TfL to splash £400m on networking deal, despite GDS opposition Transport for London (TfL) has opened its wallet and invited suppliers to reach in and grab £400m under a networking deal. The scope of the deal is for a single supplier to provide access network and wide area network services as a managed service. It'll be a "major element" of the department's plan to disaggregate its …
>This won't end well
That kind of presupposes that it's working OK now.
I did once work for part of a major supplier of transport services to a metropolitan area, and that particular section believed it had a business need for some large-screen displays. The outsourced IT management made it clear that it didn't "support" displays larger than 21" (regardless of geometry or pixel density) and that if we attached such a display to one of their PCs, it would no longer be eligible for connection to the corporate network. We could, of course, buy and support our own PCs, but only on a separate network with no connection to corporate infrastructure. As it happens, for the particular application envisaged, corporate connectivity wasn't strictly necessary, but of course we couldn't get the budget to provide our own equipment or support because there was already an outsourced contractor in place whose job was to supply such things.
Also, although we were supposedly a software-development outfit, we weren't officially allowed to install development tools on corporate PCs, because they weren't on the approved software list (i.e. office productivity applications). We were, apparently, free to establish our own separate departmental IT infrastructure, but of course we couldn't get the budget because there was...
This is the kind of nonsense that has always resulted from these types of deals and I'm sure this one will simply end in business as usual.
I have some experience of it, as I work for an IT service provider. It's not a terrible plan, but it takes a lot of time* to shake out all the communication and blame-game problems between suppliers who need to regularly interact to provide a service.
* How much time? I'll let you know when we've done it.
the main advantage of outsourcing service provision is to reduce exposure to strike action by the unions and also stop new entrants to generous government pensions.
Once tupe'd over the crap workers are encouraged to leave and the good ones enticed to drop their generous arrangements. New workers are on worse terms than their long in the tooth co workers and the organisation generally has enough staff to cope with those that do go on strike.
One less headache for the gov agency to care about.
As a tax payer, I'd welcome the reduced cost of insourcing the work and the extra saved can go on training.
"Once tupe'd over the crap workers are encouraged to leave and the good ones enticed to drop their generous arrangements. New workers are on worse terms than their long in the tooth co workers and the organisation generally has enough staff to cope with those that do go on strike."
Having been tupe'd over to CSC in the past. I would say, generally, the good ones who can find a better job somewhere else do, and the crap workers are generally left behind. Some of the good ones waiting for a pension do stay. Whether there are enough people left to keep the systems running does not seam to be a concern, savings in labour cost more than make up for penalty's of breaching SLAs.
What a coincidence. New Minister for Cabinet Office in place and the first major contract is let in breach of the GDS fascist regime. The dam has burst and I think the big departments will soon start to shove past the red tape and deliver what they want rather than being held up for years by the individual opinions of a small group of technology illiterates.
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