Sounds promising. They could certainly do with Beta IT with ITs better Virtualised Controls.

If there not careful, it might probably definitely surprise them to be leading in ITs Fields.

This will surely suit Microsoft, Oracles and so on rather than helping small players?

Still, anything that reduces unnecessary overhead/ineffieciency in the MOD has got to be a good thing.

TC

P.S. amanfromMars WTF?! etc. etc.

For Microsoft, anyway.

Why is it that this happens?

Whenever a government department has 'centralised' software procurement:

- Costs go up, to pay for the admin of the scheme (eg its cheaper elsewhere)

- Someone decided you can't have what you want, you have what they want - which doesn't do the job and is at least 3 years behind the curve.

- nobody takes responsibility when something goes wrong

- everyone spends even more time working out how to avoid the system and buy what they actually want

Decentralisation is the way to go. All we need now is someone to sell that in a consultancy package.

Good: it will help a move towards Network Enabled Capability (NEC) because at the moment coordination is at best abysmal (the fiefdom effect from setting up IPTs) and too many conflicting standards are used (no, they are rarely open. Shut up :-).

Bad: less gatekeepers in the way to get an absolutely massive amount of tax money for not delivering much (MS is but one in a long list here). Unless this new group spends some good money on people that actually know how to construct, read and enforce a contract (and stop the change control games that allow claw back of underbidding to get a contract) this is going to be another black hole with which people will set up their past-retirement employment.

Given the amount of KNOWLEDGEABLE oversight there I assume the 'bad' part to be a certainty. No way would anyone risk bringing in people with knowledge and unearth existing skeletons (the ones that built over years of bi-annual 'pass the skeletons' games between civil servants)..

Oh, as for Microsoft - the pressure to disclose the code in order to get anywhere near a classified system is building. I guess there are just too many people that have woken up here, especially since the likes of Redhat are now at EAL 4.

"P.S. amanfromMars WTF?! etc. etc."

It's a long story about an AI Program which El Reg is leading, Tim. And you would be amazed at what IT can do.

And yes, it would also be good for MS but not controlled by them.

Having spent time in the MoD, both as a lowly airman and later as an IT contractor, my concern is who makes the decision? Unless things have changed drastically recently (I know, I'm laughing as well) the person who actually gets to decide what to buy probably has very little knowledge about the subject. It is also highly unlikely that they will have any common sense because if they had any they would automatically be disqualified from that position.

Very succinctly put, Anonymous Coward. Spot on analysis.

A very Hellerish Catch 22. :-)

What else can they do other than decide what they want to buy, based upon what they know is for sale. The onus to deliver is then lifted from their shoulders and ITs burden placed firmly and squarely on the Systems Programmer whose words describe what they want. And cost will always be dependent upon what is expected as much as anything/everything that has been promised.

In an ideal situation, third party positive reinforcement is reciprocal and therefore self-sustaining and failsafe. And with IT connecting the dots so much easier nowadays, with the technology and methodologies evolving at exponenential rates, the history of monumental failures is surely likely to be a thing of the Past.

Do you think it is possible to share/say something like the Creation in CyberSpace of the Command and Control of Computers and Communications without knowing how to facilitate it with IT?

C42 Quantum Control Systems may not be everyone's cup of tea but that is not to say that ITs blend of Controls are not available for a potent brew to refresh the System, dDeep down and right to the heart of ITs Core.

WYSIWYG and Pay peanuts, get Monkeys are valid Parameters in every Plane and especially so in ITs Virtualisation Fields of Control for AIBeta Power Generation ...... for the next Generations to Follow.