Management Toolkit

Story: MPs condemn DfT shared-services failure

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Never admit you are wrong !!!

"Although the DfT knew its initial assumptions were incorrect just two months after the project started, it stuck to its original plans."

You've got the answer right there. The Civil Service culture seems to have a really big problem with admitting mistakes, even to the point of changing it's mind where a problem isn't really anyone's fault. I guess in issues of politics and such there isn't any problem with ploughing on with a broken system. It will waste money and time. It will be slower and less effective. It will however, with enough manpower chucked at it, work.

Computerised systems are based on a very rigid and unforgiving logic. Bureaucrats seem to find the absolutism of computer logic completely alien. If something is just plain wrong in computer land, it won't work no matter how many people you throw at it or how often you declare it to be policy that it is actually right, it is still just plain wrong.

I know that's a gross generalisation, but as a trivial example, if the paper form has slots for 3 entries and occasionally needs a fourth, you can just write it in. If the computer form has 3 slots, you get 3 slots. snowpainting the fourth on the monitor just ain't gonna work.

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