Top IT bod Sally Howes leaves the UK's National Audit Office Sally Howes, the executive lead at the UK National Audit Office responsible for working with departments on their IT programmes, has stepped down after six years in the role. Howes joined the NAO in 2010 as a director, and was appointed executive leader with responsibility for digital and innovation in 2013. She also oversaw …
One can only hope that she will not be replaced by some brain-dead, owned-by-the-system moron if progress is to be made.
How on God's green Earth can an administrative body specifically tasked with auditing IT projects not look at the ROI of what was paid for is beyond me. The fact that it took someone with private industry experience to set the administration on the right track speaks volumes.
What else is expected?
They are invariably outsourced to massive companies who have 'relevant experience' (mainly in failing and extorting more money), these companies then farm the work out off shore to transient work forces who lack any experience.
Any small or medium UK company employing UK engineers with actual relevant experience is discounted because even though the employees know what they are doing the 'company' doesn't have the 'relevant experience'.
The worst of course is the long term effects on UK IT
a) no point in training as an engineer in the UK as there is now so little work and so much unemployment in the sector that wages are so low even people in Bangalore don't see a point in moving
b) No UK companies get the work to get the experience to get the work
c) The country is going to be totally bankrupt because it isn't just software the government sends our money abroad for it is US missiles, US planes, Spanish tanks, German police cars, German ambulances... and if they can't find an excuse of 'buying' they send it as foreign aid.... there will be NO money left at this rate - and that won't just be a retreating Labour quip, it will be the truth... and ALL governments over the last 40 or so years are GUILTY of wrecking the country... ALL of them
At least that's what the managers want it to be.
As for the staff who are expected to use it....
Who cares what they think? How would they know what is needed?
and worst of all..
If they do know what's needed WTF should they tell their managers, who treat them with contempt?
No-one really cares about bad IT projects. It pours public money into corporate coffers. The procurement people love spending money. Large consultancies love receiving it. Policy makers love their ideas being 'implemented'
But where's the comeback for 10 billion NHS IT? Tax Credits? E-Borders? Numerous defence projects?
No-one bothers because no-one cares. Fewer understand.
I do get fed up with this routine bashing of the big SIs (yes, I work for one). People who work for SMEs are not automatically more skilled and morally superior to those working for SIs - in fact a large proportion of them wouldn't get to a second interview with us. On the other hand I'm not claiming all SIs are entirely blameless, there have clearly been cases where they have not displayed the competence that might have been expected - and neither have the SMEs.
Successive governments have created a situation where there is no expertise actually within the civil service, and most senior IT bods there are now contractors on ridiculous rates. Couple this with procurement departments whose ideas about good practice are at least 20 years out of date, and projects founded on the whim of a politician who isn't even vaguely up to speed on his brief and you have a recipe for failure. We would obviously love to deliver successful projects, and we are more than capable of doing so when our efforts are not sabotaged at every stage by our customer.
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