Is this what control is going to look like when we take it back?
Yet another committee gives UK.gov a lashing for digital strategy delay
At the current rate Julian Assange is more likely to see the light of day than the government's digital strategy – with a second Parliamentary committee having criticised its long-overdue publication. The cross-government strategy is now more than one year late, with no clear indication as to when it is likely to be published …
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Friday 20th January 2017 12:25 GMT Doctor Syntax
"Among other things it is expected to include a plan for the Government Digital Service, which was awarded £450m in November 2015 but still has no road map for how that cash should be spent."
This seems extremely unlikely given that a real plan works in exactly the opposite direction:
We need {whatever}
Work out what it will cost
Ask for money
(Plan usually stops at this point).
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Friday 20th January 2017 12:30 GMT EnviableOne
@DrSyntax - yeah, thats just not how government works
Buzz words and Reports get the government a lashing
Treaury digs down couch and throws spare change at problem
They then find someone to come up with a plan
they spend said spare change getting civil servants to rehash old ideas that dont work
and around we go again
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Friday 20th January 2017 15:35 GMT Doctor Syntax
"yeah, thats just not how government works"
Actually both models apply. People on the ground have ideas that could be useful, some happen, many get shelved because getting the funding takes longer than losing the will to live. In the meantime vast amounts get spent doing nothing, or at least, doing nothing useful.
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Friday 20th January 2017 14:15 GMT Lotaresco
GDS
""Among other things it is expected to include a plan for the Government Digital Service, which was awarded £450m in November 2015 but still has no road map for how that cash should be spent."
Under normal rules GDS would have to give that money back in March. However GDS seems to be "blessed" by the government. No matter how many monumental cockups it is involved in, no matter how lame its strategy is, no matter how clueless the few guidance documents they publish make them look[1] they are the love-child that no one is permitted to criticise. The love child of Francis Maude and Martha Lane Fox (retch).
[1] Look up their security standards document if you can. It's hilarious and appears to have been written by a child in crayon before being typed up by a drunken monkey.
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Friday 20th January 2017 12:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Big Ideas and Strategies on this scale are dangerous things and are frequently doomed and guaranteed to go over-budget and under-deliver.
Please people should be being keel-hauled aren't the ones not coming up with the strategy, but the ones that keep insisting on having one.
In the modern era we are learning more and more than an agile approach to technology deployment yields better results far sooner and much cheaper. Spending huge amounts of time and money to come up with something which cannot be tested before hand is ridiculous. On the basis that failure on some levels is almost guaranteed it is far better to learn from early mistakes and address them quickly than to spend ages spending money and time on doing nothing only for it to fail anyway, and in a potentially massive way.
One would hope that gone are the days of design by committee, and politicians could learn a lot from the smaller agile startups that HMRC continually seek to milk for the extra revenue they need due to ineffectual government making huge and expensive lash-ups.
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Monday 23rd January 2017 12:11 GMT Lotaresco
Re: I would love to be part of a committee
"... Just having to criticize, a glass of wine in the hand, sitting at the table of a good restaurant, and paid for that... sounds a cool job!"
Yesss... well as a member of several committees I admire your optimistic view of what being on a committee is like but the reality doesn't look like that. It looks like bloody hard work in rooms miles away from alcohol and good food with occasional deliveries of vile curled-up sandwiches if the organisation thinks it's worth it. Otherwise you may have go hungry. As to getting paid, long, hollow laughter. Committee work is often pro bono. The members are paying to be there.
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Saturday 21st January 2017 04:10 GMT Colin Millar
Coinciding with the Industrial Strategy
That's pretty much guaranteed - they haven't got a clue what to put in that either.
The plan from this point on is going to be something like:
Write a content free vision statement
Have another consultation with key stakeholders to see if they can think of something
Discover they pissed 450m up the wall on lunch and glossy vision statement printing
Have a "refresh" of the strategy
GOTO 10
Biting the hand that feeds IT
