So says the Telegraph leader on Government IT projects.
First, the high turnover rate among senior civil
servants means there is little continuity in the running of schemes.
The MPs found that half the senior civil servants in charge of IT
projects are doing such work for the first time. In an area where
expertise is invaluable, it seems – quite perversely – to be positively
discouraged. This "lack of relevant experience, combined with a regular
turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of
IT-enabled change", observes the PAC.
The
committee is even more exercised by the stupefying level of neglect
shown by government ministers. The prudent expenditure of public funds
should be a priority for all ministers of the Crown. Yet the PAC has
discovered that in many of the most sensitive IT schemes, the senior
officials in charge had not held a single meeting with ministers to
discuss progress. This unforgivable laxity was found in 20 per cent of
all "mission critical and high risk" computer systems.
Well, yes, I take the point about the civil servants….but that also applies to Ministers. You get to be an MP by proving that you can lie effectively to the voters, kissing babies and making great show of your ability to understand and reflect their desires and foibles. Ministers are drawn from those who pass this test…and appointed on the basis of the internal politics of the ruling party. At no point is there actually a test of competence in running an organization. We should not be surprised therefore when we end up with these very large organizations being run by those with no such competence.
While I see no viable alternative to democracy itself, the lesson from the above is that given the paucity of management competence the system implies, we should reduce that portion of the economy managed in such an incompetent manner to something proportional to the amount of expertise on offer. We can joke about having the odd whelk stall available, but being serious for a moment, what is there in the CV of John Reid that makes us think that he’s competent to manage the implementation of the most complex ID card and national database system the world has yet seen?
Having left school at 16, Reid worked as a clerk at a Glasgow Law office, following this he attended the Open University in his mid-twenties to study a Foundation Course and then later attended the University of Stirling, gaining a Bachelor’s degree in history and a Ph.D in economic history, with a thesis on the slave trade written from a Marxist perspective[1].
After graduation he worked as a research officer for the Labour
Party and as a trade union organiser. He entered parliament at the 1987 general election as MP for the Motherwell North constituency.
This?
Patsy Hewitt, who one might think has at least some experience of the real world:
In this role she was a key player in the first stages of the
modernisation of the Labour Party, and along with Lord Hollick, helped
set up the Institute for Public Policy Research and was its deputy director 1989-1994. She became head of research with Andersen Consulting 1994-1997.
Has not exactly shone in charge of the world’s largest IT project to date (the NHS Spine) nor the more minor MTAS system now has she?
This solution looks good on the surface:
The common factor in all these cases is the sheer amateurishness of the
government machine when it comes to cutting a deal. If the men from the
ministry are incapable of driving a hard bargain, they should get
people in who can.
Yes, but those who can are off making a fortune in industry.
The only viable answer is that as the State is run, necessarily so, by incompetent managers, it really shouldn’t be trying to manage very much.
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