Quote: "HMRC is in 'delicate negotiations' with EDS"

They don't enter 'delicate negotiations' with us plebs when we owe them dosh; they get heavy and threaten to jail us. Why don't they adopt the same tactic with EDS? A few EDS managers in the slammer would concentrate minds wonderfully.

I'm knee deep studying for the Prince2 exam at the moment. The OGC created Prince2, and it's the darling child of Project Management across Europe. I.e - try getting a senior IT architect job without at least the Foundation exam.

Why oh why oh why - if it's such a good method, that *every* British Govt IT project is an abysmal disaster? And why can't the Govt ever see that EDS etc just bend them over and give it to them rough screaming "whose ya Daddy".

Paris, cos even she knows when she's being taken for a cheap ride.

Does that mean that as a limited company contractor, i can negotiate a 60% discount on my tax and then not pay it for 3 years... somehow i doubt it.

Also "Major Projects Review Group" chimes well with the public sector mantra of

"If you can't make a decision form a committee" (then you cannot be blamed when the decision is bad).

Government and IT should not mix until all existing projects are complete.

Instead of another committee perhaps they just need to be able to write a contract that is not 100% in favour of the IT people.

Angela Adler - what a useless waste of space.

"cross-Whitehall culture of procurement" indeed!

What we need isn't any sort of 'culture' of anything. We need competent, intelligent ministers who will ensure that competent, intelligent civil servants are in charge of government IT projects, and bring the implementation of such projects in-house, hiring competent IT staff to make sure the technical aspects of each project are under control. Only then will the costs be brought under control, resulting in billions of pounds not being wasted on incompetents like EDS.

Fraulein Adler is yet another Neues Arbeit apparatchik who has never had a proper job - Oxford PPE degree - CBI - COHSE - Parliament.

But as anyone who has worked on a government IT project will acknowledge, the specifications change faster than you can write the code and the none of the government counterparts have the balls to make a decision in case its the wrong one. The only way forward for the IT industry is to say "no, you asked you X you're getting X. If you now want Y, then that will be another release/project".

That would REALLY highlight where the wasted money is going.

"delicate communications" bollocks

A few years ago I underpaid my council tax by 38 quid, accidentally filing out my cheque wrongly.

The delicate negotiations I got were a threat of having the bailifs sent round and an additional charge of 75 quid for the priviledge, all within 5 weeks of receipt and cashing of my check, no advance warning letter, or any assumption that an error had been made, basically just a financial shotgun to the head.

I would have loved to sit in on some of those "delicate negotiations"

"Govt- we want 209mill back you theiving bast++++"

"EDS- F+++ Off"

"Govt- 208mill?"

"EDS-F+++ Off"

etc,etc.etc

eventually

"Govt- 71mill"

"EDS- OK. but we want 3000000000000000000mill worth of contracts in return, G+T Gord to seal the deal, and in 3 years time when the publics had enough of you and thrown you out, how about a non-exec role"

Gogt- spits in palm and shakes hand"

Done deal

Barrack Obama and russian soldiers

http://snipurl.com/4wi17