By Tony Collins
The Telegraph reports today that Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has told an audience of chief executives from 31 key government suppliers including BT, Hewlett Packard, IBM and CapGemini, that costly IT mistakes like the £12.7bn NHS national programme [NPfIT] would not be repeated.
Contracts in future would be for cheaper, smaller and off-the-shelf systems, not expensive, bespoke software, he said. “Government will no longer offer the easy margins of the past. We will open up the market to smaller suppliers and mutuals and we will expect you to partner with them as equals, not as sub-ordinates. The days of the mega IT contracts are over. We will need you to rethink the way you approach projects, making them smaller, off the shelf and open source where possible…”
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