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back to article MPs' IT support costs £1.122m

If you've ever wondering how much it costs to show MPs and their staff how to use their computers, the answer is in - £1.22m. The figure came in a Commons answer yesterday. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown had asked what the cost of IT support for members was. John Thurso, speaking for the House of Commons Commission, replied that the …

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  1. DaWolf
    FAIL

    what a useless article

    First paragraph

    "If you've ever wondering how much it costs to show MPs and their staff how to use their computers, the answer is in - £1.22m."

    If you think this is all IT support does, how are you in any way qualified to right on this topic?

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    1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)
      Reply Icon

      Re: what a useless article

      If you don't understand flippancy, exaggeration for comic effect or satire, why do you read this site?

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    2. Neil Stansbury
      Reply Icon

      Probably because...

      They know the difference between "right" and "write".

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does that include their Microsoft licensing?

    Post? I don't need no stinkin post :)

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  3. Ben Brandwood

    Hmmm

    Assuming a generous salary of £30,000 for IT support, and actual cost to the employers is double that (i.e. heat, light, office space, NI contributions, pensions etc) that's about 20 full time staffers.

    Given there's over 5,000 people who need support that's 250 users per IT guy. Doesn't sound *too* bad.

    It also doesn't mention if that includes HW/SW costs, or things like data centres, hosting, etc...

    I'd like to see at least a representative comparison with similar public bodies and private orgs.

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  4. Philip Hands

    or about 2k per MP's office

    Which doesn't sound too bad...

    except for the fact that my MP tells me that he couldn't get the IT folks to do anything useful with his mail for several days when the account to which he was forwarding his mail became inaccessible in a fumbled ISP move.

    I'd imagine that many MPs are the worst combination of arrogant and clueless, so I'd probably want more than 2k/p.a. to support one of those, but the fact that they were unable to sort out an MP's mail for about a week, and so wasted a load of his time would seem to indicate that they're not earning the money.

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  5. James Geldart

    Just under £33/user/month

    Sounds fairly reasonable to me

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  6. Primus Secundus Tertius
    FAIL

    Misplaced apostrophe

    The headline should read: "Mps' IT support...", with the apostrophe after the 's'.

    As it stands, it means that one single MP had support costing millions.

    Poor journalism!

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    1. mhoulden
      Reply Icon

      Fixed now

      However I like to think it was all spent on showing Tony Blair how to move the cursor around the screen. Funny how some people like to boast about how they don't know how to use a computer but wouldn't dream of saying they dislike Shakespeare, or dismissed being able to read and write as something they never mastered but were happy to let the kids do for them.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    *brrt* *brrt* Won't somebody pick up the phone? *brrt* *brrt*

    I can't help but wonder, why are they spending time in the commons gathering this info? Isn't there a yearly statement or other that details all of this and far more than you'd care to know?

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  8. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    A support task that clearly calls for some very *special* staff.

    The user group the BOFH was born to support*

    *with some occasional assistance from the PFY

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  9. cheesey_toastie

    Does this include their website development

    They all have their own websites... most have two (one for campaigning one for constituency business). If so that would be pretty good!

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