when the UK Government ran IT projects on time and to budget.

They had a central Civil Service staffed consultancy which provided support for all departments, called CCTA. This provided cheap 'contractors' and negotiated good prices from a position of knowledge.

The IT industry all lobbied to have it closed down. It was, and now the IT industry are making fat profits for providing nothing, as they intended.

Bring back CCTA!!

Does anybody want Microsoft or Google having anything to do with sesitive private information - like health records. Anyway I seem to remember reading somewhere that Microsoft's behaviour in the 'market' has raised serious doubts their eligibility, in UK law, to tender for public service contracts. Can anybody clarify that?

government giving money to private industries?

theyve been doing it for years and getting fat off the proceeds of a lazy directorship

politics is now a lucrative career for this reason - we are being robbed and we cant do anything about it

Everyone knows Charlie took Temple Ball hit At Darpa, Maybe even with Darfa. Now heres New Invention that could of Saved Charlie Million.
General Dynamics Robotics Systems' Second Generation Tactical Autonomous Combat-Chassis, or T2, ns. It taken RoboCar to beyond mere desert test & identifies pedestrians. it usually Brakes 'bout 10 feet to far, however.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/05/robot-vehicle-may-do-armys-dull-dirty-work/?source=newsletter_local-washington-dc_headlines

So both Charlie & US Army Seek improvements. Tell 'Em ,Your Story Charles. Maybe Army Understand.

No-Engineers, Go Tell IT On Mountain or With 'd Army & WIN. FULL Comba.

vondrashek

One of the certainties of life is, governments waste OUR money by the skipload.
I would bet that,virtually any university graduate doing computer programming et'c, could create a working health database,using open saucery, for a tiny fraction of what has been spent on the NHS database scheme.
What is more,as a taxpayer, I would gladly cough up £50m in a competition for any student that produced such a database,according to the sepec's required.
It's an odds on certainty,that it would be better than that which is currently being produced.
More pertently,the scheme was more about giving money to New Labour backers & giving the Americans the private details of ALL UK citizens.
Would some kind soul please second me for a Nobel peace prize, for,discovering the DENSEST human on the planet,who comes under the guise of,'GORDON BROWN'?

So I see that the Tories are all for supporting US companies then?

Why don't they choose some of the local Open Source companies to sort out the problems. That way the systems can be made to interoperate rather than using proprietary crap.

Not to mention I don't see Microsoft and Google playing friendly together. Are the Tories just plucking company names out of the air?

It is better the Tories hiring local open sourced developer than big company like Google and Microsoft.

that all the other outsourced software projects effectively went to and failed?
Projects designed by MS certified consultants and handed out to MS certified engineers to be implemented using MS products?
You may cut out some of the middlemen but the result will still be the same only surprisingly more costly as MS lawyers will ensure even larger payment on failure than success.