back to article Labour has a pop at the government over missed GDS targets

In a pre-election pop at the coalition, Labour has slammed Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude for the Government Digital Service's failure to meet even half of its digital targets for online services. The GDS budget increased from £9.7m in 2011/12 to £23.3m in 2013/14, with spend on IT specialists rising to £7.9m over the …

  1. Little Mouse
    Coffee/keyboard

    It takes one to know one

    Can we upvote sub-headers? That's my favourite one this week!

  2. william 10

    The Conservatives should be applaud they only wasted 150 - 200 Million a year on failed IT Projects that's a lot less than the 1 - 2 billion / year of the previous government.

  3. The Crow From Below

    It really does seem that parties that leave office instantly leave all responsibility and blame on the little table by the front door for the new inhabitants of Number 10. It's like watching a bunch of primary school children trying to decide who should be the one to go and ask for their ball back from Norman the angry neighbour.

  4. All names Taken
    Alien

    Perverted inverted or is it ...

    ... inverted perverted?

    Anyway the point is what good could the opposition do?

    Time shows that when in guvmint they more or less run around private secretaries and mandarins bleating "Just let me know what you want me to do so I can help you"?

    Isn't it just "Yes Minister" with the roles of politico and unservile servant pervertedly inverted (or is it inverted perverted?)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    And should Labour get in

    ...they will scrap it for a few billion, claiming it was all the Tories fault. They will then start a new multi-billion pound project, that will run over and be half implemented. This then will be replaced by the next government who will...

  6. smartypants

    Sadly, there are voters out there who are swayed by this sort of bullshit

    You know the kind... stuffed through our letterboxes at this sort of time. Their content is laughable. You think they take you for a fool, but they're not for you. They're not for people with a memory. They're not for people who actually think about right and wrong. They're not for people who are irritated by hypocrisy or downright lies.

    They're for the section of the electorate that vote tribally. It's not about reason. It's about core-vote management. Even if only 10 or 20% of the electorate are like that (but we know it's a lot more), then it's a game worth playing. They're votes in the bag if you just make the right noises, and to hell with reason, the truth, trust and probity.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What will happen to Liam Maxwell?

    If Labour win and all the old Etonians are out of Gov, will they want to keep the ex-head of IT at Eton College as the gov Chief Technical office? I'd be betting on a P45 being in the post pretty quickly...

  8. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    RE : "Encountering serious IT problems."

    Excuse me, but it is very rarely "IT" that is the problem on these large multi-year, multi-multi-million pound, 3rd party / SI party led programmes. The issue is normally that the fundamental prerequisites such as agreeing scope, putting in place the management controls, adequate requirements gathering and business analysis, and at least some modicum of level 1 design not having been completed and agreed before firing the gun on technical delivery - that is the issue.

    It is usually "IT" that inherits the problem*.

    Unfortunately, being "SI led" a lot of these big organisations get blinded by the benefits of the "agile method" - but get to hear none of the cons or prerequisites that still need to be in place to control it.

    * - Thats's not to say IT are totally blameless all the time. I myself once tried to connect a PX11IES into a SUNZI RZ_11BXY before enabling the webmethods interface between R11a and the R/3 module. Boy that was a tough day. But we laughed... eventually.

  9. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    And let's not forget Labors interst in cradle-to-grave surveillance with the NIR.

    Tracking your every move for your safety.

    Right.

    I'm wondering if there's an argument for forcing single term administrations, so only stuff that all major parties agree on continues through multiple terms and the rest thrashes, like an OS trying to run too many jobs.

  10. verloc

    Who pays the bills?

    Can I just remind everyone that whilst this "wasted money" from both parties is good headlines it also pays for a lot of us IT bods to do things like eat, drive, and have a very overpriced roof over our heads. Aye it's bad value for tax payers but it's an ecosystem which would be worse for all of us if 11bn of revenue etc was pulled. Just saying.

  11. briesmith

    Sometimes you've got shit on your face...

    We have had a working revenue protection system managing the London Congestion Zone for years. It's proved very difficult to get into the charging area without being caught by a camera and billed. The system seems to work; and work very well.

    So what did "they" do when they wanted to switch to camera based revenue protection for the Dartford River Crossings? They built another system and called it DART or something equally stupid.

    Now you may have to be an IT expert to balls up any Government IT project but you only have to be a really stupid, totally lazy politician to order a new, expensive, untried IT system when there is a tried and tested one fully operational less than 10 miles away.

    And, what happened to fucking austerity? How did they ever get budget for this new DART system?

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