So, GDS saved Brits £1.7bn through 'digital transformation'. Sure about that?

Re: Enough is enough

Have a +1 from elsewhere in the trenches.

Re: Enough is enough

As far as Joe Sixpack in the trenches of Govt IT is concerned, GDS have been an immense aggrevation to no benefit. No doubt many 10s if not 100s of contractors have made-out like gangbusters.

The problem is that you have not one but two camps who are their own worst enemy when it comes to such projects. Few IT people know how to deal with the politics enough to stop them from risking a project (and that includes getting political people to say "yes" or "no" when speccing the whole scope because they have been trained from in the egg* never to say anything definite), and generally don't have the power to tell people to kindly f* off when it goes off-spec because their bosses get paid regardless (the IT people don't - they're the cannon fodder that gets ritually sacrificed sacked when the project inevitably fails).

On the other side, few politicians can resist meddling in the project instead of leaving it well alone because they want the publicity and glory for as long as it appears the project may actually deliver (which, ironically, they endanger with their involvement). Every time they come anywhere near a project it makes a mess of the deliverables, because what they say in public is usually dreamt up on the spur of the moment, but after it has been said it will somehow have to be added into the deliverables, even if it is total BS.

* Egg, because they are genetically closer to lizards IMHO.

The NAO keep on pointing out IT cockup after IT cockup, they need to be careful or they'll find themselves outsourced to a more "MP face saving" organisation......

That already happened, but in a different way. For a time, the NAO were led by a "former" board member of the very consultancy they were supposed to audit, which naturally led to complete impartiality. That the consultants on the major project they were running were briefed in advanced and the use of "auditors" that were barely out of school were, of course, entirely coincidental, and so the project got a solid "pass" - you will never spot dirt if you employ people who you can direct not to lift up the carpet.

I'm amazed no journalist spotted it at the time, but to be fair, it was too easy to spin to get a good grip on it. What they should have done was interview a number of junior project members privately and ask them why they had been drawing payment for sitting on their hands for weeks instead of doing something else, and what they did about it. That would have been interesting to watch..

Oh, the project? Why, that got scrapped. Or did you expect a less predictable outcome?

Re: Save here, loose there...

The comment touched on something I have never seen a full audit of - the cost to the country of outsourcing aboad. I can certainly see where there are some advantages to a departments budget of outsourcing but to the country as a whole? Just consider the wages & tax (income, corporation & VAT) - of a £1b contract outsourced to say India how much is lost when compared to not outsourcing