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back to article House of Commons to digitise parliamentary questions

The House of Commons Commission has said it plans to switch to electronic delivery of Hansard's parliamentary written questions and answers. The commission is "vigorously pursuing a new approach" to set up a secure electronic means of transferring questions and answers to and from government departments to the house, according …

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  1. TkH11

    Hmm

    So how much is this going to cost us, the tax payer? Presumably it could be done for £200K, which means it's going to cost us £10million and it still won't work. You just know it.

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  2. frank ly
    Happy

    IT's Entertainment

    "Bell told Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson that despite past failures the commission still intends to press ahead with a shift to electronic delivery."

    I used to feel annoyed at all the Government failure to use IT properly. Now, I just laugh at their quaint and bumbling efforts to get to grips with the modern world.

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  3. Anonymous John

    "a secure electronic means of transferring questions"

    How long before they turn up in a USB stick found in a taxi?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      They'll do it right this time, it'll be on a USB stick* in a red box**.

      * one answer per stick

      ** one stick per box***

      *** sticks may not be reused, boxes may.

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    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      @Anonymous John

      Why would anyone care if the non-secret information that will eventually be published on a website for the world to see gets left on a USB stick in a taxi?

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  4. Harry
    Thumb Up

    Projects like this should SAVE, not COST

    However, let's get one thing straight. If you want to save money, don't give the job to a government department and above all, don't let them subcontract it out to the highest bidder (as, presumably, they must presently be doing).

    Give the job to a couple of university students (or maybe even a couple of primary school kids). You might have to rewrite their grammar afterwards but you'd get the job done for less than one percent of the cost -- but most importantly, it might actually *work*.

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  5. TkH11

    Civil service

    Goverment departments lack of modernisation is legendary.

    I worked for a few years for one scientific arm of the government, compared to most government departments, this would have been one of the most intelligent departments the government has in respect of the number of PhDs and other degrees staff had.

    We were upgrading a national distributed system, parts needed to be ordered. (This was only around 10 years ago). In those days, it was common to place telephone orders with companies, fax orders, can't quite recall if online ordering was available them, probably was.

    What was this department's processes for placing orders?

    The requisitor had to hand fill in a form, that was then sent using internal mail to the head office, where it was then handed to a typing pool, the typists would type it up into a requisition form and it would be despatched by first/second class post to the supplier! F**K me!

    Could you just telephone the supplier and place the order? No. It was against the rules, against the process. So you spent a week waiting for your goods to be shipped whilst all the bureaucracy took place, and you sat there and twiddled your thumbs until those important parts arrived.

    Welcome to the British government, welcome to the civil service where bureaucracy is king.

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    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      @TkH11

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that sort of thing put in place so that records are kept of everything ordered, why, by whom and for how much? Internet ordering (or fax) is certainly something that could be allowed, ((records could easily be kept,) but phone conversations?

      I have a feeling a lot of people would cry "government wasting our tax dollars in secret" at that one.

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