back to article Government outlines five year IT strategy

A draft strategy paper from the Cabinet Office has pointed to web 2.0, cloud computing and service oriented architecture as areas for exploitation over the next five years. A leaked version of Government ICT Strategy: New World, New Challenges, New Opportunities outlines how the government is thinking about harnessing IT up to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Uh oh..

    "Government ICT Strategy: New World, New Challenges, New Opportunities"

    If this is yet another consulting paper I'd suggest the title lacks one expression: "New Buzzwords", subtitled "because it makes us sound as if we suddenly know what we're doing".

    I have seen enough papers written by the dishonest for the ignorant to last me a lifetime, thanks. If that's an overly negative view, well, the evidence is in the execution, which doesn't leave much of a positive track record to work with..

  2. Dan 10
    FAIL

    Crawl, walk run etc

    Functional maturity and all that - I'd settle for basic data security from these fools, before going off to implement trendy stuff like web 2.0...

  3. eezatehgeeza
    FAIL

    WTF!

    "...pointed to web 2.0, cloud computing and service oriented architecture as areas for exploitation..."

    Give me a frikkin break - they can't even get a #*&#ing database / website / IT policy right, never mind Web 2.schmo / (head in the) Cloud computing. They simply don't know their SaaS from their fekking elbows!

    1. The Fuzzy Wotnot
      Happy

      Ha ha!

      Heads are certainly somewhere, but it ain't up the cloud, that's for sure!

  4. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Do nothing

    The best thing the government (whichever one it will be) could announce for the next 5 years is to start NO new IT projects. Simply focus their energies and our money on the ones that are already being developed. Let's face it, we know that most of their high-falutin' dreams will come to naught. Anything they do start will be canceled, delayed, U-turned, cut, re-appraised or distorted out of all recognition. Maybe once they have actually finished a project, and with the prospect of no new ones coming up, they will have time to take a considered view about why it succeeded, failed, ran over budget or was late. You never know - it's even possible that they will learn some lessons from that exercise and be better placed to get it right in the future.

  5. david willis
    Pint

    Clarification of terms?

    Web 2.0 - Snake oil

    Cloud Computing - Horse Sh@t

    At least the latter may help your roses.

  6. Jerome 0

    Strategy?

    Phew, at first I thought the headline was "government outlives five year IT strategy" - I thought we might have to put up with another five years of these clowns. Wait, David Cameron is the alternative? Oh shit.

  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Badgers

    Fantasy IT strategy?

    More like 28 weeks maximum.

    I like Peter2's idea. It's clear *some* projects must becoming out on time and budget, if only because they have started so many of them.

    <rant>

    But what will they show? The usual suspects of badly thought out ideas, backed up by inadequate analysis (with little or now input from actual front line staff) "managed" in a desultory way by a committe headed (usually) by the junior-assistant-under-under-under-secretary. The supposed chair has got more important things to do than manage an umpteen million pound project when he could be playing golf.

    Naturally the requirments will move in unpredictable ways on a regular basis and none of the management team will have *any* feel for the capabilities of what their current systems can do (which might be quite extensive) or the limits of what future systems could do (store details of every single email, text message and land and mobile phone call then pattern match them looking patters near that of an actual terrorist's comms pattern, for example) .

    The work will of course be knocked out to one of the usual suspects whose fine body of work has graced these pages on a regular basis since I started reading El Reg. Probably the one who has f%^&ked up the least recently, or one who bunged the Minister the most.

    They in turn will knock it out to their offshore subsidary who will *atttempt* to make sense of a project plan put together with about as much throught as Dr Tim Mitchell seems to have applied to the architecture of the Climate Research Unit's suite of "analysis" software.

    The software will finally be delivered witht he usual cost and schedule overruns to staff with effectively zero training (because of course its so simple to use it doesn't need any training)

    This will generate an avalache of Change Requests which the Government (or its taxpayers) will be charged through the nose for.

    Unless the new bunch of cretins (the musical chairs of senior Civl Service moves will ensure that nobody from the original batch will still be responsible for this) decide to either end development and start a new system or (unthinkable!) call it a pile of cheesy c&*k and abandon it.

    </rant>

    I note large, complex, safety critical system with fairly hazy initial specs have been delivered on time and on budget (but it's quite a big budget). The space shuttle on board systems being one such.

    The basic principle seemed to be build a framework then add (extensively) tested modules to it as your understanding of what is needed grows. NB. Honest developers have admitted that getting that designing that initial (working ) minimal framework is *hard*.

  8. Alex 32
    Boffin

    ...pdf link has gone down

    Shame really as I would have liked to have a nosey at it..

    It was here:

    http://idealgovernment.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/GOV_ICT_Strat1.pdf

    But now it's gone. Probably served with a Take Down notice.. hurrumpff!

    Anyone else seen it linked?

  9. Alex 32
    Boffin

    ..not a pdf link, but..

    http://www.makeitbetter.org.uk/?page_id=27

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