Retreads - Why The Public Sector Buys Dud Stuff

Have just read the Joseph Rowntree report Database State

It's a brilliant piece of research into how we fell into the a public sector surveillance quagmire and holds out a rope to haul the state clear out of the mire.

Database State gives a short yet full analysis into central government's obsession in recent years with investing in IT programmes that rely on holding, storing and in many cases mismanaging our sensitive personal information.

It also recommends, using a simple traffic light system (red, green amber) based on compliance with international standards on privacy, anonymity and respect for human rights which among our existing national systems should be scrapped, changed or left alone.

So we could say it was the Blairs that funked it - being dined down the river by the IT lobby in that crepuscular interval after the dotcom crash and before Iraq. This was about the time they got to grips with the fact they were meant to be in control of events as well as the reporting of them. I remember seeing David Blunkett and his Home Office officials being dined by ID card lobbyits in Gran Paradiso that unlikely outpost of Italian charm south of Victoria Station on Wilton Road. And lo it came to pass...

But enlightenment has come. And the true nature of all government phenomena comes down to this. If you want to know how to sell to the public sector, just look to what has proved a recent palpable failure in the private sector and pizazz - flog it for all it's worth! Because THEY WILL BUY IT. THEY WILL IMPLEMENT IT. ON A NATIONAL SCALE. AND THE TAXPAYER WILL FUND IT. Yes, you see my dears. We all win in the end!


"Britain is greatly afflicted by government naivety in purchasing. Many departments outsourced too much of their IT in the 1980s, and now do not have people with the skills to manage complex procurements. One noticeable effect is that the UK public sector always appears to get sold whatever technology or methodology is just going out of fashion in the private sector: business process re-engineering, which was popular in business in the 1980s, arrived in government in the 1990s (contributing among other things to the London Ambulance Service disaster); PKI was the big fashion in the late 1990s but vanished with the collapse of Baltimore in 2000, only to resurrect itself phoenix-like as the identity management programme; and customer relationship management, which private firms are now starting to see through, is selling well in Whitehall and local government. Again and again, the state gets palmed off with private-sector retreads." (page 46, Database State)

So if this is the ultimate reality of public sector purchasing, what duds from the commercial world can we expect to see making the headlines in three or four years time? Answers on a postcard please!