Comments from sb-lug members on my
Open Letter to my MP
about government IT procurements
Aaron Sloman
Last updated: 30 Aug 2006

From bounce-spam@mailman.lug.org.uk  Mon Aug 28 09:55:16 2006
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:43:06 +0100
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (X11/20060728)
To: South Birmingham Linux User Group 
Subject: Re: [SB] letter to MP about the iSoft affair

aaron.sloman wrote:
> I've written an open (and updatable) letter to my MP, Lynne Jones
> triggered by hearing about the iSoft/NHS fiasco.
> ...
Hi Aaron,

An additional aspect you might consider is the procurement policy of the
NHS, with the use of preferred suppliers as recommended in the Wanless
Report.

One question I would ask is whether the suppliers and the NHS IT
professionals are motivated or competent to produce or deliver working
systems. Very often the feeling is that the emphasis is on methodology
and process and increased complexity rather than delivery.

Q.


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From bounce-spam@mailman.lug.org.uk  Mon Aug 28 11:27:48 2006
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:23:44 +0100
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (Windows/20060719)
To: South Birmingham Linux User Group 
Subject: Re: [SB] letter to MP about the iSoft affair

aaron.sloman wrote:
> I've written an open (and updatable) letter to my MP, Lynne Jones
> triggered by hearing about the iSoft/NHS fiasco.

[snip]

An interesting letter, I look forward to reading the reply on this list. :-)

I suspect that the will of government procurement officers to remain as
divorced as possible from the details of the projects themselves will
override any sensible discussion on changing the methodology for these
projects. In my opinion this is not simply because procurement officers
don't want to take responsibility, but it also provides a certain
political buffer between the deliverers of a project and its political
overseers. Alas, this is a useful strategy in government.

Pete.

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From bounce-spam@mailman.lug.org.uk  Mon Aug 28 11:58:42 2006
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:50:00 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Re: [SB] letter to MP about the iSoft affair
To: South Birmingham Linux User Group 

Hi Aaron,

An interesting letter I'm not in a position to comment on the detail but
the principle is in my view beyond question. My thought is that the
Government should be working hand in glove with the Universities to
develop complex projects such as this which, after all, are at the
cutting edge of technology. Private Eye No.1164 17th August page 6 has
some serious comment on this and other wastes of taxpayers money.

regards
Robert

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From Aaron Sloman Tue Aug 29 11:27:58 BST 2006
To: South Birmingham Linux User Group 
Subject: Re: [SB] letter to MP about the iSoft affair

Thanks to those who have responded to my message about my letter to
my MP about large IT projects

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/isoft-government-projects.html

I am assuming that people who respond don't mind being quoted when I
compile a list of responses to add to the file. If you'd prefer not to
be quoted, or to be quoted only anonymously, let me know.

Lynne Jones has not yet responded. Of course, my making the letter
public may put pressure on her to take extra care, though she is not
usually reluctant to criticise the government, despite being in the
same party.

Quentin wrote:

> An additional aspect you might consider is the procurement policy of the
> NHS, with the use of preferred suppliers as recommended in the Wanless
> Report.

I had never read the Wanless report, but have found a useful summary
here:
    http://society.guardian.co.uk/publichealth/story/0,11098,1156062,00.html

I guess the point about preferred suppliers must be deeper in the report
itself.


> One question I would ask is whether the suppliers and the NHS IT
> professionals are motivated or competent to produce or deliver working
> systems. Very often the feeling is that the emphasis is on methodology
> and process and increased complexity rather than delivery.

I have this feeling about a lot of university management, and also some
technical support people. The people concerned (including external
auditors and legal consultants used who can have a major impact on
policy decisions) often seem to give a much higher priority to covering
themselves against missing a possible danger in their recommendations
than to achieving the teaching and research goals of the institution,
about which they often know very little. This often leads to misplaced
risk assessments and poor resulting decisions, where bad decisions that
interfere with teaching and research are taken to reduce the already
very small risk of some possible disaster, like the university being
sued for something. It's like advising employees to stay at home because
they might get killed going to work. There are some
managers/administrators who are outstanding exceptions, of course.

Pete wrote:

> I suspect that the will of government procurement officers to remain as
> divorced as possible from the details of the projects themselves will
> override any sensible discussion on changing the methodology for these
> projects. In my opinion this is not simply because procurement officers
> don't want to take responsibility, but it also provides a certain
> political buffer between the deliverers of a project and its political
> overseers. Alas, this is a useful strategy in government.

I was not aware of that procurement constraint. Summarised like that
it sounds like a highly counter-productive strategy.

Robert wrote:

> An interesting letter I'm not in a position to comment on the detail but
> the principle is in my view beyond question. My thought is that the
> Government should be working hand in glove with the Universities to
> develop complex projects such as this which, after all, are at the
> cutting edge of technology.

In general I don't think university staff have the right experience and
objectives to do the actual development work, but I agree that some
of them could serve as useful consultants on such projects, including
providing pointers to new ideas that could be relevant. (Use of open
source systems might be an example!)

> Private Eye No.1164 17th August page 6 has some serious comment on this
> and other wastes of taxpayers money.

I haven't seen that. Understandably they don't post their articles on
their web site, alas.

Thanks.

Aaron
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/

From bounce-spam@mailman.lug.org.uk  Tue Aug 29 12:10:04 2006
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:00:21 +0100
To: "South Birmingham Linux User Group" 
Subject: Re: [SB] letter to MP about the iSoft affair

Based on my experience of public sector software procurements I think
the biggest problem is the rigid hierarchy of power, it probably has a
similar effect on other procurements as well.  Products and companies
are selected by senior mamagers who have no knowledge of either the
infrastructure the product will have to fit into or the actual working
practices of the users.  Add into that non-technical project managers
who have no concept of the infrastructure or the work environments and
it's a wonder that any projects suceed.

For example one recent project that comes to mind was a document
management and workflow system.  The existing infrastructure was based
around Solaris, Websphere and Oracle with LDAP v3 for authentication.
The selected product was based around Windows, IIS and M$ SQL Server
with authentication handled within the application.

During the implementation phase the project team had 23 meetings about
where exactly a logo (purely decorative branding) should appear on the
screen  but somehow never got around to discussing the details of the
workflow or the MIS reporting requirements.  As it happens the front
end to the application was delivered through a browser so the location
of the logo was configurable via CSS2, and would change according to
screensize/windowsize.

Unsuprisingly whilst the application does work it is very clunky and
requires a lot of manual intervention.  Also, as many users are only
infrequent users, password management is a major issue.

Of course, this being the public sector, bribes and backhanders are
often a major issue.

Stephen

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School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham