On 15-Nov-14 1:50 PM, Jan Whitaker wrote: > A case study in how NOT to acquire a govt system. Bureaucrats who > don't/didn't listen to advice. Sound familiar? > > > http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/ultranets-costly-failure-an-education-in-politics-and-procurement-20141114-11lz8e.html
There's an old joke: A child says to its parents. "Should I get into trouble for something I didn't do?" Parent says, "no, of course not". "Good" says the child, "I haven't done my homework" It's not what governments do, its what they don't do. Governments have a standard process. Write a business case, get it approved, run the project. The bit they don't do is in between the business case and the project. The requirements "gathered" for the business case are high level and only sufficient to inform the decision to proceed. Running a project based upon those requirements is guaranteed (based upon observed behaviours and observations) to fail. Government managers, procurement specialists, project managers, vendors all have a vested interest in the spending of money. They want to get going as soon as possible, that way, the project will get finished sooner. The idea that they should stop and have a good think about what needs to be done is foreign to these people. They don't do it and don't realise it is essential. Auditors come along and look at such projects and aslo don't realise that something is missing. Its a bit like dark matter. they know something is missing, but they don't know what it is, Mr Jones. (bonus points for the 60's cultural reference) -- Regards brd Bernard Robertson-Dunn Sydney Australia email: [email protected] web: www.drbrd.com web: www.problemsfirst.com Blog: www.problemsfirst.com/blog _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
