Is it just me, or can there really be a sense of Groundhog day when reading commentaries about IT spending in the public service?
Take this, albeit old, report from the concise http://www.siliconrepublic.com/.
Obviously given the whole PPARS debacle in the HSE the speaker was onto a winner with a talk that posed the question "Why do IT projects fail in the health sector?". According to Silicon Republic, Archie Galbraith (who is head of Accenture's healthcare division) said it was down to vendors over-commiting, underachievement of project goals and lack of value for money.
The remedy apparently is to "Know exactly what you want, agree outcomes, start with the end vision and work backwards. And always think about context and the larger system".
Great.
What exacltly is unique about this in the context of the health service, or even the public service generally is beyond me. If you want to manage projects, you should know a bit about project management.
A few months later, the same topic is still being discussed by another consultant in another Silicon Republic article.
It strikes me that if all people working in IT could be forced to read the "Mythical Man Month" by Brooks the IT world would be a better place. Amazingly hardly any undergraduate software engineering course I know of has this on the curriculum.
PPARS was a mess, but not because it was an IT project that ran out of control - it was a *project* that ran out of control - and the problems that caused it are endemic issues in the public service. So public servants are to blame? Well partly. The public service is a culture apart, where people joining from private enterprise have a steep learning curve. Most of all it is a culture where risk taking, and taking responsibility can be career threating acts.
As a public we can't have it both ways - we can't demand that we have complete transparency so that when a mistake is made a public servant can have their name quoted in the press as has been the case in the past, while at the same time expecting an efficient adminstration where ass-covering and risk aversion don't remain the norm. Forget about reforming the health service as a major challenge for Ireland - the real challenge is reforming the entire public service.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Representation
Last Christmas, when Ireland's big consulting firms spread the love a little ,I attended a "Christmas lunch". These are events where consulting companies bring their clients out for a nice meal to "network". These events are simply to say thanks for your business in the year...
Yeah right, they're part of the buddy up technique of corporate selling and have the consultants interests very much at heart. Still, as long as you know that you can go and have a very fine lunch. On this occasion, one of the big stories in the news was the Irish Ferries dispute. What interested me most was that most of the people at my table didn't focus on the specifics on the dispute (which lets face it feature some particularly dispicable actions on the part of the company's management) but on a general antipathy towards unions and organised labour.
This is a feature of the Irish IT industry, where under the influence of the many American companies operating here, there is virtually no union activity. Most in the industry, both from a management perspective and an employee perspective, seem to feel that this is a good thing. The sense is that in a dynamic and affluent industry, organised employee representation is a negative that can only impede the opportunities for all. The knee-jerk reaction amongst the great and the good of the Irish IT industry seemed to be that if a union was representing it's members rights, than surely the company was being hamstrung by left of centre anti-capitalists.
No analysis of the problems at Irish Ferries were entertained, with stock arguments being trotted out - every sector of Irish Industry has migrant workers; the company is close to collapse etc. Of course the dispute at Irish Ferries was far more complex than either side wanted to admit - the migrant workers being proposed are different to those working in building sites and hotels accross the country because as workers on a sea going vessel the minimum wage won't apply. Equally, not all the "Irish Ferries Workers" for whom people took to the streets were that upset about the propasals, with the Seamens Union endorsing the redundancy package.
What worried me though, was the unchallenged view that we in the IT industry are better off because we are not a unionised industry. In some cases at least individuals are victimised in a most petty way. And we all know instances of where it happens.
What brought this back to mind was meeting up with some old friends, and Deirdre in particular.
Deirdre is a friend from college. We meet only occasionally and for the past number of years she has been virtually been having a love affair with the company for whom she works. That was until she dared go on maternity leave. On her return all had changed. A position was advertised in the company that she applied for and was the only applicant. Dispite being advertised as a position at a director level, and dispite having being told several times in written reviews that she was likely to be promoted to a director position in the near future, Deirdre was told that although she could take the position, no promotion would be forthcoming. She was assured however that after 6 months in the position, the Directorship would be hers.The 6 months came, the 6 months went, and she was not promoted. The explanation was that the (Canadian) parent company was concerned about its staff profile and felt there were to be no promotions to Directorships.
