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Why is this article about the UK MOD illustrated with a photo of a US soldier?
The Ministry of Defence is set to prolong the British armed forces' payroll, HR, and pensions admin contract with DXC Technology by half a year – because the military's procurement team has run out of time to find a replacement. The £400m seven-year tech contract with the ministry's Services Personnel and Veteran Agency (SPVA …
There is always this one.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/18/capita_army_recruiting_it_contract_could_terminated
A spokeswoman at the MoD told us this week it has been “engaged in a formal procurement process” since April last year “against a widening set of objectives to support its overall business transformation.”
This usually means that "we are waiting for Defence Permanent Secretary to retire, collect his pension and then join the board of HPE".
A spokeswoman at the MoD told us this week it has been “engaged in a formal procurement process” since April last year “against a widening set of objectives to support its overall business transformation.”
"a widening set of objectives". In other words, scope creep and fluid requirements. Never heard of that from the MoD before.
How times have changed (not)?
I didn't get where I am today without being a junior code monkey on an MoD IT project. Working for what was a major consulting firm at the time (but now long gone). The consulting firm's sales droids were quite blatant about the sales tactics. Get the naive customer to sign a contract for the most minimal and vague specification at a give-away minimum price that undercut all potential competition.
Then every single bit of scope creep and alteration to spec was charged extra. A lot extra.
The names change, but the tactics remain the same.
Get the naive customer to sign
Maybe they are not so naive. If you don't think you'd get funding for the true cost of the programme, start with a reduced-cost spec, and then make change requests once everyone is irrevocably committed to the programme. Sometimes you might get cancelled - most times you won't.
It's a game that two can - and do - play at.
I was one, decades ago. Later, in a management capacity with a major 'client'-type, I was horrified that they went to market to buy a 'solution' to a spaghetti problem they had accumulated, only to buy some off-the-peg USian COBOL that half-solved some other non-Brit problems, and charged premium rates for change-notes to rancid dataformats and file structures. I couldn't stop it, it was a predictable disaster, and it has now only come right through a period of most painful 'evolution' - because no one ever properly analysed what the systems were supposed to be doing.
The MOD are pretty big-league for incompetence too. It's hard to beat somewhere that puts people who have no interest, talent, or experience in procurement throws them in to the job then removes them as soon as they figure out what they're doing.