Re: Direct your ire...
but no-one seems to know how to make government do it those better ways
Actually, people do know how to sort that - it's actually quite easy. All you need to do is have a civil service where the people who know how to do this sort of thing properly can be paid a market rate (give or take a bit for the "not half what they used to be" perks that go with being a civil servant) and employ the right people to do the job.
Where it falls down is that certain red tops and many politicians see civil service pay as something that should be decided by political dogma rather than realism. In real terms, civil servants went through a decade of below inflation pay increases, we've had a year of no pay rises (i.e. pay freeze, not the insultingly misleading "pay pause"), and this year we've had a well below inflation pay rise. Now for good measure, it's been announced that for dogma, 1 in 5 of us is to go - no mention of reviewing what government wants the CS to deliver and how many people are needed for that, but a statement of cuts with no thought as to how that might impact service delivery.
So, there we are, a government department with a need for a new system. In general we don't have the best project managers, or the best systems analysts, or the best ... well anything really. We have a few really good people who stay for their own reasons, but in general the best people go to private industry for a lot more money. We might get some consultants in (at a massively higher cost than it would have cost to actually have some skills in house) - but they will always have one eye on what's best for them, not the long term best for the department.
And of course, even if by some fluke we did manage to get the system specs right, they'll be changed by some minister's sound bite that we'll hear about first in the papers.
"The usual suspects" (i.e. the big 4 consultancy outfits) can pay for the best of the best when it comes to working the system.
THAT is the pirmary reason government IT so often "fails", and how to fix it is obvious. But political dogma would not allow such a fix as it would go against the soundbites about "reducing headcount" and "reducing cost" in the civil service.
And in case it wasn't obvious - posting anon as I am a currently serving civil servant. Working in a department dealing with some high tech engineering and significant safety responsibility. And last time I asked, we were "considerably" under staffed with many unfilled vacancies - partly because we cannot get people with the skills we need to come and work for what's on offer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
