All is forgiven
With the government’s ID plans moving forward it’s instructive to remember some of their previous IT achievements. Siemens Business Services were ejected from the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in 2004 after spending £77m on a failed computer system. They’ve now been welcomed back with a £6.7m contract to handle cashiering.
Personally speaking if someone had wasted £77m of my money (and let’s not forget that this is our money) that’d be the last business they’d get from me but apparently the civil service is more forgiving. Given this decision it’d be nice to know if SBS were bidding for a part of the far more lucrative ID card scheme and its associated databases. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to know who’s bidding how much for what due to the “commercially sensitive” nature of the information. All in all it raises the often asked question of exactly who are our government running the country for? It doesn’t seem to be the tax payers.
More at The Register.
February 23rd, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Let’s not forget that other beacon of competent IT projects: EDS. First of all their were responsible for the mess that is the child support agency. This didnt prevent them from winning the contract to run that other extremely successful IT project: the Tax Credits. Which they’ve also been able to screw up.
There is always a big problem with government IT projects. This is because polticians and civil servants are easily convinced about the potential benefits of IT but dont understand the reality and limits of the technology.