[benjaminwootton]

I’ve been fairly close to the digitalisation agenda in UK public sector, and apart from pockets, I find it hard to be so generous.

Horrible outsourcing deals with the usual suspects and enormous failed programmes are still the default.

[nonrandomstring]

Reading the parent comment about Denmark made me sad. I feel that in the UK we have smart, dedicated, well intentioned people just like Denmark, but if the NHS RiO system and Track-and-Trace are anything to go by we are plagued by massive corruption in the IT sector.

This is the country of Alan Turing, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Acorn RISC Machines. We need a new broom on public IT. I think we also need an outright ban on using Microsoft and other Big Tech contracts and a policy to rebuild skills and bring them back in.

One of the most disgraceful episodes of late was the UK basically outsourcing our whole intelligence show to Amazon. Our corrupt minister Priti Patel sold out MI5/6/GCHQ. For over a year she has refused to answer questions on the decision, her connections and kickbacks.

[shrikant]

FWIW, I've done some work in the UK public sector, including but not limited to the NHS.

In my experience, any time the tech folks were in-house, the "doer class" (i.e. the boots-on-the-ground engineers) were some of the smartest, most motivated individuals I've worked with, who pretty consistently gave great output (for e.g., shipping products, system design, software architecture, balancing tech debt with delivery velocity) in the face of almost uniformly painful obstacles, like the tooling they could work, or being jerked around by changing political priorities.

OTOH, any time the tech folks were a long-term outsourced arrangement, you could expect to find (WITHOUT EXCEPTION) ridiculous amounts of cruft, hacks and frankly unacceptable shortcuts in the tech systems and interfaces, and the few people of this ilk that I did deal with, were entirely focussed on Goodhart's Law-ing their way to their next gig. (TBH, I can't really blame the individuals as they're merely responding in the most rational manner to their incentives).

> I think we also need [...] a policy to rebuild skills and bring them back in.

Absolutely 100% agreed, but I suspect we lack the political will/vision, and the requisite leadership/management abilities to be able to do this in a manner that doesn't just result in the next round of useless bungs to politically connected mates.

P.S.: Entirely off-topic -- do you compose your replies in Emacs or something like that? Or at least resort to using semantic line breaks? (https://sembr.org/) I ask because your comment looks fine on the website, but shows line breaks after sentences in an HN reader app that I use.

[nonrandomstring]

> In my experience, any time the tech folks were in-house, the "doer class" (i.e. the boots-on-the-ground engineers) were some of the smartest, most motivated individuals I've worked with

Lions led by donkeys as they used to say.

> I suspect we lack the political will/vision, and the requisite > leadership/management abilities

I'll differ a little here. I think we can have capable people at all levels and I am generally confident in the UK to come through in the end. We can do good leadership too. The reason the donkeys won't carry their load is that they're corrupt, undisciplined and disloyal. They're there to serve us but we forget who holds the stick.

> manner that doesn't just result in the next round of useless bungs > to politically connected mates.

Precisely. My guess is Nick Clegg and Priti Patel are the tip of a gargantuan iceberg. We're becoming a vassal state to the third richest "nation state" on Earth [1], because they have our politicians in their pockets.

[1] The combined wealth of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook now places them collectively above Russia as the number three "superpower". https://www.wired.co.uk/article/big-tech-geopolitics

> P.S.: Entirely off-topic -- do you compose your replies in Emacs or something like that? Or at least resort to using semantic line breaks? (https://sembr.org/) I ask because your comment looks fine on the website, but shows line breaks after sentences in an HN reader

Yes, Emacs, Well spotted. Yet another fingerprint to watch for! :)

[DanBC]

RiO isn't an NHS product, it's made by Servelec who sell it to some NHS organisations. Yes, it's terrible.

https://www.servelec.co.uk/product-range/rio-epr-system/

[benjaminwootton]

I think the bigger problem is the consultancies and system integrators.

The government sign huge outsourcing which propose large, expensive, long waterfall style projects with outdated architecture etc.

Time and time again these programmes fail, but the government money just keeps on flowing.