Computer blunders cost 26 BILLION pounds

kabayiri

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Presumably the contractors also have a vested interest in dragging the jobs out as long as possible.

This dreadful Government has an aweful lot to answer for - can they do anything efficiently?

It's usually the client changing their minds which delays things. That's if they make up their minds what they want. Again government clients can take an age to make firm decisions, by which time the project is already late.

I'm afraid large scale computer system projects can bring out all the weakest traits in humans.

Interestingly, this particular government we have all grown to love has been having a long time love affair with large centralist systems. Not only does this put greater stress on the need for security spend, the means to verify performance become quite expensive too.

chucky

moggylover wrote: »

Seems in this case though, that the public sector paid the "market rate" (heavily marked up because it was taking money from the public purse no doubt;)) and then still got sub-standard employees:D.

i have no idea and neither have you because we don't know how these projects were managed or was it the technology that was rubbish or was it the system architecture. we just don't know

moggylover wrote: »

Not at all bothered what role your friend has - £650 per day is ridiculous unless he is involved in something truly new and enterprising: and messing around with what someone else has invented and manufactured doesn't tick those boxes for me:D

i don't justify the £650 a day - i can only say that it is the market rate for that job.
if the public sector needs someone to do that job they need to pay the market rate.
if they want to pay less they take the risk of getting someone less experienced or even not sufficiently qualified.

i don't like my job and the only reason that i do it is because of the money no other reason. there are many people with tougher jobs and with more justifiable jobs that earn much, much less. that isn't really my problem though or is it?

chucky

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Presumably the contractors also have a vested interest in dragging the jobs out as long as possible.

This dreadful Government has an aweful lot to answer for - can they do anything efficiently?

this isn't exclusive to the public sector - every contractor in the private or public sector wants their project to drag which in turn means their contract on as much as possible even when they're doing the job well. why? well you know the answer already - not sure why it's the governments fault though....

Old_Slaphead

chucky wrote: »

this isn't exclusive to the public sector - every contractor in the private or public sector wants their project to drag which in turn means their contract on as much as possible even when they're doing the job well. why? well you know the answer already - not sure why it's the governments fault though....

Presumably they initiate the major computer projects then empower the management to mismanage them. As an example of lack of budgeting accountability how about the Scottish Parliament building fiasco.

chucky

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Presumably they initiate the major computer projects then empower the management to mismanage them. As an example of lack of budgeting accountability how about the Scottish Parliament building fiasco.

so you've gone from the contractor dragging out the contract, to the management mismanaging the project and now you've now decided it's the governments fault because the budget of the Scottish Parliament building was too high...

Old_Slaphead

chucky wrote: »

so you've gone from the contractor dragging out the contract, to the management mismanaging the project and now you've now decided it's the governments fault because the budget of the Scottish Parliament building was too high...

I was merely illustrating how poor this government is at controlling budgets. BTW if it wasn't the Government's fault that the project came in 800% over forecast then who's was it?
Given that they can't control costs on one itsy-bitsy project what chance have they got with the rest of their spending plans. Contractors, consultants, financiers, suppliers etc - everybody runs rings around them....quite simply they've no business sense.

avantra

chucky wrote: »

.

i don't like my job and the only reason that i do it is because of the money no other reason. there are many people with tougher jobs and with more justifiable jobs that earn much, much less. that isn't really my problem though or is it?

Horses for courses I say, I was in IT for ten years and was in the same situ as you dear Chuck, didn't like my job, worked didn't mean much to anyone and most of the people around me were there just because it was lucrative.

Two years ago I had this light bulb moment when I realise I only have one life and found a job with humans for less than half the money but oh boy I am happy to wake up in the morning.

chucky

avantra wrote: »

Horses for courses I say, I was in IT for ten years and was in the same situ as you dear Chuck, didn't like my job, worked didn't mean much to anyone and most of the people around me were there just because it was lucrative.

Two years ago I had this light bulb moment when I realise I only have one life and found a job with humans for less than half the money but oh boy I am happy to wake up in the morning.

oh i agree, i don't haven't reached the stage where i hate my job yet - i'll hopefully doing that in the next 5 years - my plan is take the first stage of my retirement between 40-45 which is to do an easy job that i enjoy that is local to home.

Bootski

donaldtramp wrote: »

http://http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-computer-blunders-cost-16326bn-1871967.html



It continues....

WOW - things just get worse and worse then - along with the 1billion paid out by the DWP in error this year alone - seems the system is truly in melt-down:eek:

Pennywise

As an accountant, we suffer the HMRC computer systems on a daily basis and the amount of time we waste due to their errors and inefficiency is remarkable. You can't blame any particular part of the organisation structure though - I think they're all a shambles.

From the top, you have the politicians (esp Gordon Brown) constantly tinkering around, changing the rules 2 or 3 times a year, so that the technicial specification for the computers are constantly changing. The programmers don't have time to finish their current system before they have to change it again. Changes in tax law once a year is bad enough, but at least can be planned for, but additional changes mid-year is ridiculous and Gordon should be ashamed of himself for failing to appreciate the repercussions of his ill considered knee jerk reactions.

At the bottom, the programmers are clearly idiots. You can't blame anyone but the programmer for some of the most basic errors in the systems. As a random example, on their online system, it asks you to enter your postcode and gives an example of "AB1 2CD" but in reality you have to enter it as AB12CD or you get an error message - that's simple bad programming but what's worse is that the system has been like that for well over a year and hasn't been corrected despite it being regularly reported to HMRC as an error. Another classic is the "narrative" boxes in the online tax return, where characters such as "£" and "%" aren't accepted - anyone with a brain would realise that you're fairly likely to need to be able to put in pound and percent signs when you're giving information about a tax return - which is largely based around monetary amounts and percentages - doh!

In the middle, there are no doubt masses of middle managers who havn't a clue, don't know much about tax, don't know much about programming, never had to use the HMRC systems themselves - the kind who are just sitting around, doing their jobs, taking the money, but clearly havn't the experience, knowledge or ability to manage such a large and complicated project.

To my mind, we need some fundamental changes:-

1. Govt must stop "tinkering" around in all areas - they should be braver and make big long term decisions and then stick to them.

2. Public sector IT systems are here to stay - they'll always need supporting and will always need to be changed as laws and circumstances change. Each system should have its own full time, in house, IT development and support team - outsourcing should be banned except for purely short term requirements - then we'll have dedicated staff who are in it for the long term, who know their programmes, and who can therefore improve them and adapt them far quicker and more efficiently than a string of disinterested outsiders.

3. Scrap the huge IT projects and replace them with smaller IT systems.

It constantly amazes me how the likes of banks and pension firms, e-retailers, etc can produce very good fully functioning websites, with easy to deal with security features, very little downtime, that work each and every time you want them to, yet virtually anything to do with Government is a nightmare - convoluted non-sensical security/password protection systems, often closed down overnight or for a day or two for updates, constant errors etc - a private sector system wouldn't survive with that kind of utter disregard for the users.

The answer is clear - get the Govt to employ IT consultants etc who have held down full time jobs in the private sector in firms like Ebay, Argos, Amazon, Hargreaves Lansdowne, Halifax bank, etc - those with a proven track record in producing the goods. You can't tell me that the average full time employee of these private firms are on massive pay deals that the public sector can't match - the average Amazon programmer isn't going to be on a few hundred thousand per year!