[LINK] Report of the Gov ICT Procurement Taskforce

[David Lochrin]

On Tuesday 29 August 2017 at 10:02 Tom Worthington wrote:

>> 1.    Lack of centralised policies, coordination, reporting, oversight and accountability ...
> 
> Centralisation is the last thing you need for digital transformation.  Otherwise public servants have to spend extra time working around the central rules, so as to get things done.

What this demonstrates is the exquisite tension between scale and flexibility & vulnerability.

Back in the 19th century Karl Marx pointed out that every human system exists in a state of tension between the forces of integration and disintergration.  But some governments seem chronically unable to recognise this - every new hare-brained scheme is the unqualified solution to some perceived problem or other. 

I think Governments need a panel of The Wise, well grounded in engineering and other disciplines and skilled in big-picture thinking.  Of course their advice would never be completely acceptable, and why do we need that when we have the IPA?

Sigh...

David L.