Comments on: What the smart government IT supplier needs to say in 12 weeks’ time

By: Adam Saltiel

Adam Saltiel — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:56:25 +0000

As I commented by me I have become interested in this area and found many of my private thoughts echoed in the articles and comments here. I assume this means there is a large consensus on these topics. The issue remains what to do?
I am not sure this web site etc. will become big enough to represent an unavoidable pressure group, a huge ground swell. This leaves us with pragmatic steps.
I suggest a focus on a single point. The comment above shows the matrix of benefits and disbenefits will not permit the needed move from existing suppliers. Frankly it is not conceivable, because such moves as would enable small competitors would be interpreted as against share holder interests.
The only alternative is to support government in making these changes despite resistance from incumbents.
Government needs to unpick its involvement from the collusion as described above.
We need to encourage them, that is can be done, that it should be done and that they are the ones to do it.

By: guy herbert

guy herbert — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:32:59 +0000

“we benefit when this same transparency affects our competitors” – oh no they don’t. Transparency encourages genuine competition on price and service rather than competition to flatter the delusions and risk aversion of those with the power to sign-of big cheques. My competitor’s complicated method of overcharging for project A helps my own obscure, expensive arrangements around project B, and helps keep up the budgets and employ people signing off the intricate milestones in both respective departments. Everyone involved in either project is better off than they would be under transparency, except the taxpayer who is paying and the target of the relevant government activity, who has to take it, cannot leave it, and the smaller firm that mistakenly believes the aim of the game is solving the problem imaginatively and cheaply.

By: adoption curve dot net » Blog Archive » Too Big To Succeed

adoption curve dot net » Blog Archive » Too Big To Succeed — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:16:53 +0000

[…] Perrin has put up a post called “What the smart government IT supplier needs to say in 12 weeks’ time“. I started a comment there which grew to the size of a post, so I figured I might as well […]

By: Tim Duckett

Tim Duckett — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:10:27 +0000

I suspect that the big IT houses are going to be having more and more conversations with people like James Gardner (http://bankervision.typepad.com/) Apologies for quoting from his post (http://bankervision.typepad.com/bankervision/2010/02/halfway-through-my-week-at-the-front-line.html) at length, but I think this is a significant illustration of a mind shift taking place:

“But here is another thing I’ve found in this Job Centre, and it is something I’m not surprised about.

Staff build their own stuff to get around the limitations of systems we provide. There are Excel based spreadsheets which are used for diary management (“oh, I can’t have this open too long, otherwise no-one else will be able to make appointments”). There is email based workflow, where each step is a new inbox that gets manually monitored. And there’s any number of self-made data capturing things that are used for statistics and business reporting.

And all of it is stitched together with another technology: paper. They create their own forms, and their own paper based systems in order to supplement their jobs.

Consequently, the work is processed in a highly efficient way. I’d make a guess that each JobCentre does things slightly differently, depending on how good their custom additions to each of our centrally provided processes are.

If there was ever proof needed that decentralisation of the core is a good thing, then I’ve been immersed in it for the week so far.

I wonder what would happen if we put the appropriate end-user computing tools in the hands of these people and said “design the perfect Job Centre system”. My guess would be something good.”

Having been involved in the peripheries of Big Projects in the past, I’ve often wondered if the reason that they fail is linked to their sheer size and the capacity of an ordinary human being to cope with the scale. Beyond a certain size, it seems that the probability of success by any definition tends to zero, and no amount of tinkering with the political complexions or terminology or methodology-of-the-month will change that.