On 04/12/10 10:36, Mark Elkins wrote: > I guess one fundamental point to make is about whether or not politicians and > senior civil servants fully understand what they mean by terms such as > 'off-the-shelf' and 'open Source'. Also do they fully understand what they > mean by 'small' and 'big' contracts or projects and when it is appropriate to > use them. > > Politicians are very good at sound bites but one has to be wary of the depth > of understanding they have about anything. For instance by way of an analogy > - How is it that prior to the current economic problems they were not warning > that things could badly go wrong and yet appear to be more than keen to > believe that Fred Goodwin should have known? Politicians of all political > parties have advisers so why didn't they know of the dangers and why were > they not able to warn Fred Goodwin of the dangers of the actions RBS were > taking?
It's possibly worth adding that a very small group of people will profit enormously from the crisis, and that politicians generally tend to be in the pocket of that group of people to a greater or lesser degree. Going back to your original point, perhaps their understanding of the situation does extend beyond the superficial, but the greater profit and personal gain to be had from not upsetting the big vendors causes them to behave otherwise. > My understanding is that under the previous administration in-house central > government expertise was virtually removed whilst at the same time > outsourcing around 80% of IT contracts to handful of large organizations. > Hopefully there are enough people in the current administration who have got > a reasonable understanding of IT because it is doubtful that this is the case > within the Civil Service due to action taken by New Labour. > > I would further argue that to truly be able to embrace 'Open Source' there > must be enough IT people working directly for the Civil Service who are then > be able to connect to Open Source projects by contributing to as well as > making use of Open Source. In other words if they work for an outsourcer how > motivated would they be do this? The outsourcer might well make use of open > source to satisfy the beliefs of Ministers who think they should be, but that > is I would suggest a different matter to fully embracing the concept. > > Fully laying my cards on the table I would argue that staff who work directly > for an organization are going to be more motivated towards its well being as > long as that organization also has the interests of its staff at heart. Staff > who are hired and fired at short notice in my view generally won't. > Interestingly for all the curtailment of Trade Union powers and reluctance to > embrace provisions of the EU social chapter such as 'Worker board > representatives' how come the UK economy is not stronger than the German or > for that matter the French? As we know as well both those countries have made > far more use of 'Open Source' than ours. Is there a causal link? In order to fully embrace the concept of Open Source our government needs to do a complete u-turn, since these days policy is largely influenced by corporate lobbyists who work for organisations motivated essentially by greed. The notion of a community that co-operates and shares while striving for excellence must surely be alien to our self-serving leaders and captains of industry. I suspect it will go something along the lines of alternative energy: when the established energy suppliers have a significant grip on the supply of the alternatives we will start to see them being made available to us; until then they will remain on the periphery until every last bit of profit has been squeezed out of oil and coal. Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Next meeting: The Broadway, Bournemouth, Tuesday 2010-12-14 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
