Updated: Is the excessive spend on IT all the last governments fault?

After yesterdays posting on Is the excessive spend on IT all the last governments fault?, I did get an update from someone in the know… I cant just post my own tuppenceworth without adding in about the information in the site that I was pointed to. I’m not going to repost what is posted there, you can go take a look for yourself at http://nhs-it.info

NHS23 is a dossier of communications made to the government by a group of twenty-three academics who repeatedly told the Government how the largest non-military IT operation in the world NPfIT (http://www.btplc.com/Health/NHSIT/NPfIT/index.htm) at that point was doomed to failure. The project was delivered on a “We will tell you what you need and you will build it” structure without any thought to asking for professional assistance. Read the NHS23 site for some interesting reads.

I’m going to close this off again for now… Interested to hear if this elicits any comment….

Is the excessive spend on IT all the last governments fault?

I was reading an article on the BBC this morning… click the link, read it and then comment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12905303

The previous administration certainly has not done anything to enhance the reputation of the cost wasting of IT for IT’s sake… Certainly a very early lesson in my education; If a system doesn’t need to be computerised, dont computerise it. The question is, do we, the creators of these requested systems not have to take an element of responsibility for saying yes to these or do all we see is £££ signs? After all, government money is usually easy money.

IT is very much a service industry and so the tendency is towards trying to achieve what is requested of us but perhaps if the brakes were put on lunatic projects or just a little bit of honesty about how long it would really was going to take to build Deep Thought (hitchhikers guide reference there) and just how much it was going to cost then perhaps more sensible discussions would have been made by the administration.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not in any way want to make excuses for Labour’s policies but a sharing of the responsibility might be the right thing to do. Of course if all the political parties just got beyond all the politicking and backstabbing and just got on with the job of running the country then we might not be in the mess we are in now

I had to laugh at the sentence about using Apple equipment. It does kind of fly in the face about the criticism about opening up the procurement of IT equipment to smaller companies. I find it funny that we always talk of Apple being so secure and yet Safari loaded with security updates got hacked open in 5 minutes; too much Apple everywhere will only turn hackers attention more towards the platform then bend their wills to dominating them…. It is a dangerous complacence.

#ThisIsMyOwnOpinionAndMayNotReflectTheViewsOfTheManagement

Thoughts?