It seems turkeys do vote for Christmas...

**threaded** · 9 April 2010, 09:24

To be fair the IT content of most UK gov contracts is only a few days worth. They then waste hundreds of man years on deciding what colour to paint it.

**Churchill** · 9 April 2010, 09:26

My project was in front of a House of Commons Select Comittee the other week.

The bottom line is that it would cost more to cancel the project than to let us complete it...

**gingerjedi** · 9 April 2010, 09:26

Originally posted by threaded View Post

To be fair the IT content of most UK gov contracts is only a few days worth. They then waste hundreds of man years on deciding what colour to paint it.

Yes but I don't mind sitting at a desk waiting for them to decide.

**threaded** · 9 April 2010, 09:32

Originally posted by gingerjedi View Post

Yes but I don't mind sitting at a desk waiting for them to decide.

I think that is a lot of what has gone wrong in the UK. It's like some kind of living oblivion.

**Swiss Tony** · 9 April 2010, 09:32

Come on, every time anyone here mentions a government contract they all comment on the abysmal state it’s in and how they are pisshing money away. While I know it can be an okay gig if your paid well, like 9-5 hours and dullards, but I’m pretty sure most would agree that the projects could be either completed with the right people in half the time and potential cost (depending on how much a mess they have already made of it), or should just be binned as they are throwing good money after bad.

It would seem that most gvt projects are over staffed by the wrong people.

(I’m not including ‘top secret’ stuff in this as I have no experience in that arena)

**expat** · 9 April 2010, 09:36

Originally posted by Churchill View Post

My project was in front of a House of Commons Select Comittee the other week.

The bottom line is that it would cost more to cancel the project than to let us complete it...

I'm sorry to hear that your project will be cancelled.

**Churchill** · 9 April 2010, 09:44

Originally posted by expat View Post

I'm sorry to hear that your project will be cancelled.

Stranger things have happened, why let practical matters get in the way

**The Wikir Man** · 9 April 2010, 10:00

Sir Peter happens to be chairman of a company that would benefit from cuts in the NHS budget.

Coincidentally, he is advising the Conservative party on where they should be cutting public sector spending.

There is, of course, no implication of any impropriety.

**BrollyBonce** · 9 April 2010, 10:27

Peter Gershon is an academic twat and his recommendations are not worth the paper I used to wipe my arse.

The Gershon Review of a few years back was a farce and its consequences surreal.

For example, local authorities were expected to achieve £x of 'Gershon efficiencies'. If they spent £15m on a new system, that was £15m of investment into Gershon efficiencies. If it saved £2m, that was £2m of savings to include in your Gershon efficiencies. Outcome: £17m of Gershon efficiencies. Reality: £13m wasted uneccessarily.

That happened all over the UK in local authorities: adding big spends to small savings to get a total positive figure and calling it a 'Gerson efficiency'.

The whole Gershon thing was a duplicitous waste of taxpayers' money.

I know because I was involved in writing the business cases that went in to the programme plans, and then saw how the benefits realisation was being calculated.

Other outcomes were the Transformation Government Strategy. What became of that? Have a look under the corner of the carpet: it was swept under there. Why? Because it was going to lose money for the likes of EDS, BT, Fujitsu and al the other usual multinational leeches and parasites that give out the backhanders to government advisers and MPs.

Peter Gershon should have been humiliated, sacked and then killed himself in shame.

In any other third world country, he would have been stood against the wall and shot.

And if the Tories cannot see that, then they are as stupid and open to false suggestions as New Labour was, and/or just as keen to knowingly tell lies to us just so they can have their turn with their noses in the trough.

It seems turkeys do vote for Christmas...