The Sikh Geek

David Cameron has been laying into The Government for it’s naivety on IT Projects for the complete mess that is the NHS IT Project. He further lays into the highly paid Management/IT Consultants of the Big Consulting firms for selling a vision of Utopia that was never achievable.

Why not let Google run it? Well, he doesn’t actually say that but he seems to suggest a Google like approach might not be a bad idea! I bet you didn’t know that Cameron was a Software Architect, it’s a compulsory subject at Eton alongside Latin!

Joking aside, billions spent and what is there to show for it? One of the main companies involved iSoft was virtually out of business and the Government had to bail it out with a loan (public money to save a commercial organisation???). We’re often told how as small businesses where just no good, not professional enough, don’t make enough money, don’t know anything technically, etc, etc. But, we’ll give billions of pounds of tax payers money to the Big IT Consulting firms so they can completely f*!k things up and then get paid millions more for walking away from it. Rewarding failure? Hey, how does that work? However, the contracts are awarded to the same suspects time and time again. Every Government has done this and the irony is if the Conservatives where in power, they’d do exactly the same.

I have a friend and colleague working as a contractor on the NHS IT Project and from talking with him, things are bad. You’d think, Big Consulting Firms know what they’re doing, well not from an insider view!!!

Actually, Google is beginning to sound like an attractive proposition but it might stay in Beta for the lifetime of the Project! Oh well, at least the data will be safe