough. Plus some printing, maybe e-mail... all of that with a police-style focus on security. And special systems and arrangements for access to various 3rd-party databases / registries that might be of interest to police investigations. 800 people to manage all of that... The number alone sounds like a lot, but was that in fact enough? Or was it too many?

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