Maude: Gov contracts 'made my eyes water'

We want as a government to create what we've called a power shift...

"We want as a government to create what we've called a power shift and move power and control decisively from elites in Westminster to individuals, neighbourhoods and communities."

er... the Right are the New Left?!?

New open bidding form

Field1 - Number of jobs you will create in marginal constituency we want to win

Field2 - Number of jobs you will transfer from safe seat of other party

Field3 - Number and salary of directorships for senior civil servants / cabinet ministers when they retire

Field4 - Number of contracts for UK stuff your government will cancel if we don't agree to buy your computer/missile/fighter

Yep, can see that being plainly detailed in an online form

Heads must roll

If nobody gets into trouble for being sloppy and lazy, what will change?

Not that this is a Government failing. I work in a big national company, supposedly competitive, and the number of badly conceived and costly projects is also eye-watering. How can so many senior managers have sans clue?

2K a year subscriptions fees....

ensure SMBs are kept out.

The only reason the current lot want to allow SMBs to bid direct is to force the price bid by the big five downwards. No small business will *ever* win a bid - opt outs are built into the terms such as a small business not having resource of some form ("cash liquidity" is often used to exclude SMB's).

I look forward to.....

Francis Maud reading an IT contract and understanding it, they run to thousands of pages, so I can't see any minister reading any of them. They would be hard pushed to understand the IT detail.

I also can't see all government contracts going on to the Internet, most government systems are GPMS at RESTRICTED and above, so the technical details and composition of the systems are not for public consumption for some very good reasons.

Mind you the quality of the requirements, and the answers given, might give a few laughs, I hope the Register is preparing a crack team of jouno's to paw through all these contracts.

So far as being in the List X club goes, it's not difficult to join, just expensive, how to get list X accreditation is available to all, not all contracts require it, and most small niche players come in under a Prime contractor, who helps them.

I doubt Fujitsu and SERCO are good examples of the in club though, neither is doing that well with government IT at present.

Government procurement is fair, to the point of stupidity, it costs a fortune most of the time to bid, even for frameworks, and it's stunningly easy to be excluded for a trivial mistake, as quite a few SI's have found out over the years, getting themselves locked out of frameworks like Catalyst.

TLA PLC

Current contracts with the TLA companies and Big 4 mean that Government can hide projects inside "service contracts". Its okay to sack Consultants from small companies saving a few thousand pounds while also on giving "service providers" similar work for millions! The Cabinet Office is really uninformed.

Don't forget the Non-exec Directors with shares in supplier companies

I wonder how many non-exec directors and even some Board Directors still have shares in companies they used to manage and these same companies are suppliers to Departments/Agencies they work in!

Title, anyone ?

" ....elites in Westminster to individuals, neighbourhoods and communities."

Should read " Individual community residents in the elite community of Westminster ".

There, fixed it for them.

That won't wash, Mr Maude

Mr Maude, the Conservative Party put up their Shadow spokesperson for Science over a year ago with a message that they shared the strategic vision held by key players, for so long ignored by the last administration. We were told that the strategic vision would also herald an end to the cosy contracts that had previously demonstrated a complete absence of governance over IT strategy. We were encouraged.

Within days of the election the window-dressing had been moved to one side and within weeks the same people were reappointed to key positions within the civil service. It was 'business as normal'. I see no evidence at all of strategic governance over IT and so, what we will end up with is smaller, perhaps more cost-effective contracts that perpetuate the expensive, rats' nest of 'point solutions'. We need a clear IT strategy, NOT policy masquerading as strategy. Once that is in place, we need governance to protect the strategy from the deflective ploys of performance-managed career targets of managers and the short-term sales focus of unscrupulous suppliers,

I remain unconvinced: http://sitfo.wordpress.com/

David Gale

CEO

SITFO.org