back to article Why does the UK keep getting beaten up by IT suppliers?

It's a line Brits love to quote: "You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me, it's a full-time job. Now, behave yourself." Michael Caine's iconic dialogue as the Get Carter protagonist sums up how tech companies see the government: big, in bad shape, and here to do what they say. While the UK government wants to focus …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Holmes

    "unforeseen technical complexities"

    In other words, the people who were responsible for the specifications fucked up. That seems to be a regular occurence within UK government structures.

    If you are designing a framework which is supposed to work country-wide, you can't content yourself with the opinions of old farts who don't know how things work. You need to gather the needs of the people who will actually work with the product and are expected to deliver something.

    I have 30 years of experience in designing and implementing software products. I obviously start with the stuffy ole farts who declare what they think is what they need. Then I go talk to the people who actually do the job, and make sure that the final product responds to their needs.

    The old farts won't know the difference anyway.

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

      I expect the usual suspects suppliers are well aware of this and to maximise long term revenue make sure that the people who do the actual work are kept away from selecting specifications until it is time to demand more money.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

        No, it's the senior civil servants who make sure the people doing the work are kept away.

        20-ish years ago I was supplier side on something for the DWP (shoutout to The Taps in Lytham) and we arranged a workshop with a cross section of empowered users to validate requirements.

        At the end of 2 of these we had sign off that one of requirements was not only unnecessary but would make their lives more difficult so we asked it be change controlled out. The response from the sterring committee was "they weren't empowered to do that" and told us to arrange another workshop where the "empowered users" would be told in advance what their answers were.

      2. sketharaman

        Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

        As a supplier for 40 years, RFPs tend to include pretty granular level of details from senior and operating management people. Where things go awry is when expectations fail to materialize during the actual implementation / delivery e.g. CEO wants to change a few things in the new software and, prior to purchase, is confident of getting the operating level people to accept them. But, when the supplier fleshes out the full impact of the change, rubber hits the road. Then there are tons of dependencies with other programs running concurrently elsewhere in the organization. So on and so forth.

    2. abend0c4 Silver badge

      Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

      A signifant problem is that any 'specification', at best, will likely capture only the requirements of present policy and make no allowance for the wizard wheezes of future administrations. I don't know what the current situation is, but 20-odd years ago there were laborious manual overrides to the ICL benefits computer calculations owing to it being economically infeasible to adapt it to the changes in entitlements - and in particular to the fact that people who'd entered the system at different points had different levels of entitlement depending on the rules at that moment.

      If you're planning to implement computer systems with a lifetime of 10+ years you really need politicians to agree on the levers of power and the extent to which they can vary their adjustment. But that's not the British way.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

        Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament, because all Acts can be amended or repealed by definition.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: really need politicians to agree

        ... yeaahhhh, so there's your problem.

    3. tfewster
      Facepalm

      Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

      It's curious that Accenture can take on outsourcing deals, come in and absorb local knowledge and take over running legacy systems and processes[1]. But apparently can't document a system they manage so support could be tendered?

      [1] Yeah, they're crap at that too.

    4. Ian Johnston Silver badge

      Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

      you can't content yourself with the opinions of old farts who don't know how things work

      No need for casual ageism here. In my experience it's the old farts who know how things work and young turks rushing in to make names for themselves with change for change's sake who cause the problems.

      1. Like a badger

        Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

        Yes, old farts know how things work now, how things are connected together, and all the assembled technical cludges and how organisational culture actually works. As already noted, requirements will change even if the original spec was accurate, and that's new stuff. The OF are well placed to know how to deal with it, but they don't know what they will be dealing with. This is as true of the private sector as public, but the public sector are subject to transparency requirements that companies are not.

        There is a fundamental reason why the public sector keeps getting shafted that I've not seen mentioned yet, and that is not just because (a) requirements are incorrect, and (b) further change is inevitable, it is because no attempt is made to understand the commercial model of the supplier.

        We're all familiar with the big services provider commercial model to bid low, even loss making, knowing for certain that change will happen over any 3-5 year period (as well as a good chance of change because the spec wasn't correct), and then make a fortune on variations and non-standard service requests. If anybody isn't familiar here's a fine private sector example: Huge corporate with 20,000 employees signs deal with big US IT services provider to TUPE across the in house team. Obviously the deal was scrutinised by the buyer team for the big corporate, by the legal team, and the big corporate believed it would save money. Now, with many employees leaving, it wasn't unusual at that time for departing employees to get a PAC number to port their corporate mobile to a private contract. Managers knew this only involved a phone call and the telcos couldn't charge for it. But because that activity had to go through as a service request, and hadn't been written into the contract, it was charged at the non-standard service request rate, of £440 each. The company had paid over quarter of a million quid for "free" PAC numbers before it realised how it was being shafted, but there were of course many other forms of NSSR and variations that meant the vendor's tills kept jingling.

        The first lesson here is that if you can do it yourself, you should. The second is that if you have to use an external vendor, understand their commercial model before negotiations start, and make sure there's NOTHING that isn't costed at a fair rate, and that the bid includes a commercially attractive margin. So no pricey NSSR rates, no "to be agreed" rates for variations, and also complete transparency. Vendors won't like this one bit, and they will try and fight back, but the first part of contract negotiations should be the buyer asking "Based on what we think we'll need, how much will that cost you, what is your resourcing model, and what is your estimated gross and operating margins on that work?" If the vendor won't answer, show them the door. Next up, "we'd like you to validate our specification as part 1 of the contract, that it is complete and can be delivered" this is to get the vendor to be partially responsible if things turn to slag. Then "What will the cost of unplanned variations and changes be, and how much margin will you make on those?". And so on - assume at every turn the vendor is entitled to and should be earning a decent margin for the relevant level of risk they are taking, also assume that the vendors are lying, thieving bastards who make the Thenardiers look like honest citizens. If the buying team haven't examined every single clause of the contract and worked out how the vendor hopes to make more money through it, then they haven't done their job properly. But of course, the sales team are vastly better paid than the procurement team, and in addition get huge bonuses. Buyers don't get anything like the same bonuses for a job well done. Then there's the fact that organisations make big IT services purchases rarely, the sales teams do this day in day out. And finally, if we wanted things to be different, we'd need to (a) exclude bigwigs on the buy side from any influence in the process (as that's one of the tools the sales team use to force buyers into poor decisions), and (b) re-write the public procurement rules.

