Re: Loadsa money
Its not really about economizing. Having worked in the Northern Ireland Public Sector for a while (and with some of the Library dudes on various projects), there is a war going on which might resonate.
Enterprise Shared Services (ESS) is managed in NI with large contracts to Fujitsu, BT and Capita, and to be frank, they are rarely best value, though there is pressure to be part of them.
They are controlled by the DFP Department Finance and Personnel who holds everyones purse strings - so the pressure is real.
You cant get approval for a large project without DFP approval, and you (used to, not sure now) had to include Shared Services in any IT related business case byond your 'delegated spend' (50-500K depending upon the department or ALB (Arms Length Body =~ quango).
Meanwhile, Most NI departments want to maintain their own inhouse teams (who wrote the
Business Case, according to the bloody DFP Template). They tend to over complicate the requirements in an effort to get out of shared services. result - over expensive shared services. Great for the next procurement!
NI Civil Service senior managers are recruited based on the civil service code - meaning its soft skills which count (the ten competencies thing) , rather than any technical competence, With no real IT experience at senior levels of the NICS (even Shared Services), relationships with BT, Fujitsu and Capita are used, both for the supply and the consultation stuff = bad.
That all said, the Library system is quite impressive - but it did take a chunk of its ICT and pass it to Education, back a few years ago (school Libraies, and there are almost 1300 of them).