Monday, January 07, 2008

Why is eGovernment not working?

I'm simply amazed at the quote that £2bn have been wasted on binned IT government projects. Working for a large company, I get the whole red-tape, binned projects thing, but this to me cries out of people who think that IT can solve all problems. Any lack of understanding of the issues combined with the big bang approached that is suggested in implemented and deploying these applications is doomed to fail.

I find it quite a difficult pill to swallow. I want to believe in the government, and I know technology has it's place to make things easier and more efficient. If the government were a technology company, it would surely have gone bust by now.

I think the answer may lay in a series of changes, namely: stop the big budget projects, go for small wins, build up with lots of small decoupled applications and learn from OpenID, O-Auth and all the small start ups who develop lean applications and get early adoption to have a short feedback/improvement cycle.

How can I trust the national ID card, the database nation we're becoming when the government can't build or buy IT systems?

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