Management Toolkit

Story: 10 years of IT failures, and what has the government learned?

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Having worked in a number of projects in government while being employed in an IT consultancy I believe I can be objective so far as there are two parties to blame. Firstly the consultants; It always amazes me how we hear stories of all the high profile failures and the high profile consultancies behind them, yet why do they still get the work ??. The very consultancies that go in to help improve work practices and controls have very little controls themselves. After all surely their specialised training would indentify issues on projects and bring them into perspective before major financial project losses ensue. Governance is a big word at the moment but key to all of this is Ownership, Common Sense and Accountability. Governance is about controls and good practice which is fine and I'm all for good practices but its useless without individual accountability.
Secondly, Civil service, they wear teflon coats, are untouchable, and are the unsackables. There are a lot of good people in these organisations but for the most part the Civil servants know that they just have to turn up and they have a job, regardless !
There needs to be more accountably and controls to ensure that poor performance is not rewarded and that nobody's job is safe should they fail to perform. Blaming an individual i.e. political representative is not the answer as is usuallly the case.

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