UK agri dept spent hundreds of millions upgrading to Windows 10 – just in time for end of support

The UK's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has spent £312 million (c $407 million) modernizing its IT estate, including replacing tens of thousands of Windows 7 laptops with Windows 10 – which officially reached end of support last month. The details were set out in a letter from Defra's interim …

[Captain Hogwash]

Ahem ->

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Make gov IT jobs tax free as an incentive. This will make them significantly more attractive.

With current overspending on commercial solutions this missing tax base will pay off nicely. Overall job market size may grow too. Right now private sector hoovers talent to such nonsense as games, finance, crypto and other scam.

Then build in-house systems with this talent and open source.

[wolfetone]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Yeah but how does that benefit the lobbyists?

Come on, this is not how government is meant to work!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

It's not going to happen. They changed IR35 so that work only flows to usual, expensive and tax-avoiding, suspects exempt from the changes.

Public sector's IT is a massive racket.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

More IR35 bellyaching.

Just run a proper in-house IT Shop and pay people properly - whether staff or (fixed term) contractor.

The company know what you are paid, so show them your periodic tax submissions and all’s good…. unless you have something to hide.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

I was tapped on the shoulder for a role in gov't yesterday.

"inside" IR35. Yeah, ok, no surprise. Remote - nice. Oh and the contract says "no other employments" - so I'd have to shut down my Ltd.

They basically wanted an employee, not a contractor. And an Employee not on their head count / books.

[sal II]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

They can't get employees, because the paybands, that can't have an engineer earning more than their mediocre middle manager that has been in the job for 2 decades on like £40k or God forbid the senior management £50-60k. And you are not getting quality techies for £40k, yet alone seniors. So for long time they are forced to resort to contractors, because that's the only way to pay enough to attract talent.

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Haha

Hahahaha

You miss a crucial point in this. The desire will be to outsource management of the system, because reasons.

But the outsource suppliers will say "can't have that open source stuff, because there's no-one to sue if it all goes wrong". Because they don't actually want to take the risk that outsourcing is meant to transfer to them, but shift it somewhere else - and they don't understand that key part of the GPL - "if it breaks, you get to keep the pieces" - with the implied "so you can put it back together yourself"

Since I don't give a sierra-hotel-one-tango any more as I've retired and am now a stroppy parish council chair I can tell you all that I actually heard this from Cable & Wireless in the mid-noughties when a secure email system for local authorities was being looked at, and one of the district councils in Somerset, IIRC, had already developed one. C&W wouldn't consider taking it on and managing it for the sector for that very reason.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

I think based on your very own response they understand it perfectly well.

Why push extra risk onto yourself when you can charge a stupendous amount, earn a ridiculous profit, and lock people in. Then when the commercial offering goes out of support, they get to buy it all again! win win!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Now poor Chancellor had to go cap in hand, tail between legs, saying everyone has to chip in a bit more.

I wonder when people wake up that this is just a pure wealth transfer and spending cuts totally can happen if you tackle corruption within the state.

[Loudon D'Arcy]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

So if I've understood this outsourcing situation correctly...

...then the upgrade treadmill isn't a bug...

...it's a feature.

(Or to put it another way, there's no recurring revenue streams if you fix the problem once-and-for-all with open source software and on-prem data centres.)

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

To be fair, not exactly. There is no such thing as 'fixing it once and for all with open source software'[1]. All software has a lifecycle. Most commercial Unix has a shorter lifecycle than Windows. Most commercially free Unix has a *much* shorter lifecycle than Windows (not infrequently well under a couple of years before an upgrade to maintain security patches is required, which is ridiculous from a commercial point of view, but the cost is *free*).

For open source, you have as it says 'all the source'. If you want to maintain a Unix distribution at a specific version for thirty years you can, but it requires expense and expertise.

Either pay for moderately specialist expertise that can't necessarily be swapped in by any available warm body[2]

or

Pay for a product backed by a commercial entity where they provide the back to back support, SLAs and suchlike, but you're beholden to their support lifecycle (or you pay more and experience issues over time[3])

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and different costs at varying times. It can be understood why a company might prefer to minimise the amount of staff dedicated to their specific environment, and maximise those who can be quickly sourced.

[1] For the 'Captain picky' among commentators. Yes, if your task is disconnected from the network and you can reasonably expect long term hardware support then *maybe* you can have a setup and forget system, but these are increasingly rare.

[2] This is rather unfair on various admins, it too is increasingly specialist regardless of whether it is Windows, Commercial Unix or other applications. The general principle of 'I want someone trained in these specific products and versions' is easier to source than 'I need people who have all these skills and can then adapt to our specific configuration' holds, though. Note also that if you're doing the latter, you'd better pay them well, because where are the transferable skills? Who would willingly sign up to a job that will actively erode your exposure to new technologies over time?

[3] At work we probably have/had fifteen plus year old implementations. They still work and receive security patches, but any new functionality became increasingly expensive as backporting from the mainline becomes difficult due to divergence of architecture, plus also developers want to move on, and institutional knowledge is lost.

[Roo]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

W.r.t to the "shorter lifecycle" line: folks are still running RHEL7 and clones to the tune of thousands of instances quite happily. In otherwords: If you want to be you can be just as unsupported and out of date as Windows <11 customers for far less cost.

[doublelayer]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

And that life cycle is still a little shorter than Windows 10's. It was released in June 2014, a month before Windows 10 was. It entered extended support in July 2024, 15 months before Windows 10 did. It runs out of extended support in June 2028, anywhere from a year and a half to three years before Windows 10 depending on what version you're prepared to use. Everything needs either somewhat regular attention to updates*, a rigorous plan for how you're going to deal with very old stuff, or a willingness to take the risk of very old stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of people decide to go with option 3 but their reasons are bad and selfish**.

* The benefit of many open source operating systems and distros is that the attention to updates is often somewhat easy and free, but you still have to do it. Linux being free doesn't help you if you never tried running on anything after a 2.6 kernel, because 2.6 isn't supported anymore.

** Often, the reasons include things like finance not wanting to spend money on maintenance or IT not wanting to do the work to update it. Whether the users, customers, business, or whatever this thing makes possible are at risk is often treated as a much smaller factor than it should be. And yes, I do think IT is sometimes to blame. Certainly not always, as I have met many admins who know exactly how important a system is, what will go wrong if it fails, and fight a lopsided battle to make that happen. Unfortunately, I've found lots of people who don't like change or work and happily ignore it until something breaks and they don't know what to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

RHEL7 ELS EOL is at the end of May 2029, not 2028. It's been now extended twice I think..because it was a very popular version and predated the current 3 year RHEL release cycle.

You can still even buy semi-secret extended ELS for RHEL6 from Redhat. They just don't publicly advertise that service. Would not be surprised if that also happened to RHEL7.

[ovation1357]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

"Most commercially free Unix has a *much* shorter lifecycle than Windows"

Aside from disputing "much shorter" as there are notable long-term release examples which fare pretty well, (e.g. Ubuntu LTS gives you 5 years of free updates and a further 5 available with commercial support, which still works out hugely cheaper than Windows licensing)....

I think the more important fact is that the next version of your chosen Linux distro is unlikely to have significantly different hardware requirements unlike Windows which has already been so bloated that you end up needing to buy new hardware - not just a faster machine with more RAM but this time the whole TPM debacle has seen lots of fairly new machines needing to be replaced.

I'm comfortable that the latest and greatest release of any of the big name distros will run perfectly well on 10+ year old hardware and be fairly performant, whereas I couldn't even install the latest Windows editions.

I'm sure many organisations could save a small fortune by ditching Microsoft products in favour of open source alternatives where feasible.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

My wording could have been better. The BSDs are especially poor. OpenBSD *one year*. FreeBSD five years - but only if you run STABLE which is a pain as it needs to be built from source. If RELEASE is used, you'll be upgrading every year. Five years for Ubuntu LTS is significantly less than the effective 11 years for Windows 10 at no additional cost, and somewhat longer than that depending on the version (effectively 13 years for standard Windows 10, if you're running LTSC IoT versions support extends out to 2032, but you'd have to determinedly update to that version, I'm not sure how viable that is from standard 10).

Windows has only started the hardware crackdown with Windows 11 - I'm still on 10, my main system being very good for 2013. It would also run Windows 11 if I bypassed the hardware check requirements, but why bother?

Commercial Unix licensing pricing isn't one of my areas of expertise - I note that Ubuntu are actually very generous for non commercial users, with Pro available free for up to five PCs. It is, yes, much cheaper than a Windows Enterprise license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Funny as there is another massive waste of time and money parish councillors and parish councils.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

5 waste of time Parish Councillors disagree. If you work in elections you know how dickish parish councillors are, even worse than normal councillors.

[TDog]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Well I have been a Parish Councilor and that in the largest parish in England. Strangely enough I didn't get paid at all. Ever. And the expenses were minimal, just out of pocket to the tune of very few pounds. No loss of earniings comp. or anything like that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

DEFRA outsource their IT.

i used to work on the DEFRA account.

They initially outsourced to IBM & added CAP Gemini, which got extended a couple of times.

https://www.theregister.com/2017/07/07/defra_prolongs_si_addiction/

IBM also outsourced parts to the likes of AT&T as IBM outsourced its global network stuff to AT&T.

many of those i worked with at the outsourcer had initially started at DEFRA in the 80's, 90's.

not all bad for those who retained their TUPE entitlements like defined pensions plus uplifted salaries & extra payments for moving offices etc.

But yes, tax free salary would have been great.

[Deni]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

To not tax civil servants would cost us N in lost tax revenue, plus all the extra cost of managing two taxation systems

If we can afford to lose N amount from our purse then wouldn't it just be easier to raise their collective pay by N instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

Nice idea but shame about the corruption and/or incompetence. Worked for local gov for years, I'd already been at the NHS for a few years and by time I'd left they'd modernised. Moved to local gov and it was like going back to the past several years, it was like they'd bought all of the NHS's old kit. Stayed like that for a while because they had a head of IT without a clue and a council who refused to pay for new kit and the head of IT was just hanging around until retirement.

They had people leading who were stuck in the 70s and it was a jobs for the boys mentality throughout the whole council. The sexism was shocking and allowing a known sexual abuser continuing in his jobs for years, even promoting to manager, where they knew his past, until he as sent to prison for several years.

Then the "shake up" and the role with Google because "Its hip" and "I want to make my mark so I can stick it on the CV". More money pissed away on consultants, ignoring internal IT engineers and endless meetings with nothing progressing.

This is the reason shit like this happens and will continue because of all the bullshit. But engineers like us are sidelined because "You have no management experience". Yet you sit there and mutter to yourself "Clearly you've had shit experience as you couldn't manage a piss up in a brewery but because you say yes to everything, are a kiss arse and a grifter, you've been given a job you're no way near qualified for. And because its local gov, they can't be arsed with the hassle of firing you because you're a manager, so this goes on forever until the next director comes along and wants to "make their mark".

[Terry 6]

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

All government jobs would be free of basic tax, in a rational world. Their tax is just giving back to the government some of what the government gave to them- with admin costs on top.

In reality it wouldn't work, because however little they were paid there'd be a hue and cry about tax free perks.

I sort of have experience of this. As a local authority peripatetic teacher using my own car I used to get a parking exemption when visiting schools. We'd done this for decades, but it became a public issue when some of the Town Hall staff were caught using it to park outside the council office all day.

But instead of just stopping them there was a general furore about council staff getting free parking- as in "I have to pay to park outside my place of business, so they should too" which sounds reasonable ( and bloody well was for those lazy sods in the Town Hall), until you remember that the actual staff don't pay for their (legitimate work) parking anyway, the employer does. Which was the council. So we were still parking, but we had to get parking vouchers from the council in exchange for funds the council gave us to do our jobs, but now included paying for the vouchers and also the admin cost to the council in providing, distributing and monitoring voucher supply, and the considerable waste of our time ( paid for by council the tax payer) in obtaining batches of vouchers, not to mention all that card scratching, carefully making sure we'd scratched the right bit on the right card for that zone ( we might be in 5 or 6 different zones across the week and two or three on any given day) so we didn't pick up fines and the anxiety of making sure we had a supply in the car of all the right cards for the right zones. Massively stressful to us, and wasteful to the council- just so that we didn't "benefit from free parking".

[Anonymous Coward]

I am, in no way, trying to be a fanboi.

