By Andy McCue, 3 February 2005 16:55
NEWS Private sector CIOs would lose their jobs if they were responsible for the kinds of IT failures seen at the Inland Revenue and Child Support Agency, according to UK IT bosses.
The widely held perception is that private sector organisations are more ruthless about accountability for botched projects than the private sector, as seen with MFI's recent decision to sack two of its directors after a multi-million pound supply chain system ran into trouble.
We asked silicon.com's CIO Jury user panel if they agreed with the assertion that private sector CIOs and IT bosses would lose their jobs if they were responsible for the kinds of failures seen in government IT.
Two-thirds of the jury (eight) said 'yes' a private sector CIO could expect to lose their job for that kind of failure with a third (four) saying 'no'.
"Absolutely," was the most common response and Richard Yeo, CTO at easyGroup, said: "Private sector CIOs would either leave before they were pushed or be pushed. Either way they wouldnÂ’t be there within six months of the failure."
David Lister, CIO at Reuters, said it comes with the territory: "Performance, accountability and consequence management go hand in hand with the remuneration and incentive packages that exist in the private world. Outstanding success brings exceptional rewards but the reverse also has to be true for failure."
The scale of public sector projects was accepted as a mitigating factor by some IT bosses but Graham Yellowley, director of technology at Mitsubishi Securities International, said: "The number of public sector projects that go over budget and over time appear to be extravagant by comparison with the private sector."
One public sector juror, Richard Steel, head of ICT at London Borough of Newham - who has also worked in a merchant bank - admitted that the government all too often launches into "over-ambitious projects that are ill thought-through" but said that private sector IT suppliers are often also to blame.
"The private sector are usually the ones selling these grandiose schemes to government, and it is they who happily contract to deliver against scanty specifications and an unclear vision, and they who usually end up being the ones who can walk away from the resulting mess."
Those who disagreed cited the fact that IT failures in big private sector organisations are often not heard about as they are not open to the same level of public scrutiny as government projects.
Simon Norbury, head of ICT at Westminster City Council, said: "The point is that we would never hear of the failure in the first place - the private sector is fooling itself into pretending it does not have similar or even larger failures. In the public sector, we have to be far more open and wash our dirty linen in public. How many private sector managers would stand up to such scrutiny?"
Frank Coyle, IT director at John Menzies Distribution, said responsibility is often taken out of the hands of public sector IT bosses because of political pressure.
"Most of these public sector high profile failures were with outsourced projects. I suspect that the decision to outsource was as a result of political pressure and the IT director had little influence in that decision. The IT directors were probably left to manage the inevitable shambles of unrealistically high expectations of their superiors and false promises by the outsourced supplier," he said.
This week's CIO Jury wasÂ…
Frank Coyle, IT director, John Menzies Distribution
Kevin Fitzpatrick, CTO, Manpower
Bill Gibbons, CIO, Abbey
David Lister, CIO, Reuters
Kevin Lloyd, CTO, Barclays
David McKean, CIO, Cable & Wireless
Simon Norbury, head of ICT, Westminster City Council
Steve Ritchie, CIO, Investcorp
Richard Steel, head of ICT, London Borough of Newham
Angus Waugh, head of IT, National Audit Office
Richard Yeo, CTO, easyGroup
Graham Yellowley, director of technology, Mitsubishi Securities International
If you are a CIO, IT director or equivalent at a large or small company in the private or public sector and want to be part of silicon.com's CIO Jury pool, or you know an IT chief who should be, then drop us a line at editorial@silicon.com
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. MikeW
It's like the logic behind peer code reviews - because you KNOW you are to be held accountable, you take measures to ensure your work is of a high enough standard, and that anyone whose work you are dependent on has also complied with requirements and best practices.
2. Roger Huffadine
Making the tenders 'fixed price" would force bidding companies into being more honest and when the project derails the supplier's executives loose their jobs and the government procurement staff loose their jobs.
A few high profile incidents would soon correct the silly situation that we are now suffering.
3. anonymous
Yes heads should roll. Public sector IT managers should be pushing back against the rules they operate under. If they don't then they have to shoulder the blame.
Typically they are forced to accept the cheapest option, which in many cases either doesn't work or doesn't include ALL the costs. There are outsourcing companies out there whose business model is almost tantamount to fraud. They produce bids that are extremely low to win the business then add 'extras' which should have been included from the start.
Even in a real situation where the solution had to be proven. The Gov department chose the solution that barely worked but cost, not a lot, less than the solution that was proven to work fully and robustly.
4. Terry Carlin
I would really like a bit of journalistic effort done on this.
As it's the civil service that we are talking about. What's the betting that the people responsable for some of the more famous failures have been promoted.
Do some digging guys there is a great story here.
5. anonymous
There's no doubt that the Public sector is not successful in implementing IT solutions, caused mainly I believe by their reliance on "advisors" (we all know who they are) whose main aim is to generate revenue. Public Sector organisations feel safe if they can point to consultants' reports to justify their actions. These groups have proliferated precisely due to the Public Sector's unwillingness to make decisions for themselves.
Why is the Public Sector investing so much money in recruiting managers from outside, when they not allowed (or perhaps not empowered) to make decisions?
Other factors contributing to failure are
- Bad definition of system requirements
- Trying to design the perfect "e-solution"
- delayed reaction to the modernising Government agenda, leading to compressed timescales
- trying to achieve too much in the timescales
- changing information requirements
Public Sector failures feature so highly in the media because they are "wasting" public money.
There needs to an acceptance that public administration isn't simple. It would be useful if Government put some thought into their directives and perhaps provided consistent templates or standards to work within.
All this being said, the private sector should remember "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Personal experience of IT projects in this sector is generally no better. Dynamism is often confused with a lack of organisation or clarity of purpose. The reason why more people aren't sacked is that there is more collective responsibility for the failures (i.e. don't tell the shareholders, we're all in this together), the scope is smaller and therefore the cost is less and there is more scope for some creative accounting.
6. anonymous
Looks to me like the Govt CIOs fall guys here? Surely real blame lies with ministers and their "close experts" not really understanding the art of the possible and the large suppliers overselling their art of the possible. Anyone tried to get commom sense out of the staggering number of "agencies" e-envoy, OGC, ODPM, IDEA, NHS and now e-Government unit - anyone looking at "innovation? NO yet the last 3 years have some disruptive technologies emerging breaking down complexity to avoid these IT disasters.... what hope have CIOs with out leadership...
7. anonymous
Public Sector IT bosses usually work for a basic salary in sometimes very difficult political circumstances.
Private sector IT bosses have usually made enough, in bonuses, to retire, by the time their mistakes are noticed.
I believe there are certainly more mistakes in the private sector than the public sector and that these are usually caused by "ego"