        All this could be done, but it won't be done.

        1. Acrimonius

          Re: "unforeseen technical complexities"

          On factor in negotiating the best/fair deal and allowing for what-if is who has the upper-hand. It is not usually the Government Dept. Also, some of this takes time and pressure to place contract asap and come what may is high.

  2. Peter2

    It found "pay constraints mean that government departments are unable to fully compete with the private sector in hard-to-recruit roles."

    It's a bit hard to recruit a competent developer, support person etc on £23k a year, yes. It's also a bit difficult to retain people on this salary, which explains the problem without much in the way of elaboration.

    1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
      Unhappy

      re: The problem is people, not technology.

      You are entirely correct, but that is not the entire problem. The fact is that the motivation of contractors and consultants hired to advise and manage HMG IT procurement is to get money out of HMG. As a consultant in a small IT security consultancy Iw as told by one of the owning partners that:

      "The job of a consultant is to find out the client's budget and spend it."

      And he was perfectly serious.

      While large corporations have as their prime goal 'maximising shareholder value' in the short term, rather than delivering an excellent engineering solution, IT procurement will be fraught with difficulties. As an IT security consultant who advised on government contracts and bids, I was considered to be one of the 'sales prevention team', by most of the commercial people. They are motivated by profit, and any failure in requirements specifications is, for them, a bonus as they can charge for changes later. Maybe some of the government lawyers could come up with a contract clause for penalties concerning foreseeable issues that the bidder failed to prepare for. But I suspect that would be far too difficult and litigious.

      1. seven of five Silver badge

        Re: re: The problem is people, not technology.

        >The job of a consultant is to find out the client's budget and spend it."

        >And he was perfectly serious.

        Like Dogbert said: "I like to con people, and I like to insult them. That makes me a consultant, doesn't it?"

    2. Probie

      Agree whole heartedly with the statement, until the government understands this is a Quality not Quantity issue the tax payer is going to get shafted. As for Consultants I have known a few good ones, who will actively say - go down this road this is the outcome and are ignored in the face of a lot of consultants giving out shit advice. But it turns out finding a good consultant is like trying to find a democratic minority on Xitter - like finding hens teeth, an apt analogy as you find the consultant on average is the fox guarding the hen house.

      It comes back that statement - compete honestly with Private sector wages for the experience you need, and it will turn around.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's not, you just have to accept that you won't be that techies only customer.

      I work freelance and have a few clients that get access to my 20+ years of experience for less than that, whenever they like (if I have time available immediately, they can have me immediately, at worst it's next business day).

      I don't just pick my clients based on what I can earn from them, I pick clients based on whether I want the work because it is interesting as well...I have a few clients that I look after purely because they are interesting or unique...I don't mind taking a little less money if it means I'm involved in something different or challenging that I otherwise wouldn't be...if you're a boring company with nothing interesting going on, like an accountant, you're deffo paying full whack...but if you're an engineering start up or something that isn't just a file server, office 365 and a bunch of Optiplex PCs...you might get a good deal.

      It's hard to find a permie "all eggs in one basket" jobsworth for £23k.

      Tech work is not like it was 20-30 years ago, you don't need your tech folks to be exclusively available for 9 hours a day 5 days a week...if I worked for one company and one company only, I'd have nothing to do for about 90% of the time...which would gradually erode my will to do anything...the best techies are active techies...you want someone that has their eyeballs across several organisations for a few good reasons...1. It allows you to remain competitive on a tech level, because your techie is always involved in something somewhere to deliver improvements and keep up. 2. Your techie will be highly motivated. 3. Your techie won't be coming to you cap in hand once a year begging for money.

      The solution is to not hire permies...get external contractors...they will cost you a lot less in the long run.

    4. Tubz Silver badge

      I basically doubled by salary jumping inhouse to the company I was supporting when employed by Fujitsu, along with superior pensions and perks, so how much was Fujitsu being paid for me and not giving me a decent % in salary.

  3. Philip Storry
    Mushroom

    It's a lack of understanding

    I've come to believe that at a fundamental level a lot of the senior civil service or local government staff simply don't understand the field of computing.

    To them it's a support service. So it's just like cleaning, or finance processing, or building maintenance. And those are things that they can safely outsource.

    But they overlook the reason that they can safely outsource them - they don't change. The office being cleaned will barely change over the period of a decade. Processing invoices is an understood finance process common across many organisations. Buildings are unlikely to sprout new walls made of new materials simply because the property market changed recently.

    But IT changes. It's a rapidly moving field. It's one where a few years can make a huge difference.

    Let me demonstrate with a story - I once worked for an NHS funded organisation. (I won't name it.) When I left it was because they were going to outsource their IT and I felt that this would not be good - and I didn't want to work for an outsourcer's profit margins, I wanted to do work that made my colleagues' work easier. (I was young and idealistic...)

    The organisation signed a three year outsourced IT contract. They were very proud. They must have felt like they'd struck quite the deal - the outsourcer would replace all their desktops and laptops, take over management of the services, do any necessary migrations to the new platforms... and the price was quite the bargain!

    About six months into this bargain Microsoft released a new version of Office. Which had a new feature in Excel that one department really wanted.

    In the "bad old days" of internal IT we'd just send someone down with the new CD and do the install. (Or later, drop it via the software packaging system.) But now they'd signed a contract stating that they had the same version of Excel for 3 years. But the outsourcer could help, of course. After a study, it was determined that rolling out the new version to 10 machines would cost almost a hundred grand. There was compatibility testing, documentation, licensing - it was a very thorough quote, which extracted every possible penny. Due to automation included in the quote to roll out the change to everyone only added about 15-20 grand to the total!

