Australia's eMinister has policy-crush on UK's Liam Maxwell Australia's Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has offered a little more detail on his plans for electronic delivery of government services and the way Australia will procure the kit required to deliver them. Writing in The Guardian Australia, Turnbull detailed a meeting with Liam Maxwell this week. Neelie Kroes, the …
"The UK's disdain for customising commercial software is, however, something Australia may do well to consider."
Really - not my experience. My statement would be more along the lines of :
"The UK's inability to restructure processes to support out of box functionality rather than mandate bespoke builds is something Australia would do well to avoid as an example."
to be fair this is not just a UK Govt failing but industry as well. I would be strongly surprised as to whether most other nations are any different. I also hold the vendors to blame for COTS software that is a million miles away from real world use cases - otherwise where would they get their consultancy revenue from?
Example - every Sap programme I've ever heard of.
"The UK's reluctance to sub optimally restructure processes to support out of box functionality rather than mandate bespoke builds is something Australia would do well to emulate as an example."
TFTFY
We've recently installed out-of-the-box SAP and had to perform contortions with our processes just to meet its requirements.
SAP and Lean* go together like chalk and cheese.
*For further info see:
http://www.leanenterprise.org.uk/what-is-lean-thinking/what-is-lean-thinking-and-key-lean-thinking-principles.html
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/lean-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html
This kinda sums up the problem:
http://beyondlean.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/technology-supporting-a-process/
COTS is great when you agree that the function performed by the COTS will be what the COTS currently performs.
It's not so great when some dickhead thinks that he can buy COTS (cuz it's cheaper, natch), and yet still thinks he can customize every single damn thing about it, and change his mind constantly about what each customization is.
Consultants don't give a fuck, if the customer want "cheap" COTS, then they send an integrator and make their margin on the customizations, where as if they can convince the customer that you need bespoke, they send the architect and make their margin that way.
"Consider organising a visit to a friend or a relative in prison. The government has a vested interest in facilitating such visits – research shows that inmates who have regular visits in jail are much less likely to reoffend after release."
'All visitors aged 18 and over will, by their third visit, have to provide photographic evidence of their identity; be photographed for record purposes and have their fingers scanned to enrol them on the system'
http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/visiting-someone-in-prison
'The cloud has transformed everything, he says. “And that is a really big cultural change. This is our way of making sure people are aware of that transition,”'
OH, F***
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