Slashdot Mirror
Open Source 'Wasn't Available' Two Years Ago, Says UK Gov't IT Project Chief
An anonymous reader writes "The head of delivery for the UK's Department for Work and Pensions' flagship welfare reform project, Universal Credit, has said that the department didn't adopt open source and web-based technologies at the beginning of the project because 'such things weren't available' two and a half years ago. Howard Shiplee told the Work and Pensions Committee this week that the department is now using open source technologies in its enhanced version of Universal Credit, which was initially developed by the Government Digital Service (GDS) and will be rolled out nationally by 2017 for most claimants. The existing system being used in pathfinder pilots and developed by the likes of IBM, HP and Accenture will be largely be replaced by the digital version."
Then either they needed something highly specific, or this guy isn't qualified to evaluate technology.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Quite so. What What?
Cheerio then.
I'd like to posit that Howard Shiplee's attention span has been well asleep up until 2 years ago. Holy flying fig, man, what have you been doing since 1985!?! Sleeping like Rip Van Winkle?
...have I been doing for the past 10 years.
One pencil pusher was heard to say: "So, when do we get iPads to do our work?"
Even though the article is also lean on the details, at least it provides the actual quote, which is:
"It relies not on large amounts of tin, black boxes, but uses open source and mechanisms on the web to store and access data,” Shiplee told MPs. When asked why he didn’t adopt this approach two and a half years ago at the start of the project, Shiplee said: “Technology is moving very rapidly, such things weren’t available as they are today.”
Ok, so "such things" - does not necessarily refer to "open source". It may (and probably does) refer to "mechanisms on the web to store and access data". Perhaps something "in the cloud", given that article does not provide sufficient detail - hard to say.
This person probably has a literal interpretation of computer history and believes open-source is less than 2.5 years old even though the rest of us "non-believers" think the Apache web server, for example, has been around between 10 and 15 years according to our best estimates and theories.
These people also believe The Internet was CREATED around 1995 while the rest of us believe the Internet EVOLVED from spontaneously networked computers around 1968.
Before people blow up :-)
- This usually means that the department wasn't permitted to use 'un-vetted/approved/etc' software at that time (it may have been that they actually /wanted/ to use something open source 2 years ago, but various bits of bureaucracy didn't allow for it)
This is government after all :-)
Shiplee said: “Technology is moving very rapidly, such things weren’t available as they are today.”
If you actually read the contents of the article, it seems that Howard Shiplee was taken out of context. (Say it aint so)
It seems to me that lots and lots of small components were available for the final software product, but due to the complexities of navigating a large bureaucracy, larger systems that closely fit the requirements were needed. At the end of the day, it's just boxes on a piece of paper to an architectural "expert" somewhere. At the end of the day, it's all about risk, and how that risk is managed. The usual trick for middle management to keep their jobs, is to get the risk exported.
“You would find it very hard to find vendors in the market place to do this work at full risk. So the department took up the risk.”
Anyone who understands the concept that an entity, both corporate or government can't export risk is deserving of respect. Sure, you can have contracts with vendors that give guaranteed SLA's, but at the end of the day, if a government service goes down, and there's a 100% risk export, for sure when the media gets to it, "IBM messed up, it's not our fault!" simply doesn't cut it. A ton of mud will still stick to those who are beholden to the responsibility of a service that they provide.
Even financially, the risk that is exported is only ever as good as the other companies working capital and professional indemnity insurance.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
"We wanted software for free, and weren't interested in spending the money to have someone write and support the feature we needed. So instead we wasted millions of pounds and man-years of time on a commercial solution we elected to toss the second someone committed the feature to the codebase."
There's a qualifying statement. He has a qualifying statement to make....Please let there be a qualifying statement.
I won't waste my time clicking on anything from computerworld even if it's the UK affiliate. How about referencing decent journalism or even a 5th grade writing level?
I've been using the OpenOffice suite in one of its various previous or successor incarnations for nearly 15 years now, so yeah, its clearly not true that there were no usable Open Source alternatives 2 and a half years ago.
However, what has happened in the last two and a half years is that Google Docs acquired the capability to use old Microsoft formats (in April of 2010 to be precise) and work offline (September of 2011). If they are using Google Docs and consider all its cloud-based collaboration features along with Microsoft file support and/or offline capability essential features that make their new setup worthwhile, then its perfectly fair to point out that this alternative was not available two and a half years ago.
You mean IBM, HP and Accenture didn't recommend Open Source software ??? How is that possible ;-)
The guy must have just broke out of a block of ice and still thinks it's 1978. On the plus side, he missed Jersey Shore and the Kardashians.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
millions of geeks all groaned in frustration and were suddenly silenced.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
GNU has been around since *1983*!
Linux was released in *1991*!
By 2010 the city of Munich public services had deployed SuSE Linux in 20% of its front end systems following prior announcement of the plan in 2003, with the stated intention to complete the transition to FOSS by 2015. citation
Personally, I've been using Linux in various flavours and for various projects since 1996.
So clearly, the Head of Delivery is full of shit.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"Universal Credit" is a massive system of corporate welfare, whereby the state subsidises the wages of workers as long as they don't save money.
Libertarians and socialists alike should find this repulsive, and anyone who worked toward delivering it should be ashamed of themselves.
I can't take RMS seriously because his idea of "Free" involves allowing "Free" software to be used to create systems which promote everything but.
Open Source took off with RMS in the 80's.
Soulskill.
"Such things" refers to "open source and mechanisms on the web to store and access data", which, unless I'm shit-eatingly retarded, means the specific things they needed to implement this.
The initial release of Azure was 3 years ago, and AWS was a novelty until just a bit before then. Neither one would have been even considered as a web storage solution two and a half years ago. And "open source" very specifically means things that would take certain inputs and give certain outputs, which if I were to guess still do not exist in the form that is required.
I'm not disagreeing - I'm expounding to explain why I read with NoScript, RequestPolicy, and others enabled so I can't see ads. I close my browser, deleting cookies (yes even super cookies) between posts. I have an ISP with IP pooling so I can't be easily tracked for more than an hour or so. I do this because fuck you, Dice.
I choose not to read ComputerWorld. But when a news aggregator decides I should be informed, the message better be crystal fucking clear. The author might be a blithering, window licking retard, but Soulskill decided to post it here.
I may start a blog about all the things I smeared fecal matter on, and whose fecal matter it was, and submit stories titled "things open source cannot stop" and "what's wrong with Ubuntu" and "as a proprietary coder I explain why everything I produce is shite". I would get front page stories without a blink.
The DWP is run by a politician, Ian Duncan Smith, to whom the aphorism "How can you tell a politician is lying? His mouth moves" applies in spades. He is also not very bright as well as being incompetent. The government of which he is a member is one of the most ideological we have had in decades and cares little about actual evidence for the policies.
UK govt is full of such misinformed twats. Look at the mess in NHS IT -
...breaking, it's fucking BROKEN already! IDS has ADMITTED in the Select Committee inquiry that the system IS NOT READY for rollout and that it is so full of flaws that the planned completion of rollout in 2017 WILL NOT HAPPEN.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Well as this is the goverment we're talking about I certainly wont be letting them off the hook so easily. They are the ones responsible for vetting software and would have had enough time before the introduction of universal credit, after all the previous system was a serious failure, vetted or not:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23963867
before giving the headline or summary any attention what so ever you need to take note of "Posted by Soulskill", that is all you needed to do to be certain that the summary bears no resemblance to the actual article and has been twisted to some sort of flamebait.