Government and IT - A Recipe for Rip-Offs
Auteur: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee
Nombre de pages: 60 pages
ISBN: 0215561066, 9780215561060
Edition: The Stationery Office
Date de publication: The Stationery Office
Description: The Government's over-reliance on large contractors for its IT needs combined with a lack of in-house skills is a "recipe for rip-offs" according to a report by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC). The Committee found that as a result IT procurement too often resulted in late, over budget IT systems that are not fit for purpose. According to some sources the Government pays between seven and ten times more than the standard commercial rate for its work: however the Government does not collect the information needed to verify these claims. One of the report's recurring themes is the dominance of Government IT by a small number of large companies. The report argues that the Government needs to do four things to break out of this relationship: improve the information it holds on IT expenditure, without which the Government is unable to secure the best possible price for goods and services; publish more information about IT projects; widen the supplier base by reducing the size of its contracts and greatly simplifying the procurement process to engage with innovative Small and medium enterprises (SMEs); work in a more "agile" manner andmove towards the use of more iterative development methods which enable IT programmes to adapt to ever changing challenges