Outsourcing of this sort of thing is most definatley a godo think.

There is one census every 10 years. If the government run this we are left paying people, pensions, NI for a service that only really needs people working for a year or two, whats more it will be late and over budget.

If we give it to a private company we pay maybe 5 years worth of what we would pay (so the corporate company can make some good money), have no NI or pension liability, no common staffing issues (strikes, grievences, etc) and the project will still run late and overbudget.

What needs to change is the governments gravy train contracts. If companies run over budget and late then they should be fined or not paid as much. That works both ways though, the government needs to let them do a project without changing the spec every 5 minutes.