BUT, Christ almighty, replacing windows with even macOS would be cheaper than the abhorrent merde that is windows

Total cost of ownership has been proven to be much less with macOS than windowsL https://www.ciodive.com/news/Cisco-tests-Apple-MacBook-vs-PC-ROI-security/694409/

[Lusty]

Not correct. Windows has longer support and better enterprise management tooling. Mac might be cheaper due to a lack of flexibility and lack of enterprise tooling so certain things can’t be done (therefore lower adkin costs), but that’s enforceable on Windows too if you hate your user base.

[theOtherJT]

I'm not sure that's true any more. The various apple MDMs are really much, much better than they used to be. It's certainly not the same as Windows, so if you start out from "I want to do X how do I do X?" you might well find that the answer is "You can't", but a lot of the time you don't want to do X, you want to achieve result Y, which on Windows you get by doing X, but isn't necessarily the only way.

I'm certainly yet to find anything that I desperately need my mac fleet to do that Jamf can't manage one way or another, and I've gotten a ton of features out of it that Windows was much less good at - not least having machines shipped direct from the manufacturer to the employee's home and they arrive effectively pre-configured. They don't have to come to the IT department to get all the crap scraped off them first, which is definitely something we have to do with the Windows machines these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

The post you are responding to is batshit crazy.

Modern enterprise tooling is built on the tools created for mobile phones (hence the name), developed first at Blackberry, then taken up by Apple and Google. You could MDM iOS and Android a decade before you could MDM Windows.

Microsoft is catching up (Intune is usable these days) but even 5 years ago they were a decade or more behind everyone else. Until late 2010s Microsoft were still determined that Domains, Domain Controllers and Group Policies were the future, everyone else had jumped over to MDMs. Intune was a half-baked joke, that existed purely so they could say they had an MDM because every other tech company on the planet had something better.

Covid changed everything. Everyone was taking devices home. Windows devices not checking into domain controllers for a long time is bad, really bad (they just cease to let you login after X attempts). Microsoft realised they had to catch up, and like I said, in fairness, Intune is now usable. There's still a whole bunch of legacy shit - pretty much everything controlled in Google/Apple is controlled by dedicated hooks built into the OS. You don't have to spend long with Windows before you realise you're editing registry hives, OMA-URI Settings, legacy security policies and so forth - usable, but still antiquated.

But they are still, to this day, playing catchup, desperately trying to get away from their on prem Domain server legacy. It's absolutely nuts that anyone thinks Microsoft leads in this area. Only someone who had never used other systems would make such a ludicrous claim.

It's only THIS version of Windows (25H2) that we've been able to remove default apps ffs! Before now, if you wanted to remove the Xbox app from Windows ENTERPRISE (!!!), you had to use a script, and then Microsoft realised people were doing this and overwrote it, causing the Xbox app to install again

You WILL use the Xbox app You WILL use Edge. You WILL use Cortana/Clippy/Copilot (whatever it's called this week). You WILL use Teams. Jokers.

Microsoft are a bad joke - don't confuse market dominance for competence. They're two completely different things.

[theOtherJT]

I've been fortunate enough to not have to manage a Windows fleet in nearly a decade now, so I don't really know how good or bad it is these days, but the writing was on the wall even back then. The amount of hoops you were forced through to try and get Windows 10 to behave itself in a corporate environment the same way 7 did was just totally hateful, and they did indeed seem determined to make it harder not easier.

[Anonymous Coward]

Significantly worse in the 11 era. I'm with you that 7 was a relative bright spot, but 11 makes 10 look like an idyllic desert island in comparison.

11 is just a mess. Microsoft routinely shit all over your policies and end user usability and enforce things because it financially benefits them to do so.

Example: you block Edge, and make a lot of policies based around another default browser (Chrome, or whatever) - It works fine for years, and you've got everything configured just how you want it, with a load of security stuff build around the default browser, then you come in one morning and Microsoft just overnight decide that all links followed in Team and Outlook will default to Edge, pushed out to every Windows 11 computer in the world, completely ignoring the default browser hook that everyone in IT had previously configured

That's an actual real life example from the past year or so - one of many: ditto endless issues with Teams - including there being multiple versions of Teams installed on every computer. The Microsoft Store. Outlook, Copilot, and so on - in Microsoftland, they make the configuration decisions, not the end the user, not the IT admin - if the wind is blowing in a certain profitable direction, that's the way your environment is heading (that's not only a reason to move to Linux, but also puts Google and Apple into the equation - because even they don't disrespect their userbase as often and routinely as Microsoft do).

[Arbuthnot the Magnificent]

Reminds me...

In 2016 I led the technical part of a large scale Exchange upgrade in an NHS Trust, from 2003 to 2010...

[gryphon]

Re: Reminds me...

As an interim step in the same Exchange organization that's perfectly fine since there was no direct upgrade path from 2003 to 2013.

But if they then stuck on 2010 rather than doing another migration to 2013 or going to O365 as was that's a different story.

I know there are orgs out there still using Exchange 2003, Fujitsu posted a job advert a few weeks ago looking for someone experienced in 2003 and X400 routing.

Fun, fun.

[Arbuthnot the Magnificent]

Re: Reminds me...

It was not an interim step... In fairness, the time delay between planning the upgrade and actually implementing it might have played a role.

There are still 2003 setups? Wow, I would actually be qualified for that - probably the last version I enjoyed working on.

[K555]

Re: Reminds me...

I just retired my personal Exchange 2003 server (SBS 2003!) earlier this year because Server 2003 didn't support the TLS standard my mobile e-mail client now demands.

It had a good run. I couldn't actually log into the thing for about 2 years because I moved the VM and tripped up the activation on it. The telephone activation is long since defunct but I eventually found out that you could activate it using the Microsoft Games telephone activation (which I guess they keep alive for people who want to play the original Halo on PC?) as it appears to use the same code generator! Then, during the uninstall, it prompted me for Disc 2 of the SBS 2003 installation.... that caused a lot of rummaging through the old action pack CD wallets!

Fun times.

[Arbuthnot the Magnificent]

Re: Reminds me...

SBS... For a few years I seemed to do nothing but SBS installations or upgrades. Different times.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Reminds me...

You know, as a techie it must be tempting to download the ISO, or stick the CD in the device, run setup.exe and leave for the weekend.

Oh no, look what's happened, Let’s blame Microsoft.

