UK government hurt by delays in legacy tech upgrades, skills shortages Tech skills shortages and reliance on legacy systems are holding back the UK government's efforts to improve efficiency at a time when public finances are under severe pressure. Parliament's spending watchdog has issued a warning to government, saying skills shortages, including those self-inflicted through headcount cuts …
I have worked in NHS IM&T.
Before working there, I was surprised as to how scandals about incompetent or malicious staff killing people. You wonder how it could possibly happen.
After working there my surprise is that the organisation functions at all, and that the frequency of scandals hitting the media is so low. I certainly wouldn't take a job there unless there was literally no other options available.
Yeah. My partner died recently due to said incompetent or malicious staff killing people; it's taken them two months just to get the investigation going, and the coroner's so resigned to dealing with the sauntering unimportance they give even the most serious cases that they've had to add a six month delay to the inquest date in the hope that they actually produce something by then. There's been essentially no contact from the hospital managers at all, their only action was to hide the worst culprit elsewhere before the investigation started (even though it won't be apportioning blame).
On the rare occasions the press does pick up on it e.g. with Lucy Letby they're all "how could this possibly happen?!" Well this is how, and it happens far more often than people realise.
That all sounds very familiar. I've had cause to complain several times over the years and they always use the same procedures to try to derail the complaint. If you still insist they just refuse to communicate any further beyond "go cry to the ombudsman if it's so important to you" knowing perfectly well the ombudsman does the same thing.
The only way to have any hope of getting anywhere is through the courts.
I'm still fighting to get my Mum's late hubby's probate sorted. They can't clear it until the local council Social Services confirm there are no care bills outstanding (to clear probate you have to confirm all debts have been paid, which requires confirmation from creditors that there are no outstanding debts). The response from SS is "we do social care, we aren't accountants".
Solution: privatize it all. But with important conditions:
1) Pro-competition enforcement.
2) Grade and tax services by necessity, so that non-essential services become less profitable. For example aesthetic surgery should be less profitable than essential medical services. Home pet veterinary should be less profitable than serving people. This will help avoid the US-like medical nonsense. Feeding pet animals with real beef while having considerable population of humans hungry is nonsense.
3) Tax online entertainment much more, so that (publicly educated) developers have more incentive to work on important stuff, like online security.
... which doesn't start with a ten minute swear filled rant.
Nice to see all of that called out because it's horribly familiar - will it change anything ? Will it ... and breathe.
I need to go and find some painkillers for the headache that's starting up again.
This is setup like this on purpose - to get contractors rather than employees.
Now that government changed IR35 and HMRC slapped many departments with non-compliance, the only realistic way is to hire larger agencies.
Then complain departments have no money, raise tax and feed even more money to agencies.
Government should have as big and well paid in-house tech workforce as possible.
Quote: "...the UK government's efforts to improve efficiency..."
This quote is GovernmentSpeak.
It means "cutting costs".
It means "reducing services to citizens".
It means "we don't have a clue about generating more economic activity...so there will be cuts".
Why is The Register complicit in this sort of misdirection ?
Why is The Register complicit in this sort of misdirection ?
I'm wondering the same thing. I'm becoming weary of hearing "legacy systems bad, cloudy devops good" when the reverse is frequently the case. I've worked on one of those legacy systems and the culture was very different to the inevitable failures of the big outsourcers: the government department, developer and independent consultants worked very closely together for the duration and produced something that actually exceeded their expectations. Nowadays it would be farmed out to some secondary or tertiary bottom-rung dev sweatshop without any proper decision-making, communication or other useful process.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of the culture sucked, especially the inclination of certain individuals within HMG to start pointing fingers in lieu of anything actually going wrong, but at least said individuals were identified and "managed".
As in the US - some modest, fair and proportionate tax rises - inc making companies not avoid/evade tax globally and levelling up the tax levied on earned v’s unearned income is the answer - which will in both countries push back out of control borrowing and debt piles.
However this is not popular and the evidence-free Neo/Con mantra of tax cuts to generate growth continues.
People want Scandinavian public services, and American taxes and they do not overlap.
* gas maybe (relatively) cheap in the US … but the plague of pay-to-drive tolls is everywhere.
I run small scale up business providing support to the organisation to bridge the skills gap in software development and information security. We provide software development services, application mordernization and security consultancy. I cannot afford yet to meet eligibility criteria to apply for government contracts. Govt needs to provision a scheme to work with small specialist organisation like mine to get the faster turnaround and reduce the cost.
quote: tweak rather than re-engineer is a lost opportunity.
Not really. As long as a 'tweak' doesn't mean a Microsoft Update, it should see a minor improvement.
If you re-engineer, you get new hardware and software (that doesn't work very well) and have to train staff all over again (which doesn't work very well), all of which costs a tonne of money and generates a backlog.
quote: legacy systems are a key source of inefficiency.
Not if they work and everyone knows how to use them.
quote: system modernisation as a means of reducing future costs.
Ask Edinburgh university. Ask Birmingham City council. Modernising your system can cost you more than reverting to pen and paper.
Tech moves fast so it can make money selling new shiny every year under false pretences. The government just needs something that works. No fancy gimmicks required, no new iPhone every year. Attempting to change government updating of tech to the rate retail users are mug enough to, wastes tonnes of public money, creates e-waste and only benefits the tech sector.
The tech sector's pace of change is more of a problem than a failure to update systems that work. Those that don't work, probably never did, having been bodged from the start by crappy outsourcers.
The idea that persistently shifting to the latest tech makes things better, faster and safer, and saves you money is a lie promulgated by the tech sector to ensure a steady income.
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