    And I feel that demonstrates the problem. The management assumed that 3 years with the same software would be fine. What could possibly change in 3 years? So sign the contract, and save some money!

    But the IT companies are wiser. They know that things will change. They've even adjusted their business models to reflect it - they'll cut their initial offer to the bone, knowing that they'll make fat profits on the changes that "will never be needed" yet are in fact inevitable.

    It's frustrating. Every time I meet someone who's worked in the public sector, I hear a variant of this same story. Whether it's outsourcing an existing requirement or purchasing a new platform, it's the changes that rack up the costs. And yet we see the management fail to understand this over and over again.

    Public Procurement training should consist of a course that simply has many ways for the Procurement Officer to say "No, you're wrong, it will change." And to resist signing anything that says otherwise.

    1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: It's a lack of understanding

      One of my clients (a government department you will have both heard of and interacted with, so shall remain nameless here) had an IT outsourcing contract. For one member of staff to move desks within the same physical office was quoted as costing £400.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's a lack of understanding

        It costs my local PFI school £300 to have a light bulb changed.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: It's a lack of understanding

          Yes, when I was a PFI school governor the head explained this to us. Any item within the PFI contract ,from a chair to a server, was subject to the PFI owner's charges, on a spreadsheet. The PFI owners, not the headteacher or the governors decided when the computers needed replacing. The PFI owners had to supply the furniture and decided which items/models to provide and at what cost, plus added charges on top if it's an extra item that the school requested. The PFI owners controlled repairs. And so on.

    2. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: It's a lack of understanding

      I've come to believe that at a fundamental level a lot of the senior civil service or local government staff simply don't understand the field of computing.

      Too many of the "senior" ones still come from a time where computing meant "data processing", so for them it is exactly the same as cleaning or maintenance. They probably still send their correspondance to a "typing pool" to have it written up. The junior ones are used to just grabbing an app from an online store. Neither of them have a clue of how it all actually works.

    3. goodjudge

      Re: It's a lack of understanding

      "Which had a new feature in Excel that one department really wanted."

      Or, how about telling that dept: "stop constantly badgering us for 'the new shiny', just because, and work with what you've got."

      1. Philip Storry
        Stop

        Re: It's a lack of understanding

        I'm on the side of the department on this occasion. Sometimes there are new features which will actually help.

        For example, what if I told you that the feature was better connectivity to external sources? Or the version (2007?) which increased the row limit to 1 million rows?

        If they can demonstrate that the new feature or change makes a measurable difference, then we should try to get them that version. I'm not here to gatekeep or to play Mr. Nasty, I'm here to help them do their work.

        A later version may not be the correct answer - these days I might subtly suggest using R, or Python/Pandas, or perhaps even point them towards tools like Power BI if I thought them appropriate. But those were not an option at this time.

        During the pandemic there was an issue with the stats because somewhere in the chain had a version of Excel that was so old it couldn't handle the number of rows! That's not something that should happen, and just rejecting requirements out of hand is one of the ways it can end up happening.

        1. Guy de Loimbard Silver badge

          Re: It's a lack of understanding

          I'm with you on this Philip.

          I had a strap line for my team of internal security consultants, in short, without giving it away, it was along the lines of: "support our colleagues to get what they need to be productive, but do it safely and securely to protect the business and it's customers."

          Help out where we can, but don't introduce unnecessary risk, it's not too hard to do, surely? YMMV

        2. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: It's a lack of understanding

          The various posts under this thread all seem to have parts of the problem, presumably, this being a tech site it's unsurprising that much the focus is on the tech part.

          But in fact the "lack of understanding" is spread like (er) manure throughout these organisations and effect all sorts of process- it's just that those IT contracts are for millions. The decisions are made by senior staff who are administrators and bean counters. They think that they know how their many various departments work, and what the staff in them do. They think they know what the business processes are. They think they know what each department needs. But mostly they haven't got a f****ing clue.

          My favourite example- a council photocopy/printer contract. Each department had a nice shiny new copy/printer, including us. But there were a few different specs and fair enough we didn't need as big and fast a machine as one of the big admin departments. But we did need to be able to print to it. To have it networked iow.

          Ours wasn't. The request for ours to be connected to our network was overruled, though the cost seemed to be trivial*. Apparently some genius in the council decided that since we were a teaching service we wouldn't be doing much typing and printing. Apart from the sheer stupidity of not realising how much typing and printing class teachers do, we were a specialist teaching team. Going in to schools, assessing kids, writing reports on them, working with multi-disciplinary teams and not infrequently submitting legally committing documents to statutory authorities. Often big documents with multiple copies. So we couldn't print from our PCs directly to this printer,but had to print out the documents on an inkjet, then take it to the printer and stand there while it photocopied away for us.Senior teachers with significant responsibilities standing for several minutes in front of an inkjet, then going and standing for several more minutes in front of a photocopier At the same time they sent out an instruction that we were not allowed to carry on using our inkjet printers because they were too expensive and all printing should be done on the shiny new machines- that we couldn't print to

          To make matters worse, over the course of the contract I got permission to have them networked.

          Here's where the * comes in.

          There was no f***ing network card in the machine. Part of the reason for not allowing it to be networked, it turned out was that they saved £30 or so on a machine costing thousands by having it spec'c without the network card, because why would we need one??!!!

          1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

            Re: It's a lack of understanding

            The decisions are made by senior staff who are administrators and bean counters. They think that they know how their many various departments work, and what the staff in them do. They think they know what the business processes are. They think they know what each department needs. But mostly they haven't got a f****ing clue.

            Exactly the same problem applies to IT departments in all types of sizes and organisations, which often believe they know better than people doing actual work how that work should be done. Read just about any comments thread on El Reg for examples.