Have I done this in the past just to by pass corporate bullshit? Who can say!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reminds me...

meh, I'm in a bank that's just replacing Server 2012 as it's default DNS servers

[ComicalEngineer]

In latest news DEFRA have given Massey Ferguson a contract to replace the shire horse for ploughing.

[ParlezVousFranglais]

But with an interim 3-year phase of the shire horses pulling the tractors pulling the ploughs

[ITMA]

Is that with the man with red flag in front?

[ParlezVousFranglais]

No - that's coming in the 2026 contract amendment where DEFRA get to pay an extra £50 million for a "visual awareness adjustment"

[Anonymous Coward]

Massey Ferguson? Nah, they'd surely go for John Deere for all the improved service benefits [sic] that vendor lock-in so obviously gives you, huzzah…

[Michael]

ai version

The plan is that by 2035 they will have a fully autonomous unit with AI to replace the man leading the horse. It will require line of sight to a custom series of base stations around the field and a perfectly flat area of land to operate on. It will have a guaranteed 99% uptime for the ai service and a wired internet connection to the machine will be recommended. Batteries will need to be recharged every 30 minutes.

[andy the pessimist]

The number of people in DEFRA is 13580. 26000 phones seems excessive. 26000 computers seems high. 1 desktop and 1 laptop is just about believable.

I'm willing to be corrected but the numbers seem too high.

I would hope a bulk buy would keep costs down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would one desktop and one laptop be a sensible use of money? A laptop and a docking station would seem more sensible - cheaper to buy, and only one machine to manage / license.

[Like a badger]

Speaking as a civil servant in another department, but with friends across others, nobody gets a desktop these days unless they're in a call centre type of role, it's always laptop plus docking stations, usually with the same semi hot desking that you'd have in a big corporate. During Covid some roles got a laptop as well as the in-office desktop to enable remote working, but I'd be surprised if more than a fifth of Defra employees were in that category.

With Defra's most recent reported headcount of 6,598 it does seem there's questions to be answered. Possible answers include that Defra may be providing IT to some of the many quangos that it is formally the parent body for. Those include Environment Agency, Animal and Plant Health Agency, Rural Payments Agency, Veterinary Medicines Directorate, Consumer Council for Water, Marine Management Organisation, Natural England, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and others. Total head count across the whole of Defra's empire is 32,732.

[gryphon]

Defra is the parent.

All the rest are squabbling children that hate each other and are fighting to escape parental control.

Defra and the others all also mutually detest each other and are fighting between themselves and fighting Defra for resources.

Or so I am told.

[Diogenes8080]

As one dependent on certain EA services, I can confirm that this is true and that the spending boot is definitely on the parental foot.

The downstream post about EA expense claims is interesting, however.

[Roland6]

>” Possible answers include that Defra may be providing IT to some of the many quangos that it is formally the parent body for.”

The letter has this to say, which would suggest you are right:

“ We had previously identified that the biggest efficiency savings would come from

consolidating and modernising our core infrastructure across the Core Department and

our Arms Length Bodies.‘

[Like a badger]

My own department is playing around at rationalising ALBs, but I can assure you that the level of ambition on that isn't going to save much money.

The problem here is that government is chasing efficiency in its own cost-of-spending (the Civil Service and related bodies) which account for 1.2% of total government spending. However, the actual problem is not the efficiency with which government spends, it is simply that it is spending far too much in total relative to tax. The only solution is either raise taxes a lot, or cut a lot, or some combination of those. Whilst a more efficient and effective Civil Service is absolutely needed, fiddling around with the 1.2% will in the short term only make it harder to control the other 98.8% of government spending, and ultimately the parliamentary Labour party have decided they like spending lots, so they oppose any ideas to reduce public spending.

If they do want to reorganise the Civil Service and government delivery, then what they should be doing is bring all arms length bodies back under direct ministerial control. Look at the Environment Agency, around 13,000 headcount, expenditure of around £2bn a year, and yet not properly accountable to any minister. The Defra minister acts a "government sponsor" for EA, and appoints its board, but essentially there's no proper and direct governmental control (as with most ALB). One of the board of EA is paid £20k a year, yet the accounts show he was paid £1.1m of taxable expenses - looks like governance isn't a strong point for EA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think it is right. We were working on something with the Environment Agency a year or two back and I had to liaise with their IT overlords, and I'm pretty sure that they were part of the Defra IT department.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck - many years later, we're still consolidating without much in the way of savings but then it would help if the centre knew what the "children" actually did and needed....

[Excused Boots]

“ Possible answers include that Defra may be providing IT to some of the many quangos that it is formally the parent body for.:

Which does raise question why, quango, ‘quasi, nom government....’ OK let me stop you there, ‘non-government’ Why am I paying, through taxation, for this?

[andy the pessimist]

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/civil-service-staff-numbers

This is where I got the staff numbers from. Where one department ends and another one starts i don't know.

[Anonymous Coward]

yep, those numbers are completely off.

DEFRA vpn had over 30k users at peak times.

EA had their own vpn system.

DEFRA has a bunch of agencies under it, some like EA & parts of RPA are more autonomous than others.

But overall DEFRA definitely has over 30k staff which does not include their outsourced partners providing managed services like Vodafone etc.

[Bamba_RFW]

That's pretty close to needing a LONG (signed) integer

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a Headcount or a 'Ballpark' estimate !!!

That is one hell of a 'dodgy' looking number :)

32768 - 'a little' ... so it does not look too neat :)

Is Defra a Civil Service catch-all dept ?

If you cannot work out what dept it should fit in ... add it to Defra's empire !!!

:)

[Anonymous Coward]

Executive Agencies are not quangos! So that's APHA, CEFAS, RPA, VMD.

The 6598 figure from the WMI is the Department Payroll staff, non payroll staff also need to use the same kit of course.

The letter does does make specific mention of EA - who are indeed a quango, they have about the same number of staff as the rest put together.

And it also mentions other Arms Length Bodies, so add MMO, NE, Kew.

Yes, the vast majority of staff have laptops and already did by the late teens.

The 24,000 as mentioned is just those that are end of life, after the big upgrade which started in 2020.

And of course the 312m figure covers way more than just the laptops.

[Anonymous Coward]

when i worked for an outsourcer to DEFRA, EA/RPA had their own IT.

Was weird going to a DEFRA site and seeing it was shared with EA who had all their own kit and services.

