Fiscal Prudence
The Government - those nice people in suits whose job it is to safeguard taxpayers' money from being wasted on fripperies like a national transport system, a sustainable energy policy or wages for people in the public sector - have brought off another flux in the turbulent kaleidoscope that is the efficiency paradigm by spending something more than two thousand million pounds on computer and IT projects. Of course, this is not the whole story. The figure of two thousand million applies only to those projects which have failed, and therefore is probably an underestimate; particularly as, in order to safeguard the taxpayer's peace of mind, "neither Whitehall nor the National Audit Office, parliament's financial watchdog, keep definitive lists of which schemes go wrong".
Contrary to what one might expect, given the Government's record of encouraging constructive criticism and tolerating dissent, "one senior Whitehall official" has called the matter into question, noting that "the government's £14bn annual spend on IT could be used to build thousands of schools every year or to employ hundreds of thousands of nurses in the NHS"; or, perhaps more realistically, to bail out a few more of its pals in the boardroom the next time a bank goes belly-up. The official, who is Programme and Systems Delivery Officer at the Department of Work and Pensions Crisis, estimated that only thirty per cent of projects are successful, and noted that "it is not sustainable for us as a government to continue to spend at these levels" and therefore "we need to up the quality of what we do at a reduced cost of doing so".
But sustainable and not sustainable, as far as politicians are concerned, have nothing to do with the difference between surviving and going under; they are simply a pair of alternatives, of which the former is a bit more expensive than the latter. The term not sustainable, in this government's ears, conveys little more than a slight inconvenience, something on a par with not legal or not compatible with the public interest: something to put aside pending a good day to bury bad news. Although the Guardian notes optimistically that the "extensive list of failed projects calls into question other major government IT programmes, such as the proposed £5bn ID cards scheme", the Glorious Successor will doubtless ride out this petty nit-picking.
Contrary to what one might expect, given the Government's record of encouraging constructive criticism and tolerating dissent, "one senior Whitehall official" has called the matter into question, noting that "the government's £14bn annual spend on IT could be used to build thousands of schools every year or to employ hundreds of thousands of nurses in the NHS"; or, perhaps more realistically, to bail out a few more of its pals in the boardroom the next time a bank goes belly-up. The official, who is Programme and Systems Delivery Officer at the Department of Work and Pensions Crisis, estimated that only thirty per cent of projects are successful, and noted that "it is not sustainable for us as a government to continue to spend at these levels" and therefore "we need to up the quality of what we do at a reduced cost of doing so".
But sustainable and not sustainable, as far as politicians are concerned, have nothing to do with the difference between surviving and going under; they are simply a pair of alternatives, of which the former is a bit more expensive than the latter. The term not sustainable, in this government's ears, conveys little more than a slight inconvenience, something on a par with not legal or not compatible with the public interest: something to put aside pending a good day to bury bad news. Although the Guardian notes optimistically that the "extensive list of failed projects calls into question other major government IT programmes, such as the proposed £5bn ID cards scheme", the Glorious Successor will doubtless ride out this petty nit-picking.
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