        3. Bertieboy

          Re: It's a lack of understanding

          And here's a problem I fought for many years - F****** spreadsheets used to store data! Every department/office had some whizz kid who thought they'd design a wonderful spreadsheet for all to use - result: no coherency across the various disparate departments; no easy way of effectively collating/analysing data.

        4. MrBanana

          Re: It's a lack of understanding

          I problem I've seen too many times is that one department, of a dozen people, ask for an additional software feature for an existing product that is really only useful to them, and not the other 1,000 employees. The procurement team will either outright deny the request because they couldn't possibly pay for +1,000 licenses of that feature, or spend a fortune on +1,000 licences because they are spending someone else's money and were too stupid in the first place to buy a product that didn't allow for flexible pricing. For option one, rely on the users without access to that needed feature to download a "free" copy of the software that only allows individual use, and breaking the no corporate use clause in the licensing agreement, and just clicked Agree.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Government engineering sevices

    Governments used to have their own engineers to handle complex infrastructure works. Governments also had their own computer centers with their own experts.

    Free market thinking abolished all that.

    The market can do those things much cheaper, they said. They ignored that the market does not return these savings to their customers. Especially not if their customers have an information "disadvantage", ie, are completely ignorant.

  5. juice

    > [HMRC] handed Accenture an additional £35.2 million ($44 million) without competition on a £70.4 million ($88 million) contract that was never tendered.

    If my maths is correct, that means Accenture got £105 million for this contract. And I'm increasingly asking myself: where's all that money actually going?

    The "average" profit margin for software contracts is somewhere around 20-30%. Which means that in theory, Accenture spent (or charged, which is not /quite/ the same thing) around £70 million for their services.

    And while things are rarely that simple (and sometimes deliberately so), if the average Accenture employee costs £100k per year, that means that they've used somewhere in the order of 700 years worth of effort.

    My slightly cynical take on this, is that everything's been sub-contracted and outsourced, and that at every sub-stage, there's someone looking to apply their own profit margins...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Methodology Failure And Weasel Words.....Oh Dear!!

    Quote: "....A skeptic might be driven to the assumption that HMRC doesn't really know how the tech on which it runs the National Insurance system works...."

    Technology procurement (of any type at all) requires that the customer for the technology not only knows what they want.....but has accurate documentation about the business use of the final product.

    For IT procurement:

    (1) Do the people who let contracts actually KNOW and DOCUMENT what business process the software is going to support?

    (2) Does the "request for proposal" actually define the DOCUMENTED business process?

    (3) Does the "request for proposal" actually legally bind every submission to accept the "business process" AS PART OF THE EVENTUAL CONTRACT?

    If the answers to these three questions is "No"................

    ................then the the people of (for example) HMRC, Birmingham or West Sussex will get some unknown (and probably unworkable) "solution"..........

    Oh....and of course in the IT business the twenty year obsession with "agile" (you know - "user stories", walls of Post-It notes, project management as "interference")....all of that has made items #1, #2 and #3 distinctly UNFASHIONABLE! Just saying""

    And then there's the word....."solution"........another weasel word from the consultancy dictionary du jour!!!!

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Methodology Failure And Weasel Words.....Oh Dear!!

      Point 1) actually cuts deeper. Does anyone in the organisation ( or even any group of people)actually hold a full picture of all the things this monolith needs to do, let alone how it's meant to do it? The very basis of launching these projects seems to be predicated on the unfounded (imho) assumption ( aka magical thinking) that the whole shebang can be shovelled into a single computer system that will replace hundreds of people doing often quite specific,even maybe unique and often fairly complex tasks. Tasks that could and maybe should be integrated into the new system, if anyone knew about it, or why it was important, or how it fitted into the wider business activity. There might be, for a small example, an employment role in the organisation that doesn't fit into the normal categories, and maybe a member of the personnel dept who spends two hours every month adjusting their pay because none of the pay scales hourly rates and specific allowances fit neatly into the correct pigeon hole. And there could be any number of such trip hazards throughout the organisation.And that's assuming the management even understand that one particular role has very different responsibilities from something that from on high seems to be exactly the same.

      For an example of that; a school has teaching staff (The Teachers) and non-teaching staff (Teaching assistants, admins etc). And the first of these has a professional contract and the rest may have an hourly (term time only) contract. So the system is designed to meet these two kinds of employment. Except there are also nursery and Early Years staff- who appear to be supporting the teacher like a TA if you are looking at it from a council HR or finance department. But those staff are expected to be qualified in EarlyYears- used to be known as NNEB- sharing teaching in the Early Years according to established Good Practice and OFSTED reporting ( not often the same thing I know) accepting shared responsibility for the kids, even covering the class and mamaging a TA to maintain the ratio during the teacher's preparation and management time etc.. But then some bright spark decides that these Early Years staff are suddenly the same as TAs and that their annual salary is really a pro rata salary and so they should only be getting 40/52 weeks of pay and starts to reduce their salary Yes this did happen Except then they realised that they had zero chance of recruiting Early Years staff, of getting those staff they do have to accept the responsibility they used to, or retaining them, especially the more experienced staff .In the LA I'm aware of they fudged this by raising the pay scale so that it equalled out.

      1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: Methodology Failure And Weasel Words.....Oh Dear!!

        For an example of that; a school has teaching staff (The Teachers) and non-teaching staff (Teaching assistants, admins etc). And the first of these has a professional contract and the rest may have an hourly (term time only) contract.

        It's even more complicated than that, because teachers were originally paid to work for nine months (ish) per year. This caused a lot of them budgeting problems so things were rejigged to pay those nine months' salary in twelve equal installments. Even now there is a great deal of confusion about whether teachers have a lot of paid leave or a short working year.

  7. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

    government is not making the most of the limited expertise it has

    Too true.

    At the government department I worked at, part of it was chock full of IT expertise, whose job it was to to design, build and deliver bespoke IT systems to parts of HMG. But when it came to our department procuring (externally) a large HR system, our own in house experts were locked out of that process essentially being told they weren't required. Result was a delayed system that didn't meet user demand and many years later was still subject to internal ridicule and get well programmes.