As i left they where completing the roll out of Unified Comms which was to retire the old PBX's and roll phones into the computers etc, a big driver was to enable DEFRA/RPA/EA to use a common messaging platform.

certainly the DEFRA VPN had 30k+ users on snow days.

[andy the pessimist]

For a development person or it person i would expect 1 desktop and 1 laptop. Everybody else to get a laptop.

That does not come close to 2 computers for everybody.

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptop, iPad and iPhone ?

With senior people probably getting a £3K Microsoft Surface in the mix somewhere and grunts a base ThinkPad.T-Series (with dock)..

[Adelio]

Laptops

I have tried laptops but i have NEVER liked the mousepad or the small screen.

I have a dual screen setup and it works fine

[Pascal Monett]

Ha, ha, ha

So, when will customers revolt and tell Redmond that support is due until the last Windows 1 0 license is retired ?

Because why is it Borkzilla's privilege to decide when an OS version is to be retired ? People are using that thing. You have no right to arbitrarily decide to end it.

You have the power, you do not have the right.

And you have largely enough money to support Win 1 0 until its last user dies of old age.

Because Win 1 0 was supposed to be the last version.

Do you really think we forgot that ?

[theOtherJT]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

Because it belongs to them?

I mean, I get it, that's really shitty, but it is the way it is. You don't own the thing, they do. You were granted a conditional licence to use it. They can do what they want, they do have that right.

...which to my mind is why people should think very carefully before buying* Windows in the first place.

*read: Renting. Terms and conditions apply

[Terry 6]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

And, we need to bear in mind that Win 10 still works*. It's the support that is ended. Morally repugnant but perfectly legal.

*And I'm bloody well not ceasing using it it any time soon.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

> And, we need to bear in mind that Win 10 still works*. It's the support that is ended. Morally repugnant but perfectly legal.

But not the app updates...the still seem to keep on coming

[IamAProton]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

actually they are suporting it already (LTSC versions)

Some applications are available only on NON-LTSC versions, but they can make a tool to remove those and make the LTSC security updates available to any win 10 that has been "converted" to LTSC

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

You can blame Microsoft for a whole host of things, including increasing spyware, unwanted LLMs, almost mandatory cloud accounts, and unnecessarily dropping support for hardware perfectly capable of running Windows 11 if they made the effort.

What you can't do, however, is blame them for the longevity of support and the notification of support lifecycle. It's typically better than anything else on the market, including commercial Unixes, and comically better than free Unixes.

Even with an inept company and hideously slow internal bureaucracy it's still an acceptable amount of time for all but the most tardy.

[Swiss Anton]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

What is so wrong with windonws 10? I've just had to fork out a wad of cash for a new PC that can run window 11, and I'm very annoyed.

[doublelayer]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

It's fun to blame Microsoft, but let's consider this. The migration we're talking about happened from 2023-2025. In other words, it happened well after Microsoft announced Windows 11 and announced the time for Windows 10 security updates to end. Unless the department went to the storehouse of used hardware, the machines they bought not only support Windows 11, but almost certainly shipped with it and had to be overwritten to return then to 10. All of this information would have been well-known from the start since all the necessary information was available from the end of 2021 with most of it announced months earlier. This is not Microsoft's fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

That 312m spend, as stated in the letter, covers much more than just the kit and OS that staff use.

As for the Windows version question. Much of the work happened before Windows 11 was even announced.

All that build and test against legacy applications moving from Win7 to Win10 and fitting within a variety of existing infrastructures.

One department, several executive agencies and a bunch of ALBs who had all been going their own way for a long time. Since a previous government had fractured the civil service and forced the outsourcing of all IT, including the civil servants that were previously doing the job.

Rollout of new kit and build then took a fair while across such a diverse set of users and setups.

Work to upgrade from Win10 to 11 began as soon as it was feasible and many of those new laptops were simply migrated.

But yes they're getting to end of life, some are over 5 years old now and by the end of the next SR period all will be older than that.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

And don;t forget that in government circles getting the plan approved and finance provided can take years, so they probably started this well before win11 was announced

[tezboyes]

Re: Ha, ha, ha

Yep, I was involved in some of the testing, as an end user. It was at latest 2019 maybe even 2018 when it all started. Project had to identify everything that was being used. Get decisions on what had to be continued. Wrangle testers across all those different areas. Most could be tested on virtual machines, but my team had a special requirement. So I got given a real laptop with the candidate build. That was the start of March 2020.

[williamyf]

The UK's Agri Department seems like the Kind of organization that CAN get Win10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 LEGALLY, and therefore be supported until early 2030 FREE OF CHARGE by Microsoft themselves.

Pretty much any machine that can run 7 can run 10, so the modernization is probably getting Win11 ready laptops and downgrading them, not replacing laptops that can not run 10, let alone 11.

In those types of organizations, the reason for migrastions to go so slow is years of underfunding, lack of human power and BESPOKE APPLICATIONS that are too dependant on a specific version of Microsoft's OS.

JM2¢

YMMV

[FirstTangoInParis]

Bettered innit

Windows 11 gives you more efficiencies etc.

My experience to date is that it absolutely doesn’t, and actually it’s far worse. As well as MS keeping messing around with the UI on Outlook. Windows 7 and 10 worked. 11 is in the same heap as 8 and vista. I almost said roll on 12, but I’d rather roll back to 10.

[Roland6]

“windows 10”….

I agree with you, the letter is a semi-technical overview not a specification or report to a technical audience. Thus “ Windows 10” is sufficient, it doesn’t need to say “Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise 25H2 LTSC”.

Enabling some journalist to jump to conclusions and get on their hobby horse…

[Ken Hagan]

The articles says "during the current spending review period (2022-23 to 2024-25)" and so it is extremely likely that any replacement hardware bought during this period will be able to run Win11.

If they have, in fact, been installing Win10, that tells me that the obstacle to Win11 adoption is the software that they want to run on those machines.

(Or, as suggested by several people above, the software that they don't want to run on these machines: namely all the crapware that MS are shovelling into Win11 these days.)

[Anonymous Coward]

FFS !!!!!

This smacks of heavy-duty lining of some consultancies pockets.

How can you perform an upgrade of OS without knowing that you are installing something that is obsolete.

