
UK Chancellor targets IT projects in £6 billion cuts - strawberryshake
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/government-law/public-sector/news/index.cfm?newsid=20298
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ThomPete
This could potentially be a good thing.

The budgets we currently see when the public sector is involved are borderline
vulgar.

Most of these projects could be made for 1/10th of what they are currently
being made for.

By being forced to cut spending perhaps the governmental institutions will
start to listen to more lean oriented approaches.

Unlikely, but possible.

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gaius
It's a weird and emotive thing. One thing that is very risky in UK politics is
cutting NHS spending. It is _the amount you spend_ that the unsophisticated
electorate judges you on, not the results. So New Labour spent GBP 20Bn on IT
systems that don't work and no-one wanted anyway and were lauded for it. The
Tories could slash that in an instant, but then they'll have to deal with
accusations of "cutting the health budget".

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ThomPete
I agree and think it's like that in most European countries. Someone (normally
the opposition) complain that the government isn't doing enough for the
schools where to the government answer we spend X amount of money on this.

There are however times when this backfires.

When some long awaited and praised system goes 300% over budget, at least in
Denmark it's not going down well with the public.

Another area that no country yet seem to have solved satisfactory is the
digitalization of patient journals. But the main problem there seem to be
incompatibility between different divisions which I have a hard time believing
can be that difficult to solve.

Anyway it sure is quite sad to see how bad the government is at running IT
projects. Although large corporations don't seem to be doing much better.

It needs to be solved.

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nradov
I have participated in some of the same international healthcare IT standards
bodies as UK NHS staff, attempting to resolve those incompatibility problems.
It really is that difficult to solve. Unless you've worked in the industry for
years it's hard to appreciate how complex the data is, and how many different
forms it can take. In most cases these aren't accidental differences, they're
driven by real requirements for patient care.

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arethuza
Its a classic mistake to try and make a large IT system meet all the
individual requirements of a large heterogeneous organization - witness many
ERP disasters.

You have to rationalize the processes in an organization _then_ make them use
the same systems. In fact, I've seen scenarios where having totally inflexible
IT systems was actually a bit of a blessing - there was no endless wrangling
over requirements, people were told "you are going to use this and like it"
and they had to change their processes to fit in with the systems.

I wouldn't have believed how well this can work unless I had seen it happen in
a fairly large multinational.

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nradov
It doesn't work in healthcare (at least not in the US). If you tell doctors
"you are going to use this and like it" then many of them will pack up and go
to a more flexible clinic or hospital. It's impossible to ram anything down
their throats.

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arethuza
Can't see why we couldn't do that with the NHS - it's all state owned and paid
for directly by taxes. It should be there to provide healthcare, not to
provide comfortable careers for managers.

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didroe
I'm pretty sure you could save £6 billion just by never _ever_ using EDS
again. It's like some kind of abusive marriage, the government keeps getting
screwed over and then goes back for more.

~~~
parenthesis
`EDS' sounds like a disease: `Eternal Development Syndrome', or somesuch.

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rythie
If the IT project doesn't in end save money more than it cost, it's a failure
in most cases.

The ID card system was never going to save any money nor make the country
safer (it's original selling point). The NHS system seems to be going very
badly so far and is late.

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simonsquiff
These massive project just don't work. 1) Pay consultants vast money to 'spec'
out an insanely complex requirement. 2) Go through very long winded and
expense tender exercise, with the usual suspects - all expensive and with many
failed projects under their belt 3) Company builds from scratch to the spec.
4) Spec is obviously incomplete, discover too late, company asks for lots more
money to fill the gaps. 5) Rinse and repeat (minus the tender)

You end up with something that has taken 10 years, and is delivering a
'requirement' that is 10 years old and now not relevant (even less relevant
than the imperfect 10 year old spec).

The only real way to do this is to break these projects up - either in scope
or in size - ideally get something as off the shelf as possible and iterate it
until it suits the needs, and then roll out wider. I.e. get well away from a
waterfall process of massive scope.

For example, instead of trying to put in place an NHS wide system (which then
fails at great expense), get each individual Trust to go on their own with off
the shelf suppliers or at least smaller, cheaper bespoke organisations.
Smaller, more manageable and cheaper. You can define interoperability
standards if that's needed; you can buy enterprise licenses if one supplier
does end up being obviously better.

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simonsquiff
Part of the problem is the ridiculous procurement processes that the
government departments make you go through. The cost of sale is therefore
amazingly large, which leads to large project costs for the few companies that
are willing to put up with this process, while erecting a barrier of entry for
smaller and cheaper organisations.

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Silhouette
Most of the high profile, high budget projects they are talking about have
been outsourced to big name consulting companies at absurdly high rates.
Cutting those _en masse_ is probably no bad thing.

In other news, there is talk of changing the rules so that a substantial
proportion of such work must be given to smaller, independent companies, who
frankly could probably do a better job given the track record of places like
EDS. As long as they don't then find they "need" to bring in expensive
management consultancy firms to co-ordinate the smaller teams, that is...

~~~
gaius
I think the new government could get away with levying a windfall tax on all
the big outsourcing firms.

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joubert
Will they also start taking the tube without complaining that they're not
riding in a rolls Royce?

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gaius
Probably. It was reported in The Times that Cameron has slashed the size of
the PM's entourage, e.g. no motorcycle outriders for his motorcade. He says if
he gets stuck in a traffic jam he'll just wait like anyone else. Whereas I
remember when Tony Blair wanted to go for a drive, entire roads were shut.
Nothing like going for a sandwich at lunch and finding all of Ludgate Circus
cordoned off and I just wanted to get to Pret on the other side of the road!

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arethuza
If he keeps up stuff like that I might actually start to like the man.

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hugh3
Wow, can we make him President of the United States too?

I've only seen a US presidential motorcade once, but it had some thirty
vehicles and travelled at about sixty miles an hour down a closed-off street.
That, combined with the private 747, is probably the most obscene thing about
the modern US presidency. Waiting in traffic in an unmarked car would do the
President a lot of good.

Yes, I know it's for security, but nobody has taken a shot at a Presidential
motorcade for nearly fifty years, and simply having a roof would have solved
Kennedy's problem.

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gaius
Tony Blair wanted a private jet too but the media derided it as "Blair Force
One" and the idea was quietly scrapped.

New Labour got a lot of credit from some for scrapping the Royal Yacht, but
they neglected to point out that in wartime the Royal Yacht was a actually
fully-functional hospital ship. When we're not at war, why not use it for
diplomatic functions?

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arethuza
I remember the arguments about the Royal Yacht - they seemed to make a lot of
sense to me and I'm fairly anti-Royal. From what I can remember at the time it
was stopped to provide some desperately needed class-warrior credentials for
New Labour - the Royals being fairly easy targets as they can't complain too
much.