    Same story beyond IT as well. When the admin departments need to do some stuff that involves technical skills, which a team of professional mathematicians just down the corridor is chock a block full of, not welcome.

  8. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Light blue touch paper and retire. Danger to life and limb is guaranteed by wilful abuse.

    Why does the UK keep getting beaten up by IT suppliers? ...... Lindsay Clark/ElReg

    Any advance or disagreement on the observation that lily-livered lion hearts being led by arrogant ignorant donkeys is always going to extraordinarily render the former easy prey to the latter's deliberations and maladministrations is most likely responsible, ...... at least until such times as the lion hearted realise the perversion and inversion before them and create havoc and mayhem and CHAOS with magnificent feasting on the vanities and insanities that so used and abused them ...... with the false deadly notion embedded in the proxies and driver agents that it could be done forever by them with impunity.

    Einstein though was never so right, was he, whenever he shared and warned .........

    Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Intelligence and Ignorance......and Stupidity.........................

      No one here seems to acknowledge that "intelligence" IS NOT A SINGLE TRACK CONCEPT!

      For example:

      (1) Jane Doe can get into MENSA with an IQ greater than 150.......so "intelligent".

      (2) Jane Doe (the same Jane Doe) knows absolutely nothing about, for example, computer architecture......so "ignorant".

      But if Jane Doe is the purchasing professional in charge of the next IT request for proposal, her intelligence is of NO USE WHATSOEVER......

      ......and consultants and IT vendors know this......

      ......and the result ten years later looks like.................stupidity!!!!

      And there you have it.....Intelligence......then Ignorance.....and finally STUPIDITY described in The Register.

    2. KarMann Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Light blue touch paper and retire. Danger to life and limb is guaranteed by wilful abuse.

      Why, I hear that there's even so much stupidity that some will actually believe Einstein said that, no matter how out of character it would be for him.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Light blue touch paper and retire. Danger to life and limb is guaranteed by wilful abuse.

        Why, I hear that there's even so much stupidity that some will actually believe Einstein said that, no matter how out of character it would be for him. .... KarMann

        Well, one thing we all can be sure of now, KarMann, is Einstein will not be caring whether he said it, or not. ........ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/

  9. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    No source code, no sale

    The initial contract was awarded in 2022 to "disaggregate" the system and make it more "open and independently maintainable."

    The only way to do that is at the start. It is work for hire so HMRC could legitimately have put ownership of the copyright into the contract. Instead of needing to get changes at monopoly prices from the original supplier HMRC could have put the work up for tender and got a competitive price.

    break its five biggest IT contracts into 30 smaller, more flexible ones

    Instead of 5 problems they will have 30. Accepting that the proprietary software they paid for is a source of every increasing expenses is difficult. Paying for new a solution for which they own the source code is also difficult (sunk cost fallacy). Without the source code, potential savings set set price completely independent of cost. With the source code there is a possibility that price can be lower than savings - or more likely there will be no savings but they actually get additional value from improving their system.

    1. Like a badger

      Re: No source code, no sale

      Or get Tesco to buy government's IT for them. I used to work for a big retail IT company, and the supermarkets were brutal to work with. They had very, very clear requirements, knew every clause in the contract, the cost of any and every variation, who held responsibility for changes, insisted code worked (and money withheld until it did), and that code was held in escrow against a range of possible events. IT suppliers run rings round most big organisations because buying stuff is a necessary evil. Because buying stuff and understanding product cost build is the very heart of what supermarkets do, they were not as easily rinsed as government and other big corporations.

      Then, when they'd got the code up and running, they'd resist the temptation for farting around with the software at all costs. Until relatively recently, a leading supermarket had EPOS systems that clearly displayed the makers name and the 1998 copyright statement, and I doubt that was an oversight by the original vendor.

      But maybe don't get Asda to buy government IT.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tail end of last centary

    I was working for Government - department wanted to modernise its IT - so put a team together to write the specifications. It was about a ream of paper, first half basically said need PCs, Office and email for 700 users, 30 of which were CAD operators across two sites and several buildings per site. The next half covered CAD, Project Management and document archive requirements.

    The view was to put out for tender in a way to reduce risk, trouble is the way it was spec'd in one large project all those considering tendering either pulled out or joined together.

    Their estimate dropped by 25% when they realised we weren't biting - we did it in house for 12% less.

    Strangely it was also where I've seen some good IT outsourcing, one using small company and the other after kicking supplier and saying not up to scratch.

    But I don't see the commercial side doing much better with the big vendors.

  11. HorseflySteve
    FAIL

    A consequence of the Peter principle

    IME The civil service is full of Peters, bean counters and people who can't get a better paid job in the private sector. Also their masters usually know more about Greek Classics than they do about technology and consider engineers and technologists as mere tradesmen, like the guy that came to fix the washing machine.

    Is it any wonder that they can't spot the sales engineer's BS?

  12. John_Ericsson

    Lots of reasons. However the primary reason is managers not one taking responsibility/accountability by suggesting something they could be blamed for. Once someone has suggested “X” then X it is, and we know who to blame when it al goes wrong. This attitude runs from top to bottom on the management hierarchy. In my experience poor project management is something the UK excels at.

    1. AndyJWard

      One the subject of Government salaries, I was working with a goverbnment research lab in the US and got to know some of the IT researchers there. They mentioned they had special dispensation to pay more than the standard US Government salaries, and have 6-monthly reviews, because they recognised the importance of good IT and Electronics personnel and the fact that they had to match the market rates to recruit and retain them: interesting work and job security wasn't enough. Enlightened thinking, eh?

  13. Tron Silver badge

    We need to use less tech in government.

    The churn rate of tech is designed to ensure that users keep buying new kit and keep upgrading.

    In government, the costs of doing this are phenomenal.

    If we used less, simpler tech, less networked tech, less tech exposed to external risks, systems could be used for much longer.

    Computerising everything with customised packages is a license to waste money. They do this because it isn't their money, it is our money.