Even if you assume that the upgrade was slow and late, as per usual, it is a waste of money as the whole process will need to be repeated.

It looks like the consultancy doing the work has deliberately ignored the reality so that they can do multiple upgrades and charge for each one as a distinct step.

Windows 11 did not appear yesterday, yet you are continuing to install an OS that is obsolete.

Yet another over-priced project that has been delivered late, no doubt !!!

Govt projects are such a profit maker as the leaders within the govt are so lacking in skills that they are 'robbed' every time.

Of course, this is not a problem as 'we' the mugs who pay for this will just keep paying !!!

This level of ineptitude is not acceptable BUT government depts never learn ... highly suspect or totally incompetent ... guess which !!!???

:)

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: FFS !!!!!

This smacks of the short term thinking of austerity hobbling critical infrastructure and costing much much more in the long run. See also F-35 and HS2.

[Terry 6]

Re: FFS !!!!!

See parallel thread currently.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/11/04/uk_f35_capability_crimped_by/

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: FFS !!!!!

Thanks for the link, I'm already active and commenting on the thread. On the plus side, my piss is on a permanent rolling boil so my heating bills this year will be minimal.

[David Hicklin]

Re: FFS !!!!!

> How can you perform an upgrade of OS without knowing that you are installing something that is obsolete.

As I mentioned earlier, in the world of the government it takes years just to get a plan approved and financed.....and would take years more to get a new one planned and approved again leaving them on win7 for even longer

Now I don't *know* that this is the case but based on my limited exposure to supplying to government "units" in the past it is probably is.

[theOtherJT]

Sadly, this does not surprise me in the least.

I've been involved in largeish (tiny in comparison to this - only about 1500 machines) infra upgrades for public entities. The process goes like this:

Announcement is made...

IT: End of support for $product has been announced and we need to upgrade before the end of the year after next. We would like to begin the process now. We have a quote from the vendor.

Management: There's nothing in the budget for that this year. We can put it up for consideration for next years budget.

The next year...

IT: We need to start the upgrade on $product which goes out of support next year. We have a new quote ready for if we buy now, it's gone up a bit tho.

Management: Well, the budget for that was refused because it's in support *this* year, so it'll have to come out of next year's budget.

IT: OK... but we won't get funds released until next April with the new tax year, and the end of support is in June. It usually takes our vendor three months to negotiate the bulk sale price for this many units so we really need to start now.

Management: No. Budget.

The next year, April...

IT: We have less than two months to do the upgrade. We need budget approval for the $product licences.

Management: What?! This quote is 50% higher than we budgeted for!

IT: Yes, you waited until the last minute so now the supplier has us over a barrel and the quote we were given last year has expired so if we want this before the licence expires, this is the price.

Management: Well, there's not enough money for that, it'll just have to wait.

June, the day support ends...

Management: What the hell is happening!? Half the PCs aren't working!

IT: We know. $product has dropped out of support and the information security team have shut it off.

Management: We need this working again, now! It's totally crippled several departments!

IT: Well, we can get an extended support contract for $product and get everything working again by tomorrow if money's no object...

Management: Just get it working!

The next day...

IT: So, we've gotten an extended support licence. It's costing double what the upgrade would have, so we really need to do the upgrade as soon as possible.

Management: Look, it's working now, and costing way too much, I might add. We're not signing off on any more money for this this year.

Three years later...

Management: Why on earth are we still paying for this obsolete program?

IT: Because your predecessor and for that matter their predecessor wouldn't give us the budget to upgrade it. We can go straight to version N+1 now for $lotsofmoney.

Management: Oh no, that's far too expensive. The upgrade to version N cost was only half that three years ago. Lets do that instead.

IT: Well, ok, I mean... we can do that, but we're only going to have to do it again next year because version N will be going out of support soon.

Management: I'm sorry, but that's all that's in the budget.

Another year passes...

IT: We've completed the $product upgrade to version N. Incidentally, it goes out of support next year, so we need to budget for the upgrade to N+1

Management: Preposterous! We've only just done one upgrade. We're not paying for another one...

...repeat ad infinitum.

[John_Ericsson]

The project would have been "upgrade windows 7 desktops to windows10". A project manager would have been assigned and the remit would be "to budget, no excuses" . The Project Manager delivered.

[david1024]

So...

Noone thought that maybe a skip from 7 to 11 might work out since they'd had the 7 machines so long out of support? 300+ mill replaces a lot of hardware... That's going to need to be re-replaced now for an inflation adjusted swag of 450+mill. I can install 7 today if I needed to, not like it is illegal. Get waivers and pocket routers to give that old OS some protection and accept the risk as you go to win11 (or Linux or whatever)

That's the head that should roll for this.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: So...

The project probably started when W7 was coming to end of life. If they start to migrate to W11 now, they'll get there just as it goes out of support.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Sir Humphrey would be proud...

[Anonymous Coward]

Treat computers like cattle not like pets

Ironically if it were 24,000 carbon based beasts who were virus infected then DEFRA would be able to decide to cull them overnight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Treat computers like cattle not like pets

For DEFRA to cull a herd and place movement restrictions on others, you only need one animal with symptoms…

[Roland6]

W11 25H2 - end of mainstream support Oct 10, 2028….

Given the ESU programme for W10 lasts until October 2028, I expect there will be a similar story then about how migrations to W11 have completed just as it goes out of support…

I’ve had to trash a couple of customer laptops as they are unable to upgrade beyond W11 22H2…

I do wonder whether there are any security updates in WS2025 that could not have been applied to WS2012 or even WS2K3 x64… NB. I’m not suggesting we should be deploying new applications on WS2k3, but if you have a working business application on WS2k3, all you really need are security updates and possibly the odd feature update. Similar applies to Windows x64 desktop using W7 x64 as the baseline, given its wide use and standardisation of x64 motherboard architecture.

[Roland6]

Cloud…

“ It also raises the question of whether the Windows 10 rollout was a stopgap measure to buy time before a broader move to cloud-based systems.”

Like to see the rationale for this conclusion. Even cloud needs client systems capable of running stuff locally and we can be sure many in-house applications have Windows clients.

[Caver_Dave]

Re: Cloud…

The charity Microsoft Office account that we have for the Young Farmers County Officer is being dropped in January.

The only free account that we can then have for our one, part time member of staff, has to be cloud based.

For big charities, with office based staff, this will be effectively no change.