But she was told she was doing great.
So lets recap, a woman with a track record, in a position advertised at a particular level, told if she did the job for 6 months would be allowed to progress to that level.
Imagine her annoyance when a colleague was promoted to a directorship in an unadvertised position. The colleague was male. When she challenged her management on the matter she was told that the Irish subsidary had been allowed one promotion opportunity and that her colleague was deemed to be more of a rising star then her - as a mother it was felt that she would not be able to be as flexible and well placed to serve the needs of the company. She wouldn't be able to jump on a plane in the morning. There is no question that this was wrong - indeed she probably should have taken a discrimination case against the company - but she felt this would have damaged her career further in the company.
She probably would have benefited from representation.
Yeah right, they're part of the buddy up technique of corporate selling and have the consultants interests very much at heart. Still, as long as you know that you can go and have a very fine lunch. On this occasion, one of the big stories in the news was the Irish Ferries dispute. What interested me most was that most of the people at my table didn't focus on the specifics on the dispute (which lets face it feature some particularly dispicable actions on the part of the company's management) but on a general antipathy towards unions and organised labour.
This is a feature of the Irish IT industry, where under the influence of the many American companies operating here, there is virtually no union activity. Most in the industry, both from a management perspective and an employee perspective, seem to feel that this is a good thing. The sense is that in a dynamic and affluent industry, organised employee representation is a negative that can only impede the opportunities for all. The knee-jerk reaction amongst the great and the good of the Irish IT industry seemed to be that if a union was representing it's members rights, than surely the company was being hamstrung by left of centre anti-capitalists.
No analysis of the problems at Irish Ferries were entertained, with stock arguments being trotted out - every sector of Irish Industry has migrant workers; the company is close to collapse etc. Of course the dispute at Irish Ferries was far more complex than either side wanted to admit - the migrant workers being proposed are different to those working in building sites and hotels accross the country because as workers on a sea going vessel the minimum wage won't apply. Equally, not all the "Irish Ferries Workers" for whom people took to the streets were that upset about the propasals, with the Seamens Union endorsing the redundancy package.
What worried me though, was the unchallenged view that we in the IT industry are better off because we are not a unionised industry. In some cases at least individuals are victimised in a most petty way. And we all know instances of where it happens.
What brought this back to mind was meeting up with some old friends, and Deirdre in particular.
Deirdre is a friend from college. We meet only occasionally and for the past number of years she has been virtually been having a love affair with the company for whom she works. That was until she dared go on maternity leave. On her return all had changed. A position was advertised in the company that she applied for and was the only applicant. Dispite being advertised as a position at a director level, and dispite having being told several times in written reviews that she was likely to be promoted to a director position in the near future, Deirdre was told that although she could take the position, no promotion would be forthcoming. She was assured however that after 6 months in the position, the Directorship would be hers.The 6 months came, the 6 months went, and she was not promoted. The explanation was that the (Canadian) parent company was concerned about its staff profile and felt there were to be no promotions to Directorships.
But she was told she was doing great.
So lets recap, a woman with a track record, in a position advertised at a particular level, told if she did the job for 6 months would be allowed to progress to that level.
Imagine her annoyance when a colleague was promoted to a directorship in an unadvertised position. The colleague was male. When she challenged her management on the matter she was told that the Irish subsidary had been allowed one promotion opportunity and that her colleague was deemed to be more of a rising star then her - as a mother it was felt that she would not be able to be as flexible and well placed to serve the needs of the company. She wouldn't be able to jump on a plane in the morning. There is no question that this was wrong - indeed she probably should have taken a discrimination case against the company - but she felt this would have damaged her career further in the company.
She probably would have benefited from representation.
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