    If we used less tech the cost would dramatically reduce. Maybe more people and more paper, but much less money. And the tech we used could grow old, as it would not be connected to the net.

    Most of all, just give people the tech they need and no more. Simpler systems with file and data compatibility, as required.

    But it won't happen. Politicians have 'friendships' with the private sector, and the money will carry on flowing.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you think it's bad now...

    Ex-public sector IT here. Partly the problem is pay but a bigger part is culture. Too many petty managers signing off on shiny IT projects without the slightest understanding of how the system need to work operationally. Then constant changes followed by abject panic when it doesn't work as needed.

    They sign the deal (or just shake hands on it, many times I encountered large service agreements with no formal contracts). Can't say I encountered any outright corruption in a large IT tender but I'm sure it happens at least subtly.

    Pay does come into it and this will be more evident from now on. Many IT folks in the public sector have hung on for their pensions, when these more senior folks go they are replaced by younger folk with a changed job title and a lower salary (more work less money). The new folk are less loyal as they know the golden era of pensions is long gone. They also know the pay is shit compared to the private sector and most of them work much harder in the public sector than in the private, most of them do care they they are supporting citizens. The public sector can no longer afford professional salaries so it is dependant on consultancy and the hope that the shorter term consultant will be cheaper than a longer term employee. Many of the skills they also do not need long term.

    They are now all looking at AI as the great white hope that will solvew all their economic woes. But this is becasue those making decisions no nothing except what they are told at conferences by people selling AI consultancy. It will not work but not really becasue of the tech, it's the same old problem that they culturally cannot help but screw up projects by letting the petty manager with no operational knowledge make the decisions.

  15. Vestas

    Long time ago now...

    ...but its probably for the same reason the MoD has been so utterly shite at procurement for 40 years+

    Anyone decent in terms of project management/technical knowledge dealing with contracts there got an offer from "industry" (BAe Systems usually in my day) and then someone clueless replaced them. Replacement could be "handled/manipulated" for a few years by which time a new contract was signed. Rinse/repeat ad nauseum.

    I doubt a lot has changed.

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

      Re: Long time ago now...

      One of the tales I know from my days of MoD is the type 42 refit program.

      Portsmouth dockyard brought in 3 refits on time and under budget. they were banned from tendering for the refits for the rest of the 42's

      One went to swan hunters.... after it was twice the budget and 5 months late, the ship was delivered to the navy for trials, it was then docked in Portsmouth for 3 months to fix all the problems.

      Now they why is interesting..... it was a political decision to put work to private yards (including BAE) while excluding the 'inefficent' public sector.... and with less work in the yard, they could get rid of those pesky civil servants....

      Which leads on nicely to why so many IT projects go up the swannee

      Politics..... reacting to the latest media headlines to change the terms of an IT system that barely serves the needs of the users already and now has to have more stuff added. and of course the private sector can then charge what they like to implement to changes, but an in-house IT supplier will just be attacked by the self same media for being a 'bloated useless public IT supplier' along with 'buying it from private will be cheaper and quicker' headlines without the knowledge that the politicians of the day (who barely know their way around a computer) change the requirements almost daily.

      The solution would be a dedicated government IT supplier able to design/plan the systems as needed , able to sub-contract work out to private as needed and able to tell the politicians to fuck off as needed

    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "MoD has been so utterly shite at procurement for 40 years+"

      Is MoD procurement still around 23 000 staff (bigger than the entire UK armed forces combined) ?

      Israeli procurement (which has a larger budget) does it with less than 1000 staff.

      1. Like a badger

        Re: "MoD has been so utterly shite at procurement for 40 years+"

        "Is MoD procurement still around 23 000 staff (bigger than the entire UK armed forces combined) ?"

        UK military headcount is about 130,000, plus about 20-30k reserves.

        https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/quarterly-service-personnel-statistics-2024/quarterly-service-personnel-statistics-1-april-2024

        MoD DE&S (aka procurement is apparently about 12,500:

        https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/defence-equipment-and-support/about/recruitment

        MoD total staff is about 60,500.

        So we're paying over 12,000 people to work collectively to turn gold into lead, with conspicuous success. Who knows what the other 38,000 MoD staff do?

    3. Acrimonius

      Re: Long time ago now...

      Also countless audits recommending a new way - better, faster, cheaper - every decade or so. MOD has the luxury to hide behind 'defence of the realm' so money is no object

  16. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

    I think this comes down to the corruption of government by the very wealthy.

    We could pay gov tech employees a really great wage and have enough of them.

    Or we could pay an external company loads of money instead.

    To do the job, the external company needs to employ the same number of people on a given project, but you can bet a big margin goes to the corporation and not to the employees pay. So, it’s tax payer’s money being siphoned off to the mega rich (often non-domestic and untaxed) rather than the government money being used to support good jobs in the nation’s economy. That’s how the very rich get richer and the economic middle class gets hollowed out. When the prime minister is the son-in-law of one of the wealthiest people in the world, (Rishi) who advocates workers do 70hour weeks and shouldn’t ask for holidays, it ain’t gonna improve.

    Educating our MPs and councillors on how we can better manage the flows of wealth and why ‘trickle down’ really means ‘the rich will own everything and you’ll be financially insecure’ is the best hope we have now I think. Sorry so depressing.

  17. Andy 73 Silver badge

    "In 2023, the PAC found that the number of digital, data, and technology professionals in the UK civil service amounts to around 4.5 percent of the workforce, "less than half the number it needs when compared to an equivalent industry average of between 8 percent and 12 percent."

    For a lot of government functions these days, the technology is the service. Gathering, processing and acting on data from the population of the UK and millions of business is the bedrock of government activity. I'd expect the percentage of the workforce dedicated to technology and data processing to be significantly higher than the industry average, and then double that again to catch up with years of mismanagement.