Most of the rural parts of our county do not have mobile phone signal, let alone enough service to access a cloud account.

So we will be forced onto a paid account that allows us to use a local copy of Office (as we have now).

Another less obvious way that Microsoft is screwing people over.

[Roland6]

Re: Cloud…

> The only free account that we can then have for our one, part time member of staff, has to be cloud based.

I’m assuming you actually need 365 because you’ve already got it set up how you want, until the changes to the licensing were made, and thus alternatives such as Libre Office etc aren’t really an option.

From what I’ve done with a small local charity (8 staff) is to move them to the free Grant 365 accounts, then purchased discounted digital licences for Office 2024 ProPlus LTSC edition from a web reseller that I’ve used since 2019, thus deploying desktop apps that don’t constantly need cloud access.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Cloud…

If MS ever had a customer helpline, I’m sure it would have the following message:

Your call is totally unimportant to us. Even if we bother to answer this call, we won’t be able to help you because (a) our management are bar stewards and (b) we don’t understand the problem either because we have no idea how the code works. Some marketing droid in a suit comes in now and again and tells us to mess around with something and then just ship it. We’re not even sorry. Goodbye.

[Nematode]

You couldn't make it up.

[Tron]

Governments work to a slower cycle than the tech sector.

The tech sector upgrades to maintain income.

Governments just consider tech to be a tool and focus on actual work. The need to refresh tools artificially fast is a con.

Those W7 machines could do anything that W10 or W11 machines do, if MS didn't actively prevent it.

The tech sector are basically drug dealers, hooking people into regular purchases.

If anyone in government had half a brain they would have funded an OS build that could remain stable for two decades, with little more than a few tweaks. The core components of Works, browser and comms are not hard.

[luxeterna]

Time to move to Linux ?

If the Gendarmes can do it and the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein, why not us ?

[Darren678]

Misleading

This is misleading, Replacing the devices is the cheapest thing in the list. They migrated a public service for apha to a brand new one and many more things. Most of this spending is on systems. Not physical devices.

[Anonymous Coward]

This story needs some serious fact checking.

That answer was from a question in 2023.

The upgrades to new laptops with Windows 10 installed was almost finished testing when Covid hit.

IT then rolled out VPNs to all staff in the space of a couple of weeks. Many of them in the week before lockdown was announced ...

Those running the project then changed the deployment strategy to handle the fact that staff couldn't just come into the office to swap the laptops. So every one had to be pre built to know which user was getting it delivered by courier.

All of those laptops were upgraded to Windows 11 in the last year.

And yes they are of now coming to end of life, they're 5 years old !

[xyz]

Maybe....

they were waiting for win 10 kit to become old stock so they could get them cheap.

pmsl.

[amanfromMars 1]

Terminally ill .... grinder organs prone to rapidly failing

What legacy system/version are the NHS nursing? Is it one of those machines which creates and massively contributes to permanent ballooning national debt and compounding deficit spending ?

IT’s a RAT Trap, Billy, .... and you’ve/we’ve been caught

[Tubz]

Time For A Change

Time government departments moved to a home grown Linux OS and apps and if they need a Windows App, run it in a virtual desktop like Citrix.

My company migrated to W10 from W7 desktops, along with a Citrix solution so WFH users could use Netbooks to access them, along with laptops and rolled out a new VPN, over 5000 assets in less than a year with a tiny team, across multiple sites in the country. You just have to have the backing of the bosses, accountants and the will. We know we saved millions in the long run !

[Northern Lad]

Computer Illiterate Management

Seen this more times that I care to remember, government IT should be run by a centralised IT department that has the money to update ALL government departments in a timely manner.

When its reliant on people who haven't got a clue, only see the pound/dollar signs and the inconvenience your heading towards disaster, but don't worry, when the car crashes its never their fault, its bye bye to the bloke running the departments IT.

[Roland6]

Re: Computer Illiterate Management

Suggest you take a look at the Cabinet Office and how that has gone. They would simply outsource it to … Microsoft…

[Anonymous Coward]

"31,500 Win7 laptops removed"; "24,000 devices to replace"; "As of June 2025, Defra had a full-time equivalent headcount of 13,165 staff, with plans to reduce this by a further 5% during the 2025-26 financial year." So how many PCs does each DEFRA FTE use/need? Also the "upgrades from Win 7": were those just to Win10 on the same hardware or newer devices that can handle Win11? Win7 went off general sale ten years ago but DEFRA stuck with it and, the story seems to imply, stuck with the antique hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall working as a 'consultant' at a different government department on a very big IT project.

They needed a laptop to take to regional offices to demonstrate something.

It took many months to get this, because the department's spec was so far out of date that it was impossible to buy.

Whoever supplied it had bought a Windows 2000 laptop (yes, this was a long time ago) and installed a previous version of windows.

Guess what:

the demonstration needed to run on Windows 2000. And of course the laptop was supplied locked down by the useless, incompetent but reassuringly expensive outsourced IT company (best not to say who).

Luckily, their incompetence made it easy to hack into the locking down and install the correct OS.

It would have been quicker, easier, cheaper and better to have just gone to the local computer store and buy one. But that wasn't permitted.

[Bottle_Cap]

" investing in automation and artificial intelligence to cut costs and improve customer experience."

Half of this comment is true...

[Swiss Anton]

Why aren't the IT companies being fined for imposing pointless upgrades on us that only happen because they want to make more £s/€s/$s by forcing us to "upgrade" to something that's more or less the same as the old, but just a little bit more annoying. They've fined Apple for it's abuse of power regarding it's app store, they should also be fining M$ for it's abuse of power.

[ComicalEngineer]

Why, oh why....

Several reasons, take your pick of one or all:

1/ Uneducated (in an IT sense) managers and project managers

2/ Failure to look beyond the established big players (MS / Amazon etc)

3/ Adversity to taking any sort of *risky* decision (career ending events)

4/ It's not my money I'm spending

5/ Nobody ever got sacked for choosing MS / AZ / Cisco / SAP / large software vendor of choice

6/ Brown envelopes (backhanders, holidays to Disneyland etc etc)

[Excused Boots]

Re: Why, oh why....

The answer is (3), with a degree of (1) thrown in for good measure. (2) is a consequence of (1).

