Government department computer systems
'Nuff said?

I've spent the best part of 18 years working in various government departments, and the shocking inability for ministers to develop a tender spec that sets out exactly what they want the computer system to do is nothing short of a disgrace.

Over £30 million in the mid 90's to develop a benefit card system for the post office, and scrapped because they couldn't get it to work properly (they decided to test it on child benefit first, because they reckoned it would be easiest).

Roll out of Jobseekers Allowance in 1996, and the system couldn't get beyond the personal details screen without crashing, resulting in all claims having to be processed manually for the first few days.

The great National Insurance switchover, where all the data stored on one system would be automatically transferred to a new, better system overnight. They switched off NIRS1, only to find that a stupidly high proportion of data hadn't transferred to NIRS2 as it was supposed to. Result, more manual processing of all benefit claims, meaning claims taking around 2 weeks to process instead of the average 3 days while we waitied for the NI records to be retrieved.

And recently, I worked for Defra, where the most complex system for processing Common Agriculture Policy payments has been adopted by the UK, in contrast to the rest of the EU, who took the simplest option. Thousands of farmers not receiving their payments on time, antiquated computer system (honestly, you needed 3 separate systems just to pay 1 claim, it used to drive me mad). New super-system not working properly, resulting in out of date data, adding to the problem. Millions paid out to farmers in compensation, and Defra being fined millions for being, frankly, shite.

I could go on...

Want to make a mint in IT? Be come a government contractor, fuck it up, and go away with a nice little payoff courtesy of the tax payer (Legless, take note - there's a fortune waiting for you in IT mis-management. All you need to do is become incompetent in all matters IT overnight. Might take a bit of doing, but I'm sure a man of your prodigious talents could do it...)
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Wed 31 Oct 2007, 17:58, Reply)