    But that low percentage probably also hides that technology is seen as a minor service function, and that nearly all of the senior management are Oxbridge humanities graduates. No names, but I've seen the results of this in organisations where the leadership is determined that they understand the technology after reading a few vague architecture documents (and to be clear, they are smart guys, of course they can read) - to the point where they can confidently make completely wrong decisions about technology and strategy. At that level, decisions are seen as "management", not "engineering", so people with no real experience of technology at scale try to do management at scale and.... large invoices all round!

    For those that are interested, it's well worth reading up on Digital Government in Estonia. You can set up a business there online from anywhere in the world, get married online and basically perform most government functions electronically - and it's no coincidence they have the highest number of tech unicorns in Europe.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "on Digital Government in Estonia."

      Ahh, the poster child for "digital*"

      Population 1.366million

      Left the former USSR 20/8/91.

      Wanted nothing to do with the former USSR, so basically a green field site for IT, with a well motivated populace (78% voted Leave in what I suppose we should call "Sexit")

      *Also much beloved of those who wanted ID cards (with "free" cradle-to-grave tracking of HM subjects)

      1. Andy 73 Silver badge

        Re: "on Digital Government in Estonia."

        Yup, they're a special case, and the Soviet influence runs deep, but they also show that properly online government services can work extremely well, and appear to demonstrate a knock on benefit to industry.

        And why not treat some of the required transformation in the UK as 'greenfield'? Stop trying to merge existing, inefficient systems that have a dependency on resource heavy departments with software that has to dance around manual processes. Analyse what is actually being delivered rather than how the current staff deliver it. Build replacement parts in a modular fashion (even if the interfaces at the edge remain messy and manual) and then give people the chance to switch over if it benefits them. It doesn't have to be a big bang changeover, but it does have to be a commitment to genuine change rather than patching a broken system.

        As for ID cards - they are not required for the UK to go digital, and we've got a good history of preventing them being introduced. That doesn't make the other lessons from countries that have successfully gone digital from being valuable.

    2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

      No names, but I've seen the results of this in organisations where the leadership is determined that they understand the technology after reading a few vague architecture documents (and to be clear, they are smart guys, of course they can read) - to the point where they can confidently make completely wrong decisions about technology and strategy.

      That's not really any worse then people with an MSCE certificate who think they know how teaching, diplomacy or healthcare ought to be done.

      1. Andy 73 Silver badge

        On the whole, people with MSCE certificates don't have control over billion pound budgets, even if they think they do.

  18. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Government procurement could *start* with some actual *penalty* clauses

    The US government has a right to walk away from any contract without compensation.

    This fact alone is a major reason for the structure of US companies that are almost exclusively "Govt con-tractors"

    Curious that HMG, despite it's fondness for emulating US methods, has not adopted a similar policy, is it not?

    It's not like there aren't enough lawyers in parliament.

    They may (will?) not understand the technology involved but they can understand the idea of wheather it does (or does not) meet the requirements

    And BTW there's a classic old story from "Programming Pearls" that describes a Bell Labs exercise to build an email system for an Olympics. The lead research did a quite BOTE calc and concluded the bid proposal they were going to put in (as written) would need something like an 80sec minute to work out.

    I wonder how many of those "unforeseen technical complexities that are "too fundamental" for any change control process to deal with" were of those kind.

    We'll probably never know because the government will claim "Commerical confidentiality,"

    Which means that the con-sultants can "find" exactly the same problem again next time.

    HMG giving money to con-sultants and con-tractors is like sleeping with a dog you adopted that morning from a pound that's been living on the streets for a year and not expecting to wake up scratching yourself.

  19. MrGreen

    Conflict of Interest

    Those handing out the money for the contracts have shares in the companies where the money is going.

    They don’t care how much of your tax money is being wasted because they’re making millions.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Public Sector...

    ...gets fucked because of preferred supplier lists and back handers from the likes of Capita etc.

    It is impossible for the likes of me, a small independent IT shop, to get a public sector contract.

    That is all.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "It is impossible for the likes of me,"

      Except how many of those Capita/Accenture/PWC staff do you think are direct employees?

      The answer is a lot fewer than you might think.

      How did you think they maintain the need-a-Serb-speaking-Python-and-Rust-developer-of-course-we-can-Minster routine?

      If' your good, set up as an LLC and your skills are in demand then yes you can.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "It is impossible for the likes of me,"

        Yeah, my comment still stands *I* cannot hold the contract...I can work for someone that does and walk away with 20% or less of the actual rate being charged and have no control over the budgets for my own project...but I cannot hold the contract and manage it myself...there has to be a parasitic company like Capita involved in the middle tearing a stripe out.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Public Sector...

      Indeed AC, one isolated example was all about back handers & who you know

      I'm posting AC for a reason.

      A small company I used to work for bid for govt work, even set up a demo system online that their end users could try, ensure everything was as required (we even made a few quick turnaround changes as it was a classic loose requirements spec from the "top folk" , but with end users seeing a working product they then added a few nice to haves after playing around, which we included). All end users gave ultra positive feedback at end of the trial.

      Competitors were big name groups (at least one of which was, AFAIK, basically selling vapourware), "our" product was only one end users had been able to try & it met all their needs..

      We did not get the contract.

      Our sales guy heard (off the record) from guy who had organised end user trial (but crucially was not someone with a say in who got the contract, a "coalface manager" rather than a budget person) that our bid was by far the lowest, fully met the spec (obv. as spec was enhanced / extended based on seeing our product in use & changes we made during end user trial). The end user test head guy also noted there was no way we were going to get the contract as how good it was was irrelevant - we did not have the internal contacts or the "big name" & crucially we had not provided any "hospitality" or similar financial inducements for the decision makers - despite any hint of bribes being expressly banned for govt. bids) - end user head guy was irritated we did not get it, as a working solution would have made his, & his teams, jobs easier - he kept in touch with our sales guy & (surprise, surprise) a few years down the line told him the winning bid was still not fully fit for purpose.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Public Sector...

        This. I gave up on public sector bids donkies ago...the main problem I had (aside from what is mentioned here) is that bids are only made public because they are required to be made public, the intention is to always use an incumbent or internal team.

