Open source Gov.UK is 'example of UK soft power' El Reg joined 13,000 registrants to attend the first day of HPE Discover at the ExCel centre in London's Docklands and what a huge affair it is. We have already covered the first big news announcement (on "composable infrastructure") and in this article we zoom in on the keynote delivered to a packed auditorium by CEO Megan …
The overall look and feel and sentiment is good.
is a nice idea, but we didn't get any contracts out of two cycles so have not been a direct player for the current one, and we are exactly the SME it was set up to attract.
NHS procurement is ridiculously complex and there is an opportunity for G Cloud to be a threshold test, and if you meet that and there is a specced contract that is all you need.
Given that a shiny, brand-new steam locomotive in Babbage's day would set you back about £1500, and its counterpart today is somewhere between £1 and 2 million - even the amounts haven't changed that much.
Babbage spent the Victorian equivalent of £170 million, on what was basically a two-person project.
A lot of people complain about how government is inefficient, particularly where IT is involved, but one reason this comes up is that if you are a private company and someone can't use your service, you lost a customer. That happens, and businesses can deal with it. If you are the government, your services must be available to everyone. That introduces a vast number of complexities and edge cases that people who have never worked in this area are unlikely to think of.
I'm sure many cost overruns are a combination of the extra effort involved to mitigate those problems combined with the fact that companies willing to pitch in low to get the business are either unaware of the complexities involved or working with a plan to increase the amount they bill later. Many "overruns" are most likely to be close to the cost of the project that would be projected by any rational person, but because the job goes to the lowest bidder companies have to make up fictitious cheap prices that they are well aware they will never achieve.
I'm not defending the process at all, but a lot of the perceived waste is more a question of people trying to do a very difficult job. The government could probably save a lot of money by having some decent in-house development teams and some expert contract negotiators, but invest-to-save doesn't bring extra cash to companies where ministers have directorships, does it?
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Nope.
Govt ICT is inefficient because it can be. It doesnt have to work. Unless its stupendously bad (NHS IT bad) it gets more funding and carries on.
I've seen many an example of contracts whereby the Govt buyer is happy with
a) paying loads
b) dealing with anyone other than SMEs
because it makes their CV look a lot more impressive.
Your argument about corner cases for public supply is a bit flawed. A lot of services, essential services, are for the poor and vulnerable (old etc). A lot of these members of society DONT EVEN HAVE COMPUTER ACCESS.
"That is quite the understatement, considering the many vastly expensive cost-overruns that has beset the UK government’s failed mega IT projects"
Nearly all of which were developed, delivered, and (trust me on this, seen it with my own eyes MANY times) usually effectively run by (as in: "we've got the contract, now we'll tell you what you're going to get") the PRIVATE sector.
It's not for nothing that many large GDs are now taking design, development and delivery back in-house: private sector delivery partners are, and always have been, fucking useless.
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