To: UK Ministers for Innovation and Technology, and for Defence Procurement

Stop wasting £billions on farcical and doomed technology projects!

  • For effective and efficient management and engineering of technology projects, devise legislation to impose formal Competence Management, based on objective criteria, on procurer and supplier organisations.
  • Ensure technical competence permeates all levels (director/CTO, management, engineering).
  • Ensure incompetent buzzword-bandits are removed from positions of technical authority.

Why is this important?

Over several decades, procurer and supplier organisations have combined to squander £billions of UK taxpayers money on techno-junk. In this regard, UK defence and government IT projects have been notoriously shambolic for decades, as indicated in:

https://ukcampaign4change.com/2022/01/27/43-years-of-state-it-project-disasters-and-theyre-still-happening/

The Post Office Horizon scandal is a prime example of unreliable technology causing years of mayhem and human misery. Other corroborating factors to consider:
  • The Horizon statutory inquiry uncovered weak leadership and engineering incompetence at ICL/Fujitsu and Post Office.
  • ICL/Fujitsu was involved in other profligate techno-farces such as Lorenzo (NHS) and Libra (MoJ).
  • Circa 2007, our assessment of ICL/Fujitsu did not find practices necessary for engineering dependable systems.
  • The Post Office NBIT project, due to replace Horizon, has turned farcical, as exposed again by Computer Weekly. Leopards and spots!
  • For Logica, another UK systems-house, our team devised a process for the recruitment of over 200 software engineers, based on objective competence criteria.
  • To quote Elon Musk about repeated failures at Boeing Starliner "Too many non-technical managers at Boeing."

Competent (qualified, trained and experienced) human assets, complying with lifecycle standards (ISO, IEC), is the only viable solution for technological progress and sustainable growth.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Human-Assets-Human-Asset-Evaluation-Human-Asset-Allen/229df82518968933a301a9dac9f05e8344e72c26

Time for competence management to be the rule (of law) in the UK, not the exception!

How it will be delivered

Email the ministers!

Great Britain, United Kingdom

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