In Reply to: re: work to rule posted by tech on February 19, 2010 at 07:20:41:

Of course the actual contractor on the ground doesn't get paid 1000 euro a day!!! Doh! As I say your innocence is touching. You don't seriously think the employer will hand over that kind of dosh to the person attempting to do the work? What you get into your hand bears no resemblance to what the big private sector companies charge additionally to cover profits, overheads, travel, subsistence, etc.

Also I am not talking about routine software but more technical large-scale core stuff that should be done in-house. There's lots of off-the-shelf packages that are tweakable for low cost - and this is at an even lower cost where a public sector organisation is lucky enough to have an in-house IT section with programmers or other technical expertise. The 1000 euro a day contracts are for the more core technical stuff that should be done in-house but is handed over - by our politicians - to the big IBMs and the like.

Have you ever pitched for a job on tenders.ie the public procurement website I wonder? I could be wrong but I've never heard of a west of Ireland company getting the kind of business that is charged out at 1000 euros a day per head. It would be unlikely that they would be sufficiently 'connected' or large scale to land this kind of work.

Think of the wonderful appointments to our state boards and the like - the way our politicos match the expertise to the job. Think Galway tent territory and you will get an idea of where these big projects come from. Even the best project manager is powerless when presented with incompetents doing work that in all likelihood they should not be doing in the first place. The time spent managing these projects would be better spent doing it in-house - that's the whole point. A simple example - handing out the job of writing software to count the nation's democratic votes to a private company is to me at least laughable. A core democratic function handed over to a foreign company ultimately producing what was unusable and in the same stroke providing another great outsource job - storing the useless voting computers. With all due respects I don't think a project manager should be even attempting to project manage something like that - but that is the political system we live in.

As for real incompetence on a massive scale - yesterday's papers revealed the first 10 private sector companies that we the taxpayers are paying for directly - a mere 80 billion euro worth of over-inflated private sector 'projects' that went wallop leaving us to pick up the tab. To me this is the epitome of private sector incompetence. How much a systems analyst gets into his or her hand of the 1000 euro a day that they are charged out for pales into insignificance when faced with this kind of raw incompetence and greed that is out there in the private sector. Again of course let out of control and aided and abetted by our political paymasters - the commit suicide if you dare to question us - kind of project management skills.

On the other hand I presume that you agree with my points about Ireland's cheap and low-cost public service - as in our low rankings on the OECD for all public-sector related indicators. Our miserably low rate of spending on health, education, R&D. In other words we already run a bare-bones public service that has already been cut to shreds. To get better value for money we need to cut out large chunks of out-sourcing of core functions and bring this kind of work in-house. Core functions of the public service should not be run on the profit-motive and the quick-buck in-out mentality. We should not be dependent on picking up after the 1000-euro-a-day boys have gone leaving their hidden bugs, poor documentation and all the usual costly maintenance traps that add to the cost of ownership.