Posts by Infosec Guy 9 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Nov 2012
We actually did at one point have a very high quality establishment called the National School of Government that ran a multitude of course for everyone from ministers to junior civil servants on how to be better at their jobs. Alas, along came the recession and it was closed down and a not insignificant contract given to Capita called Civil Service Learning...lots of online clickthroughs...
I have to agree with luke11. I am intrinsically linked to the work our government security services provide and it is careless for a UK publication to publish this. I am hugely disappointed. If you don't don't think that every single government across the world with any capability does not do as much secret spying as possible then you are a fool. Reg, you are upsetting important political balances that our country has spent hundreds of years cultivating. Whilst we are small we still have a bit of clout and I for one want it to stay that way. To publish this so you can get a few more hits and flog a bit more advertising space to IBM/MS/HP is frankly disgusting.
Maybe a bit cynical but..... is it possible that they were in cahoots, ie for the Treasury's purpose the books will appear that the money went out in FY 2013/14 so that budget will be reallocated in 2014/15 (16k x say... £500 = £8m!) and then the order is cancelled shortly thereafter and those lovely people at Dell give them an £8m credit which goes back into the pot without any money ever having to go anywhere....thoughts?
Harry Kiri, you are indeed right. I work for an SME Security Consultancy and we work with and have taken a number of organisations through List X, IL3/4/5/6 accreditation, PSN, ISO 27001 and other HMG Security requirements. It is a total chicken and egg thing. "Oh you don't have HMG Accreditation? well you will need it to win this work. But you have to have it first, and we can't give you any indication if you will win it." That means spending large resource on achieving accreditation with no assurance of revenue. Crazy situation. So much for a pragmatic and proportionate approach to Risk Management!
Some excellent comments, XYZ in particular. I know exactly how many people work at the PGA (REALLY not many - budget cuts, you see). Looking at it from a Govt CIO's perspective makes it very clear indeed. Its very easy to put a list of suppliers online who might be able to sell you a useful service however you can never buy or use that service because they have none of the security and governance that goes with the data (mostly yours and mine may I add). So you end up in front of the ICO for a dressing down, a tasty fine and a good helping of potentially career destroying PR. Not good if you're a senior Gov IT manager 3 months off a pension and a burgeoning career in consulting. We'll leave it to Atos, IBM, HP/EDS, CSC et al to lose data/cock up. then it can't be anyone's fault!
Having spent my summer putting together a bid for this and also losing much sleep I still dont see why they couldn't just say: " we cocked up. print your bid off, put an extra copy on a CD, seal it in an envelope and send it by registered post." the EU large tenders are still done this way and it works fine.
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