Watch as UK government magically makes value of £500m framework contract swell to four times the size The UK government has launched a tender for a £2bn IT services framework contract after the expected value rose to four times the initial estimated price. In a tender notice published this week, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, acting through the Crown Commercial Service, asked for vendor bids to join a framework worth £ …
I get the impression that the UK government spends so much time and money on IT strategy analysis, transformation planning and many other flavours of vapourous grand visiony nonsense that they never actually get round to building things that do things.
Makes sense from a cabinet that all like to see themselves as modern, super performing tech CEOs, rather than the clueless incompetent berks, all with the same sort of humanities degrees, that they really are.
Yes. I've seen some of that in my career. No one technical, or even tech-adjacent, is generally involved in decision-making. Makes it so easy for massive IT consultancies to get big contracts; anyone honest enough to tell a doctor or a soldier that what they want will cost X isn't going to get the gig. It'll end up costing 2X the way they do it, but they pick the supplier that says it'll be done for 0.1X.
The only time I've seen decent tech knowledge at senior levels is at GDS. Don't know if they're still like that, but it was pretty cool.
What one has to be both extremely mindful and particularly wary of, for it is not conducive to the greater functioning good of novel operations, is that private contractors engaged are not in reality/actuality, central government departments and their arm's-length agencies aka capitalising cronies, for that sort of incestuous liaison is an abiding temptation which has always proven itself to be eventually, and sometimes even surprisingly quickly, self-defeating and incredibly destructive to itself.
It is certain more than just immensely wise nowadays, because of all the new fangled and entangling facilities and utilities and abilities readily available for practical virtual use and which can almost immediately be morphed into sustained and systemic abuse and misuse, not to incur the ire of legitimate novel private contractors with such ancient shenanigans.
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