So this is what happens.
1. It finally becomes bleeding obvious even to the tea lady that an information system is broken, kaput, finished, stalled, rusted out or whatever.
2. Consultants are hired to write a request for tender document that spells out the operational requirements of the new system in great detail. This takes two years and the specifications run to four or more volumes.
Rarely in industry - if the IT system is impairing efficiency, this is far too long a period to be seeing profits eroding/losses increasing, but in the public sector there is little or no 'sense of urgency'.
3. After a further years processing, a global consultant, called ****** wins the tender with an absurdly low bid and proceeds to start work. Twenty staff are immediately ensconced in your offices. A foot is permanently jammed in the door. No one wonders why the successful tenderer didn't ask very many questions about the system during the bidding process.
Processing is delayed by the 'consensus-building' CS review process that involves every man and his dog, but never actually tries to resolve conflicting requirement issues. Also, if the PID and ITT are properly written, then the contractor with the lowest bid would be put over his submission properly but this never happens, even though 'lowest bids wins' is the oldest trick in the book.
4. Simultaneously, each decison maker between the project manager and the Minister are provided with a suitably chosen partner in the said consulting firm. They proceed to "get close" to their particular quarry through some very expensive lunches, attendance in the corporate box at Wimbledon, the opera, whatever it takes to ingratiate themselves. These events are monthly "to discuss progress" is the usual pretext.
A variation of this is the "It is important for the project that you must attend the conference on (insert favourite technology) we are holding in New York next week". Since middle level managers rarely get to go anywhere, this sends them into orbit and they go running to their boss armed with this recommendation on ******* letterhead.
Yes - seen it done many times. Again, you would think the Civil Service was wise to the process by now.
5. Three months into the project, the designated partner explains to the project manager that the specifications for the system seem a tad outmoded (by this time of course they are four years old) and variations will be required to cope with new (work practices/Taxation laws/ insert favourite reason). This will require the project manager to take decisions - which of course the project manager cannot do without wide consultation.
Poor initial specification by unqualified civil servants, hence the low bid turns out to how missed a great tranche of work to achieve what the client really, really wants - Nimrod MRA4 springs to mind.
6. Three weeks later, the ****** partner arrives and points out that his staff have been waiting threee weeks doing nothing waiting for the project managers decision, and casually hands him an associated invoice for thirty thousand quid for the associated dead time, remarking casually that he had seen the Minister at the opera last night and told him how swimmingly well the project was running. he also usually asks for three other decisons to be made as well, often highly technical decisions that he knows that the project manager doesn't have a clue about. The project is now going in the direction that ****** wants it to go. It becomes obvious that the original system specification is now irrelevent. It is a dead document written four years ago that has no connection with todays reality. The project manager is now in uncharted territory with only **** to guide him.
Caveat emptor. Should have properly constituted the programme board in the first place to get the right level of sponsor on the customer side. Untrained CS individual is now definitely out of his / her depth.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 every few weeks. Repeat step 4 when the project managment structure changes as people sense what is going on and bail out.
Yep - the DWP is especially good at this.
8. Tell the Minister and senior managers at all levels that the new system isn't going to save any money without job redesign/business process analysis/ a new IT strategy/ architecture etc., and how sad it would be if the public found out about this. Thisd brings in another army of **** consultants in HR, business process redesign etc. etc. They of course also know how to repeats steps 4,5, 6, 7 and 8.
No - better than this. Get a diferent firm of consultants to come in at great expense and QA the first lot.
9. It usually takes about five years before the budget is consumed. These guys and girls can suck two hundred million pounds out of a Government department very very quickly.
Very horrible and depressing to watch, but the consultants are there to make money. What you describe is exactly how the big firms work, it is a model that has been repeated for at least the past twenty years, so you would think by now that the Civil Service would have wised up and trained its procurement staff and project managers to cope with this, look for the warning signs....
But no, any old CS generalist will do, it is his interim posting on 'delivery' before he gets promotion to that plum SCS policy job where he doesn't have to be bothered with the real world at all and his pension is assured. Next stop, the Treasury.
I went freelance exactly because I didn't like the consulting model that says 'to be promoted you have to sell, then on-sell'. That is how senior managers in consulting firms get up the greasy pole, by winning the 'big ticket' contracts.
I'm no fan of EDS or BAe and I think PFI is the biggest con going at the minute. It's like a Japanese mortgage, indebting your children and possibly your grandchildren and leaving you with a big hole in the wallet and no assets to speak of. But it takes two to tango.
Does anyone ever have a good thing to say about consultants ??