Andrea di Maio of Gartner has hit one particular nail on the head in his blog from December 23 2009 entitled “Vendors and Consultants Should Not Be Driving Government 2.0“. In my view, they shouldn’t have been driving Government 1.o or e-government, but largely were, either having got themselves into political seats of power or acting as the power behind the thrones.
What should happening? Well better procurement for a start, instead of getting picked off one-by-one by suppliers and consultancy companies, government bodies and local authorities should be getting together and telling the suppliers and consultants what the citizen wants and what their role might be in providing that, if they want the business.
Money is short now at the taxpayer level and if we are going to match that situation at a government level we’ll have to sharpen up process and outcome across the board and stop reinventing wobbly wheels! We can’t keep shelling out for every new technical fad and fashion or be expected to pay for the bloatware some suppliers sell us as software applications.
United we stand, divided we keep paying through the nose!
Andrea also picks up am interesting “Top ten for Gov 2.0 in 2009“. Government IT staff will appreciate number one!
The Great E-mancipator 