        Just look at how NHS grants work...you'll tick every box, except the "must be working within the NHS or a specific NHS department".

        Even if you try and take the scenic route in, via a GP or local healthcare centre or something, you'll fail...because even if they absolutely love your product, if the money isn't staying within the "buddy network" you won't get it.

        I've been contracted before for NHS work though a company who was also subcontracted...it was a London based trust...I was contracted to do some regular database maintenance...the place I had to visit had a fucking huge IT team, all folks that had been hired straight out of University...absolutely none of them ever did anything...at least not while I was there...I just saw them playing LAN games of Quake 3 for the whole time I was there.

        NHS not only needs to clean up it's contracting practices, it needs to stop fucking around with it's graduate hiring scheme. The NHS has an army of "techies" that can't do anything because they have no experience outside of University...the actual tech work goes to contractors that are 4 rungs down from the primary contract holder who aren't paid enough to care...the firm I subbed for, who subbed for someone else wouldn't prioritise the NHS at all because after the two rungs above had take a stripe, there wasn't anything meaningful left...be being at the bottom, I was on even less...I was getting the thin streaks of gravy off a massive plate...the contract was worth something like £2m a year...but by the time the "management overhead" had taken it's massive slice, there was only about £70k a year left...which was essentially spread out across a small team of engineers and a project lead and running costs (travel expenses, spare parts etc). It wasn't worth a wank.

      2. localzuk

        Re: Public Sector...

        There is often an assumption in public sector that "big company" means "stable and secure", so conversely, small company means unstable. So, when marking a bid, there will be lines talking about things like business accounts, cashflow/cash on hand etc... And basically everyone who isn't a huge corp gets marked down because they don't have hundreds of millions sat as "cash on hand".

      3. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: Public Sector...

        This, with Locazuk's comments shortly after, does not surprise me.

        Local authorities have a strong "No one got fired for buying IBM" mentality.

        Risk aversion is built into the senior management. Which makes sense If it's the right kind of risk

        The problem is that the risk they're avoiding is getting blamed. It's not the risk that the big company selected will be totally useless. Because that blame is well distributed and the Big Company will have ready made excuses.

        1. localzuk

          Re: Public Sector...

          It isn't just about risk aversion at a management level - policies and procurement rules as currently written dictate certain things when buying in the public sector. So, when a department is going through a procurement, the requirements placed upon them automatically disadvantage smaller businesses.

          1. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: Public Sector...

            That's a fair comment, though arguably the policies from on high are also are also written with an eye to the, err, optics and avoidance of blame. After all, say the various implicated politicians we went with a sound well known company. ICL ( Fujitsu). They had all the experience, big departments with lots of people, guaranteed cashflow........

  21. Acrimonius

    IT/ERP Companies also do not have what it takes

    What is overlooked is that many of the companies also lack the required engineers and managers both in terms of experience/skill and numbers. This is made worse as they promise to do something in half the time than what is realistic (also never good practice to say no to the Client's deadlines) or are faced with a mountain of changes they cannot suddenly cope with. So they go cap in hand back to the Client for more money and time which itself needs more money.

    As far as Government staffing is concerned it will never have internal staff with the reqired technical and technical management skills. Nor will the most able want to be in the Civil Service. It will be career ending - a CV no-no. So an army of consultants/advisors who have an hidden agenda and no one internally competent enough to also manage.

    Replacing the outdated SAP is likey to a mother of fuck-ups

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: IT/ERP Companies also do not have what it takes

      Acrimonious it may be, Acrimonius, but that post of yours was accurately succinct and perfectly highlights the problem which Parliamentarians in their present phorm and ilk will always be plagued to suffer and do vainglorious battle against and be comprehensively defeated by.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IT/ERP Companies also do not have what it takes

      In some cases maybe...but if larger organisations actually had more skill and experience the track and trace system during covid might not have started out as a shitty spreadsheet.

  22. localzuk

    Poor pay

    The UK govt doesn't pay enough for competent tech workers, so they get people who can't succeed elsewhere. Example, the "Head of CyberSecurity" position in the MHCLG, a department of 3600 people spread out across the UK, has a salary range of £77,257 - £83,230 (London), £70,644 - £76,608 (National). A critical role, ensuring the security of an entire ministry and 3500 people across 20 offices, getting paid £70k. Or someone suitably experienced would walk into a job at a FTSE500 company for £100k+.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Poor pay

      I dunno man. Cybersecurity pay is a mixed bag.

      I work as a cybersecurity analyst sometimes (if I can actually find a gig) and the pay is usually garbage when you consider the amount of responsibility and sheer stress involved.

      I wouldn't take less than £200k for this sort of job. If I can't afford at least a couple of very nice holidays a year and a really comfy house to go home to, I wouldn't take that cybersecurity job...after tax etc, those salaries are crap.

  23. CorwinX

    Pay peanuts - get monkeys

    This is all

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pay peanuts - get monkeys

      They don't pay peanuts to the contract holders though...and they still get monkeys.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pay peanuts - get monkeys

        Of course, they pay the peanuts and sometimes get monkeys.

        But still charge the client for gorillas.

        AC as it's the offspring who is paid by BigCorp as a Grad. But being hired out as a "Senior" Something or Other. Said child of mine is actually damn good and appears to be well appreciated by the client, but isn't receiving anything like the paygrade that's being charged out as.

  24. CorwinX

    Penalty Clauses

    These only work if you've got people who know what they're doing tech-wise and can make sure the original specification and contract for the system are rock-solid. No get-out clauses.

    But if that's done properly then failing to deliver lets you put the boot in.

    Also phased payments, based on milestones.

    Initial development, acceptance testing, initial pilot, retooling, extended pilot, final acceptance, rollout, support.

    I learnt that on day one of a project management course at the bank I worked for.

    The problem, I think, is these contracts are always negotiated with civil servants - not IT professionals.

    IMHO

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