3 ms·

IIRC there was talk of that being a disaster because they wanted to avoid giving the contract to one single company and mandated it was split up with different

IIRC there was talk of that being a disaster because they wanted to avoid giving the contract to one single company and mandated it was split up with different companies doing different bits. So they deliberately sharded the contract and so there was endless bureaucracy and politics and blame-gaming between the companies who are normally competing against each other for work and so on. It's kinda interesting really. I don't think it would have gone much better if a single company did everything as the often seems to be a clusterfuck regardless (example: post office horizon system)... Then you look at a big company like meta or Google and they're churning out systems that pretty much work and at huge scale.. are the people incompetent at consulting companies? Are the customers incompetent? Perhaps there are a million legacy dependencies that needs to be dealt with (but that is true with meta etc al too). Interesting interesting. I know freelancers whose line of work is basically to get contracted in while Fujitsu or Accenture or IBM or whoever is there doing work, and basically just try to stop them pulling the wool over the eyes of the clients. Their whole careers have basically been calling bullshit on consultants.

zimpenfish 2y ago
> Then you look at a big company like meta or Google and they're churning out systems that pretty much work and at huge scale.. They are but they also have a margin for breakage that, e.g., the NHS doesn't really have. If your Facebook or Instagram feed is missing everything from the last 3 days because a node went down, they can fill that in with other stuff and you might not even notice. Same with stuff missing from Google Search, etc. If stuff is missing from your medical notes because a node went down, that could be fatal if you're just about to have a procedure done. Same with, e.g., tax records, police records, etc. I guess financial institutions are the better option (but again they still have a bunch of "reconcile stuff at the end of the day" options that don't necessarily translate to the NHS et al.)
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I think if you saw the volumes of emails sent inside a trust from IT saying that things were down or back up, you might be surprised. Google and Meta have insanely better track records and standards for themselves, because they have more money and more of an incentive to be working. Meta created a planet-scale messaging service which just went live and worked straight away under full load. They have insane testing ability and desire.

zimpenfish 2y ago

> Then you look at a big company like meta or Google and they're churning out systems that pretty much work and at huge scale.. They are but they also have a margin for breakage that, e.g., the NHS doesn't really have. If your Facebook or Instagram feed is missing everything from the last 3 days because a node went down, they can fill that in with other stuff and you might not even notice. Same with stuff missing from Google Search, etc. If stuff is missing from your medical notes because a node went down, that could be fatal if you're just about to have a procedure done. Same with, e.g., tax records, police records, etc. I guess financial institutions are the better option (but again they still have a bunch of "reconcile stuff at the end of the day" options that don't necessarily translate to the NHS et al.)

robertlagrant 2y ago
I think if you saw the volumes of emails sent inside a trust from IT saying that things were down or back up, you might be surprised. Google and Meta have insanely better track records and standards for themselves, because they have more money and more of an incentive to be working. Meta created a planet-scale messaging service which just went live and worked straight away under full load. They have insane testing ability and desire.