Slashdot Mirror
Biggest IT Disaster Ever?
lizzyben writes, "Baseline has a major story about a major IT disaster in the UK: 'In 2002, the English government embarked on a $12 billion effort to transform its health-care system with information technology. But the country's oversight agency now puts that figure at $24 billion, and two Members of Parliament say the project is "sleepwalking toward disaster"... In scale, the project... (NPfIT) is overwhelming. Initiated in 2002, the NPfIT is a 10-year project to build new computer systems that would connect more than 100,000 doctors, 380,000 nurses and 50,000 other health-care professionals; allow for the electronic storage and retrieval of patient medical records; permit patients to set up appointments via their computers; and let doctors electronically transmit prescriptions to local pharmacies.'" An Infoworld article from earlier this year sketches some of the all-time greatest IT meltdowns.
Anglo-saxon have institutionalized hatred and distrust of governments, which makes them blind to the fact that such big blunders are not only the province of government, but of private entreprise too.
In fact, there are far more blunders in private entreprise but you never hear about them because, well, private entreprises are (drum roll!!!) private (tadaaah!!!).
They are well-placed to hide their shortcomings under the carpet, without having any public accountability.
Governments **CAN** do things very efficiently, but the likes of Dada21, in their government-hating way, carefully refrain from stating so.
Who developped the atomic bomb during World-War II to win against the japanese? Certainly not Proctor and Gamble or General Dynamics; no, it was the US government who did.
And who regularly runs the largest high-speed train network in the world, where the fastest trains in the world carry thousands of passengers HOURLY for hundreds of thousands of miles, without any accident? It's not a private company, but the french State-owned railroad company SNCF.
Likewise, the only north-american power grid that did not come-down during the last northeastern blackout not only is owned by the government of Québec, but it sells the cheapest electric power in the world.
No, in reality, what Dada21 and their ilk want is to destroy the State so they don't pay taxes, and it doesn't protect the weaker people from their predations. And to do so, they keep trumpetting a supposed inefficiency of government in the hope that, one day, some one comes along and says "I'm gonna end all that government efficiency if you vote for me!", and the gullible people vote for him, only to realize that his agenda is mostly to scrap Democracy.
This is exactly how Adolf Hitler gained power 75 years ago.