UK government lines up billions to refresh legacy tech in 600-system tax dept The UK government's commercial wing has begun to set up a contracting agreement set to be worth up to £4.5 billion ($5.4 billion) for application software services supporting the nation's tax collector. The Crown Commercial Services, which sits within the Cabinet Office, has launched a consultation with tech market suppliers …
You dont need anyone worth their salt - just look at recent Defence fails such as the Bowman system upgrade to EvO - a third of a billion for literally nothing. And then another contract to re-do the old system!! This isn't about delivering, its about getting as much of those billions as possible.
You don't need good people for this, they just need two bum cheeks to put on a seat.
(Apologies for the cynicism but I've seen this too many times now)...
And much of the problem is the procurement process itself. It is so broken that the only contenders are the same bunch or misfits that screw everything up.
Then there is the problem that the starting point is a complete shambles of disparate systems stuck together with string all compounded by the constant changes to the tax system.
Crapita or Fuckjitsu
Also side bets of
3 years past due date
5 years past due date
10 years past due date
Along with
'Number of people falsely imprisoned due to IT tax service cock up'
And not least
'How many years before owning up to said cock up after previously telling the courts their systems were perfect'
God I'm cynical
Boris the Coakroach,
I will take your bet, if you take 'Dogecoins' !!!
1. Crapita as part of a consortium (No-one is going to take this on alone .... AKA 'Spread the blame'.
2. For complete replacement of all 600 systems .... 10+ years past due date .... never will replace all 600 !!!
3. Number of people falsely charged due to Tax cock up. .... No takers as this is the text book definition of 'absolute certainty'.
4. 'How many years before owning up to said cock up after previously telling the courts their systems were perfect' ..... no takers as the payout date is too far into the future .... Rigor Mortis is more likely to arrive than the actual payout.
5. Cynical, Moi !!!??? ...... Of course I am, I live in the UK and have seen it all before BUT somehow it never is seen by the people who spend out 'Tax Dollars' as the 'Muricans' say !!!
:)
Strange use of the verb "to serve" in the context of HMRC. It used to be called the "excise" because it excises a big chunk of everyone's dosh.
HMRC used to refer to the public as its "customers", but when I once said to a tax inspector "if I'm a customer I think I'll take my business somewhere else" he wasn't amused.
> Strange use of the verb "to serve" in the context of HMRC.
In any other context, "tax" would be what the courts refer to as "demanding money with menaces".
Still, those billions to (fail to) replace those old systems have to come from somewhere.
Apropos that, how much would it cost to employ clerks with quill pens to operate the tax system? IBM (It's Better Manually), as we used to say.
Right f**king there are the reasons for guaranteed failure.
Not the 800TB of data. Large (but I'll bet CERN or NASA and certainly GCHQ manage bigger datasets)
Nor the 24/7. Not sure why most of them need this. Customs yes, but unless every UK subject has online access to their tax details (or is expected to) why this?
No it's those other 2. 600 systems -->599 interfaces which can (and probably will) change. And close to 2 IT changes per month/per system. Yet some of those systems have (I'm fairly sure) been in for decades. Their change rate should be zero.
What's the bet each of those changes will trigger further unlocalised system changes, necessitating work on other parts of a system, that triggers changes to other systems. Glenford Myers has a really nice thought experiment about software coupling usinga a 10x10 light array. Set them to a random pattern. Then choose wheather a light should be on or off on the next cycle based on the current state of a number of other lamps in the array (chosen also at random). If it's one lamp then the pattern becomes quite stable quite fast, 10 other lamps quite slow. Every lamp dependent on every other lamp takes a very long time to achieve stability. I always thought it would make a cool program just to watch.
And in a country about 500Km wide and about 800Km long (excluding NI) how many data centres will this take to run on?
The PAO might as well start righting up the report now. We all know they won't bother with actually agreed success (or failure) metrics because (heaven forbid) that might mean someone could have failed. With no internal resouces to offer independent oversight or sanity checking (because competent civil service pensions were sooooo expensive) they will be told (and believe) any old bu***hit the con-tractors and con-sultants tell them and of course it will take so long (years I expect) to get a decision that only "The Usual Suspects(tm)" will have the financial endurance to stay in till it gets awarded and they can start making out like the bandits they seem to behave like (based on past behaviour ad-nausem).
The NHS project cost, what £9Billion and struggled, partly because different stakeholders couldn't agree on what was required of it. Now, I'm not suggesting big, complex IT systems are beyond management - but consider this: those that get to do the initial sign-off will be long out of office before the delivery date, the underlying requirements will change - sometimes annually - with each administration and it's absolutely critical for the UK that the system works. That doesn't strike me as a stable base to work from.
I project: it'll run massively over budget (I'll stick my neck out for a headline figure of triple the stated spend, way more if you include the knock-on costs and contractual clauses for termination, etc), it won't meet the objectives that were set and certainly won't meet the ones that are, by then, currently expected and no one will be held responsible for any of it.
Mind you, several big IT consulting firms will make a tidy profit. Lawyers too. All funded by, ironically, the tax-payer.
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