Scotland waves £15m around to tempt low-code partner to help with social security overhaul as technical debt mounts The Scottish government is sizing up the market for suppliers to develop on its low-code technology platform and support its social security overhaul. Having selected low-code platform OutSystems to help modernise IT services from its executive agency Social Security Scotland, the Scottish government is now looking for a " …
Ultimately code must be created and run, so the reality is that someone else is writing the code, it's concealed from you and you're blindly taking its quality and security on trust. This is possibly not the safest way of fulfilling your corporate governance obligations.
Soctgov is having to do this on the cheap since their pockets are not deep. So compromises are necessary and shortcuts inevitable.
Note Scotland went sensible with our contact tracing app, which worked out of the box and genuinely Scottish NHS using iOS and Android systems instead of standalone apps. I ran it, had to delete it as my ageing handset doesn't have to storage capacity. But it ran seamlessly. Is still running AFAIK.
So they have some recent form in being suitably pragmatic and not seeking to reinvent the wheel or build unnecessary empires. I see these as strengths, not weaknesses.
It's just another abstraction layer just like using something like a java runtime is. I see "low code" platforms growing in popularity in my region as there's a shortage of programmers interested in this kind of work / technical dept and outsourcing does not appear to work quite as well either.
Are you sure it's not because Scottish people are just tight?
I've never known a Scotsman to buy the first round. Ever. Which is weird for two reasons. Firstly, the first round is often the cheapest because usually not everyone is there yet and secondly if you buy the first round you avoid the expensive spirits later on and can leave early.
The last time I had any sight of social security systems in England - which was about 20 years ago - the people processing benefit claims could only do around 60% of them using their aging ICL mainframe, the other 40% had to be manually calculated. The reason for that was mostly that as new benefits were introduced there were a whole load of transitional issues relating to people still being entitled to elements of old benefits that were no longer available to new claimants but also being entitled to other benefits from newer programmes with different criteria. The systems simply couldn't cope with the significant number of people who straddled various policy eras.
The only way to have a truly "low-code" benefits system is to select a set of parameters and for politicians to accept that their future policy options are mostly limited to changing the parameters rather than the algorithm for deriving the payment - or creating entirely independent benefits.
This, of course, will never happen - so there is a perpetual accumulation of cruft, however little code you (pretend to) start with.
The beauty of low code is you can adapt at make changes at a rate of knotts. It's not your traditional truth around time of someone upends a policy.
Well, I'm now totally reassured that the speed of a low code response has no detrimental effect on its quality or accuracy.
G's us
No wonder you think low-code is good.
if cant_be_bothered_to_sanity_check is True:
take_shortcut_without_thinking()
.move_fast()
.break_things()
If you can't solve a problem by thinking logically and organising people, information and processes, it doesn't matter how you implement your shit, broken solution - you've not solved the problem.
If it's solved, then I'd go for a solution with longevity like an open source programming language, over a proprietary UI on top of the same open source language.... but sure... call me back in 5 years when you want to reimplement the same solution through a different abstraction layer, I'll take your money again :)
And tell me will we never hear the end
Of puir bluidy Charlie at Culloden yet again?
Though he ran like a rabbit down the glen
Leaving better folk than him to be butchered
Or are you sittin in your Council house, dreamin o'er your clan?
Waiting for the Jacobites to come and free the land?
Try going down the broo with your claymore in your hand
And count all the Princes in the queue
For there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o' the leal
And it's time now to sweep the future clear
Of the lies of a past that we know was never real
From the singer of that song:
"The idea that Independence will solve anything by itself would be quite ridiculously naive. Independence is not a solution to anything, it is merely a stage in a process and the removal of what is one of the primary obstacles to progress for the Scottish people. I really have no idea what shape a post-independence Scotland will take, and I don’t take seriously anyone who says they have."
That's not very neighbourly of you AMBxx.
Fifers use the word neighbour to mean friend, which is pragmatic and peaceful. They also have a rebuke for anyone acting too mean, competitive or exploitative. "You're being a wee bit English".
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