IT Spend in Government

The excellent Adam Smith Institute has a great article by Tim Worstall "Three time over budget and you're out" which reveals a catalogue of IT overspend in Government and quotes:

A friend involved in these projects, just before Christmas, tried - using publicly available search technology - to produce a rival to the DirectGov portal. "Our tests," he reports, "show that DirectionlessGov is much more effective at most common searches than DirectGov. "While full cost data is not available for the first year of operation, the publicly funded DirectGov has been built from a group with an operating budget of £4.4 million and a team of 39. At the time of writing, total development time for DirectionlessGov is approaching 26 minutes, and is reported to be on schedule."

This made the Gorse Fox review his experiences and what he has learned from the experiences of colleagues.

• Never start a project because a Minister has made a commitment in Parliament - you can guarantee it is ill conceived, there insufficient budget, and the timetable is utter fantasy.
• Never put a "policy" person in charge - they will never freeze the requirements long enough to allow any sustained development activity.
• Accept that you will have a list of stakeholders as long as Peter Crouch's arm - inform them but DO NOT involve them.
• Recognise that most of the week will be taken up with meetings
• Recognise that all meetings need (by Civil Service mandate) to have at least 47 people attending and every one of them must give their view for a minimum of 10 minutes.
• Recognise that the person in charge (SRO) probably has about as much idea of what is needed and how software is developed as the Gorse Fox does about brain surgery. (Well you just saw through the cranium and poke about inside for a while, don't you? It can't take that long.)
• Recognise that if software has to be purchased it will take a minimum of twelve months - this is because a) they always want the most expensive product in the belief it is the best; b) they want to drive the price down; c) they have no budget allocated for it; d) they have to follow ridiculous OJEC rules which are designed to make things fair for all vendors by preventing the Government from ever buying anything
• Recognise that your architects and designers will stop going to meetings, because life is too short already
• Recognise that your project manager will be changed after the "honeymoon period" as he will take the blame.
• Recognise that there will be a significant cadre of people actively hoping that you will fail, and doing everything in their power to make sure everyone knows what a disaster is looming.

Gorse Fox cannot escape the realisation of how lucky he is working with the Esteemed Client where his biggest problems are his own Trolls, and external interference.

[File under: Government IT Projects]