Read a pretty shocking article on government waste of money on IT in the Guardian this morning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1082416,00.html
Essentially, for those who can't be faffed to click the link, the government wanted to unify the Magistrates Courts across the country with one system. The tender which won was for £146 million. It has now risen to over £400 million, and the system still does not work.
This is the latest cock up, following distasters with the passport office and the CSA, amongst others. The Public Accounts Committee report [ http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmpubacc/434/4340... ] states that this is the biggest waste of public money yet.
What do we think about this, and how could things be done properly? Would the use of open source software improve matters? Why can't they recruit willing and able software engineers and do the job in house? From what I have hear from various sources, there are a lot of good IT people out of work at the moment. Surely they couldn't do any worse?!
Dave