[LINK] UK computer crash

[Rick Welykochy]

Jan Whitaker wrote:

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1360798,00.html
> 
> A Tory frontbencher and a leftwing trade union leader yesterday called 
> for a review of government IT contracts after the Department for Work 
> and Pensions computer fiasco.
> David Willetts, shadow secretary for the ministry, said problems were 
> "more serious" than the government admitted after this week's collapse 
> of 80,000 desktop machines and delays to amending and processing new 
> claims.
> 
> "They have been very reluctant to tell us what happened. They said the 
> problems were intermittent but they were more serious than that," said 
> Mr Willetts.

I know what happened. So does the Register:

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/dwp_network_outage/>

Summary: EDS and Microsoft attempted to migrate a few ("seven") Win 2K workstns
over to Win XP IN A LIVE ENVIRONMENT. The idiots got it wrong and migrated
80% of the entire system, and migrated it wrong. The  affected PCs wound
up in a permanent BSOD state and could not be patched or rebooted to a safe
state.

This follows on the heels of another £456 MILLION fiasco by EDS this
year:

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/csa_nukes_eds/>


Summary: Very serious problems arose when migrating the Child Support Agency
(CSA) system. Three quarters of a million CSA payment cases are now backlogged
on a system that performs 20% slower than the system EDS replaced. CSA staff are
handling the backlog with calculators and paper (!).

More at: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/26/child_support_agency_it_failure/>

How do these "consultants" get away with these blunders? So far, my reading
indicates that the U.K. government is "punishing" EDS by withhold approx 20%
of their monthly fees (!)  We are talking over a $ BILLION of waste here ...
total waste, since the CSA project will be shelved. Never to be used.


cheers
rickw



-- 
_________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show
you how it's done.
      -- Scott Adams