Disastrous universal credit IT system hangs in balance as Iain Duncan Smith quits

Op-ed: Ex-minister, who repeatedly hit "reset" on chaotic omni-dole project, backs out.

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Hey, nice to know it's not just the Scots who are incompetent.

Perhaps if all the gubmit IT projects knocked a couple zeros off their budget to chase away all the extortionate vulturesconsultants and handed the job to their own people who already have all the knowledge and experience in running their existing systems, they might get somewhere someday. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

 

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Yes it should be simple to implement, feed a bunch of data from different departments, aggregate them, and run an algorithm over it to work out how much you get.

But then, rather than give it to me to write, they give it to consultancies who have 1 or 2 good people and a huge number of outsourced (ie cheapest) "IT" workers and contractors who get paid by the day.

I've worked on such things, it was hell attempting to do good work in the face of so much incompetence.

I don't often criticise someone I don't know, but based on this comment, you are utterly ignorant on this subject.

Government systems- especially those like universal credit are rarely technically complicated. The problem is that they translate law into code and this is incredibly complicated. Law makers don't think through every possible outcome, but creating these systems means you have to. This is where most delay comes from.

Here's a radical idea: Ditch all the consultants and outsource drones, and allow the government department to assemble its own compact, focused problerm-solving team that combines law makers, administrators, and developers into a single heterogeneous group that works in-house as a single unit to learn and understand the problem space and build the tools to serve it better.

Nothing is more utterly useless and less likely to yield a valid solution than programmers who only know how to program, managers who only know how to manage, and consultants who only know how to put zeros on the end of every invoice. If a programmer can't be arsed to learn about law or a lawyer can't describe how it works to non-lawyers, replace them with those that do. And don't be afraid to pay top dollar to secure the right people, because it will still work out infinitely cheaper than these endlessly repeating too-vast-and-ignorant-ever-to-succeed boondoggles that serve solely to inflate the usual private-sector suspects on the taxpayer dime with little but excuses in return.