Why are the design specs not open-source?
I'm a software developer, but I have no experience of government IT and the tenders/contract system, but I do want to ask...
Such data platforms are hardly cutting edge technology, why is everything so vague in the government announcements and tech press? It's like they're setting up for novel research in computer science... It's bread & butter stuff on face-value, which is all they disclose...
Why is there not a concrete list of data requirements offered for public scrutiny? This isn't for "gotcha" reasons, it's simply the best known approach to a good engineering solution: peer review. Each proposal from a vendor should come with a design doc, again for public scrutiny. I suspect they are massively over-complicating the project, and I see no counter-balances in this tender system to counteract that. The only one that works is public discussion and bidding, with open-source outputs.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
