Re: uk general election
On Wednesday 13 April 2005 09:37, geoffthur@ntlworld.com wrote:
> Dear Debs
>
>
> I'm hoping to stand in the uk general election, although I've left it a
> bit late and it might all fall through.
>
> Obviously, standing as an Independent I would have little chance of
> winning. I need policies, preferably stuff that nobody else is saying,
> but will strike people as making sense, and I need to believe in them.
The fact that you _need_ policies rather than you are passionate about
something will mean that you have no chance of winning.
That doesn't mean that you can't use the platfom of the election to argue
strongly about something you care about and to get the message across even if
you don't end up being an MP
>
> One thing that matters to me is the state of the internet - spam,
> cracking, organised crime and the like. Another is the way we allocate
> contracts for large computer projects here. Let me tell you about one
> such.
>
> The Child Support Agency was set up a while back to deal with absentee
> fathers. In theory, it collects money from them and gives it to the
> mother and child. In practice, this agency has added to the distress of
> single mothers by coming up with apparently randomly-generated support
> plans, some of which are way wide of the mark. Even when the money is
> taken from the father, it sometimes seems to end up in limbo, rather
> than getting to the mother. I believe this agency has cost something
> like five hundred million pounds to set up (I heard this figure quoted,
> but have not had time to check its accuracy yet), most of this on
> computer systems that are still ineffective. Apparently staff began
> entering wrong information just to get claims processed. Some files were
> deleted erroneously.
I think you need to be very careful here. The situation you report is one
widely reported in the press a few days ago, and the way that was reported
was clearly one related to staff morale and lack of leadership in the whole
organisation - not all of it related to the computer system (other than
potential misuse by the employees). The press reports talked about procecess
failures in terms of phones deliberately forwarded to numbers that would not
be answered and cases that were dropped because information was not
available, without reviewing if someone else would ever pick it up again.
>
> This is just one of a string of failures in computer system provision in
> the uk. The free market approach is a failure here. I believe we should
> have an Agency for Computer System Provision, or some such thing, paid
> by the taxpayer. A smallish group of highly-skilled and well-paid
> programmers without businessmen creaming off much of the cash.
Don't be niaive. There already is a small group in the government overseeing
procurement. But you couldn't get a small group implementing these massive
programmes on their own. The solutions aren't purely technical either, but
complicated projects mixing the technical issues with the massive people
issues that implementing a complex systems of this nature entail.
I am pretty convinced is that a very large part of the problem is the issue of
changing requirements - not a technical issue at all, but a combination of
feature creep by staff not familiar with IT development and polititians
changing the rules that these systems have to implement.
If there were easy solutions they would have been found by now.
Lastly, shouldn't part of the role of government be to encourage its own IT
industry. Much of the way of doing that is to let government contracts to
British companies.
[Disclaimer, I work for LogicaCMG, a British IT company. A fair proportion of
our UK business comes for government contracts and I would not like to see
all our jobs (not just those working on government projects) in jeopardy
because the government stopped spending in this area]
>
> On the internet side, what can I get away with saying about Microsoft?
Be factual - and also argue the case for supporting British industry rather
than American. But be realistic too. Nobody is going to vote for you if you
recommend putting everyone back to the dark ages
> What should they be told to do, and how can we make them do it? How far
> away are we from Linux systems for the less computer-literate user?
They are available today - its just that its more complicated then just
dictating everyone use them. There has to be market forces to make it happen
too.
> I know there are often threads on this sort of stuff here, but they tend
> to focus on how the individual should respond. Can countries do more in
> this area?
Look at what a Peruvian congressman said
http://www.opensource.org/docs/peru_and_ms.php
and think along the same lines
>
> I'm sorry if anybody thinks I shouldn't be bringing this here, but I
> need help and expect some will be interested enough to comment.
Get yourself also up to speed on the other relevent issues that are related
(such as software patents, and digital rights management and the protection
of fair use rights under them) an
> And I'm
> a few days behind in reading my emails because of my sudden decision to
> try to stand, so if there are relevent current threads on any of this,
> please be gentle with me.
Good luck - but I still don't really understand why you are standing.
--
Alan Chandler
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk
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