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"How does one spend $1 billion on software and fail?" Just look at most UK Government IT projects. They've got it down to a fine art, blowing billions and bei
by pascalmemories 11y ago
"How does one spend $1 billion on software and fail?"
Just look at most UK Government IT projects. They've got it down to a fine art, blowing billions and being left with nothing useful.
Several major international government consultancy firms got their break on supposed small UK Gov IT projects, and were able to keep billing $1,000's/hour for years (while delivering nothing useful) and became big IT consultancies in the process. The failure didn't harm them one little bit - it let them claim the have experience and that got them way more work.
IT project failure in large and complex organizations is practically guaranteed.
Now, if they did that small-ish team, paid well, it could well work. But your board is not going to approve some pizza munching, jolt cola drinking geeks as your wonder IT team. Don't worry what the team is really like, the consultants asked by the board to review them as part of the process will make sure they're described as the aforementioned pizza and cola weirdos. And recommend using the consultants team instead. Been there. Done that.
- darkr 11y agoThere's no board for UK government IT projects. The process starts with lobbyists (from the likes of Fujitsu, CSC etc) offering fancy dinners, a few trips to the opera, family holiday in Barbados, and crucially a revolving door, behind which is a future lucrative senior position should they decide to engage the services of said company. Lucrative senior position will in part involve lobbying former government friends and colleagues. And so the cycle continues...
- mseebach 11y agoNHS Connecting for Health literally was that board. Also, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity -- or, in this case, incompetence. If you're telling yourself that the difference between billion-pound boondoggles and small, competent and motivated teams working to agile principles is a bit of low-level corruption (so lightweight that none of it could be discovered and prosecuted under the Bribery Act), you're looking in the wrong place (and you'll also struggle to explain how and why the Government Digital Service was set up, and why they're succeeding).
- darkr 11y agoYeah, you're right. I am generalising and cynically caricaturing; though a fair bit of that stuff does go on. The current system of self-regulation is sorely in need of reform and legislation, but those tasked with legislating are the ones who benefit from the current system. I have a lot of respect for the lads and ladies at the GDS. They're doing some sterling work.
- gaius 11y agoThe NHS blew £10bn on one software project that never delivered and was scrapped. This is very normal in UK govt procurement. See also what we are spending on aircraft carriers with no planes.
- madaxe_again 11y agoDon't forget the ongoing costs. Nhs choices costs £3 per page-view from last year's figures. It's a largely static site. Imagine, they could actually pay health care workers properly if they stopped hosing taxpayer money down the gigantic nepotism drain.
- kennydude 11y agoIt's horribly slow and doesn't seem to work well at all neither. Hopefully the new NHS digital team will take over that entirely soon (http://nhsalpha.herokuapp.com/ http://nhsalpha.herokuapp.com/)
- gaius 11y agoThe sad thing is if you say this is evidence the NHS needs some reform, a load of freaks will appear screaming "save our NHS!!" Not even realizing they are just saving the profits of Accenture shareholders.