…that getting a Met Police password reset (quite a regular occurrence, apparently, given the large number of computer systems in use), costs the taxpayer £100 each time?
A friend of a friend of mine has made a lucrative career out of building expensive and ineffective computer systems for various organs of the state. Remember that when you hear politicians arguing that front-line services will need to be cut.
That is quite a high figure but I’m not surprised.
A friend of a friend of mine has made a lucrative career out of building expensive and ineffective computer systems for various organs of the state
Is he a Director of EDS or Crapita they have made millions for the same thing
At the BBC also I believe.
My last force used to buy such naff systems, over and over again, it was unbelievable. Apart from the usual IT story (never on time, never on budget and never doing what the salesman said) the last horror story involved the ex head of IT buying a system `on a handshake`, with no initial maintenance clause. This they tried very hard to hush up. When it crashed or fouled up, as it frequently did, an independent consultant had to be called in at about £90 a day. They must have laughed their ££££’s off – hence he became the Ex head of IT.
Erratum: That should have read – “£90 an HOUR-
You should see what happens when they don’t get someone who knows what they are doing in. We’re still about 50% paper. At the first team meeting I ever attended nearly 2 years ago it was proposed we’d go ‘paperless’ and start using our database properley – to howls of disapproval from the old timers who thought it was ‘unworkable’.
Nearly 2 years on and nothing has happened, except 2 of the old-timers have the odd meeting and argue about what ‘codes’ we should record what we do on the database under – it’s comical, it really is. I’ve tried suggest we just have one general ‘actions’ code then write what we’ve done in the free text and attach any documents as appropriate, but apparently that’s ‘unworkable’ too.
They reckon we need to make a list of all the different things we might do (sent letter, received email, made telephone call etc) then liaise with all the other teams that use the same database and agree with them what codes we can use that won’t interfere with what they are doing. They haven’t even agreed between them in nearly 2 years.