Re: Sheep shall safely graze
Not sure what part of civil service you where in or when but in my day (2000 - 2008) we had great equipment, latest desks and chairs because health and safety, latest servers, switches firewalls, desktops, laptops etc. Training sucked though. Long timers retired after securing their final salary pension and then came back a few weeks later earning private sector pay with public sector benefits. There was a mad push to farm out services like facilities, security, IT, for no better reason than to have it on someone's civil service cv that they outsourced something, regardless of the cost or impact to the organisation.
No one cared about the cost of anything. Staff where always looking at ways of maximising their pay for minimum work. Working weekends but not doing any work. Turning up early mon - thu so they can have Friday off, clocking their mates in and out etc.
Private companies are there to maximise earnings while the civil service are blind to costs, and have outsourced so much they have no clue on the true cost of anything. When HP[E] says a desk visit to patch a cable costs £100, whoever civil servent manages the contract has no clue & just pays it (yes it may cost £100 if the tech has to travel x miles to do that job, but the previous onsite tech would have just done it).
There is a huge culture of someone else will do it without knowing the cost which the outsourcers play to their benefit.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
