WRITTEN ON October 19th, 2004 BY Louise Ferguson AND STORED IN Across the Board

Yes, yet more about the process versus object issue.

I see so many e-gov initiatives that limit participation to those in government. Why?

I get invited to talk about e-voting and get asked specifically to limit my thoughts to UK vendors/experiences etc. Why? Vendors compete *across* national borders. It’s only governments that don’t.

Surely building something better means learning from the successes and failures of others, without having to spend the money they have. Why this constant wish to reinvent the wheel? And this feeling that ‘we know best’ and ‘we won’t make the mistakes that others have’? It’s the ‘not invented here’ syndrome.

The public sector can learn from the not-for-profit and private and vice versa. The UK can learn from experiences in other countries and vice versa.

Learning from mistakes is particularly important (you don’t learn too much from successes). For the public sector to have some kind of anonymous reporting system for cockups, a la aviation safety, would be useful. I know this is already under way for NHS, but we could do with this for public sector ICT issues too. It’d be lot more useful than ‘demonstrator’ projects that are little more than PR exercises for the people concerned.