It's arse covering (or ass covering for our left-pondian colleagues), go with the established players and you have a degree of cover - ‘but it’s Microsoft, who would have thought that going with them would have resulted in such a cluster-fuck, your honour’!

Anyone remember the classic line from Yes Minister - ‘oh that’s a very courageous decision.....'

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile in Germany...

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost_state_ditches_windows/

Why oh why do we Brits put up with this rip off Britain bollocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of admission from a sliver of public sector shows us how bad the IT departments are. Most home users are better. Seriously worrying for an educated economy.

[baynesa]

"Spending billions to save millions" is the best description of the UK Government's approach to cost-sving I've seen. Austerity has cost a fortune.

[Alan Brown]

Windows 7 laptops??

At minimum those would be 12 years old and probably closer to 15

I have a couple of laptops of that vintage. They can barely run a modern linux GUI, let alone win10 and I only keep them around as part of the obsolete tech collection

Someone clearly didn't get the memo that the design life of a laptop is ~5 years at most

[Roland6]

Re: Windows 7 laptops??

> Someone clearly didn't get the memo that the design life of a laptop is ~5 years at most

There is design life and usable life.

Until recently my daughter was daily using an HP ProBook 450 G4 (2016) happily running W10+ O2019.

My work laptop is a 2020 Thinkpad E15, which can run W11 if I give into the MS nag prompts. It is still more than capable of running “modern” workload and applications that don’t expect/require an AI coprocessor. Hence I expect it to be usable for 8~10 years ie. It should last to see W11 go EOL.

The issue is all the minimum specification junk that gets produced and which is just capable of running Windows and one or two lightly used applications (and thus grind to a halt when You load up,Teams without shutting stuff down). Basically, if you buy a Windows laptop with a compatible specification to a MacBook(*), you can expect it to be usable for 5+ years.

(*) yet to find laptops that come with the MacBook quality of webcam, mic and audio…

[Col_Panek]

Re: Windows 7 laptops??

No, I didn't get the memo. I'm typing on an HP Elitebook that I got dirt cheap. It came with Windows 11, which I ran for an hour until trying a few distros, finally installing KDE Neon for fun. It replaced a 2013 Chromebook Pixel with a dead video driver. Our desktops average 9 years. No Windows in this house.

[Kiaf]

A little research would have come in useful instead of sensationalism aimed at besmirching an organisation for political capital.

A brief search would reveal the existence of Windows 10 Enterprise 2021 LTSC which will be maintained until 2031 without subscription. I'm guessing hardware driver issues may prevent adoption of Windows 11, therefore this version of Windows 10 would in fact save them money while maintaining security.

A non-story demonstrating total ignorance.

[steviebuk]

This article isn't surprising

Most local councils are like this

https://magazine.unison.org.uk/2025/10/14/vindicated/?utm_campaign=November%20U-dig%202025&utm_content=Read%20Bindu%27s%20extraodinary%20story&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Communications

The fact they appealed, twice and then the offended kept her job is typical.

Same will happen here. The offenders will keep their job regardless.

[Dwarf]

The endless upgrade loop

Fundamentally, the endless upgrade loop doesn't really help customers. If they have software that works and supports the business, then the only thing driving change should be customer demand, not suppliers as suppliers will always want to take another bite out of the customer, since more income is never enough and newer is never cheaper.

The other main problem on major upgrade programmes is that the time it takes to get everything lined up - budget, people, relevant test environements, resolution for anything that doesn't work - with help from suppliers, inter-dependencies both internally and externally, it all takes a lot of time. and ultimately, all of this effort is sunk cost to the business.

Sometimes, there are intermediate steps for whatever reason - it can be that recently acquired business, which is currently being integrated and puts dependencies on what we can upgrade until they are sucked into the borg collective. Sometimes its change freezes and furloughs at critical times, which slow things down. The list goes on and on.

Then there is the issue that allowing suppliers to set the tempo means that they will just spin the merry-go-round faster and faster to get more and more cash our of the customer.

Ultimately, something has to give ..

[frankyunderwood123]

it’s not even a typo…

£312,000,000

How is that even possible with 13,000 civil servants?

Sure, it was more than just laptops, but let’s do some basic math assumptions.

High end dell laptops at £2000 a pop x 13800 and make it £3000 each that includes a generous £1k to set each one up, plus other administrative costs.

That’s £41 million, leaving £271 million to account for, for the other stuff on that list.

This just shouts MASSIVE levels of corruption, doesn’t it?

I suspect a huge amount of money is being trousered here, sadly within the law.

“just add an extra zero on that invoice, nudge nudge, wink wink”

We all remember the PPE scandal during covid. To think that kind of activity has ended is to be considerably naive.

[Taliesinawen]

$407 million to upgrade IT estate

Good Grief! .. A ten year old desktop PC and run the latest Linux system!

[Anonymous Coward]

Public sector means MS on the desktop, it just does.

Linux makes a fine argument on paper but as soon as you put people in the mix that will fall apart.

For many reasons, there is no Linux expertise within the public sector outside of the data centre, everything is Windows based and is OLD. I suspect one reason for the delay in moving from Win7 has been legacy software. In the public sector there is a lot of that and it's often very old and might not be supported at all. The company that made it might not exist or it might be a big one like Crapita or NGA who refuse to develop for modern OSs without gigantic payments (and sometimes even then they refuse). Then there are the employees. You have met people haven't you? Changing an OS to an employee is like a death threat, and that's from MS to MS. Putting something like Ubuntu or SUSE on a desktop would kick off strikes even if the transition was flawless.

The argument about outsourcing IT is a common one as well, it looks good initially the saving look fantastic, lots of nice press articles, the supplier proclaims glory for all, the IT manager gets it through the door then immeditaly jumps ship using their new shiny CV as a springboard. Meanwhile later the details comes out and the organisation discovers that the cheap outsourcing isn't so cheap now that they have to pay top dollar for every little thing and have no rights in their own network and changes take 10x as long as they did before.

[Col_Panek]

"upgrading" Windows makes things worse. Switching to Linux, makes it cleaner and easier to use. Keep the same icons and wallpaper,and people might not notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Harvest for the world

DEFRA officials must reap what they sow, or jump ship for another department in need of their skill sets (Culture perhaps), or leave and return as Consultants before retiring on their handsome Civil Servant Pensions with a Gong for their many years of "Service".