Government IT

I saw this today Government IT "Cartel"
And to be honest I am NOT shocked.
Having worked in some government departments it is clear that only a few civil servants know what IT actually is let alone actively know the design and operational side of things.
So, it is a case of following the process and this I think is the key, some processes are so old that they are unfit for todays fast moving IT platforms.
I heard this morning at the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership, IT & Media Group that often users have better systems at home than they do at work.
This is due to the rapid pace of change, and its something that I've blogged about before "the vicious circle" article. I wont recall everything I wrote but in summary, IT companies do things too quickly, thats ok in certain areas, but when its one that is expensive like IT then it is not acceptable.
This is one of the advantages of the cloud, insofar that users should be able to access (subject to certain security aspects) all of their companies data on their own device, thus at a stroke, government IT is a thing of the past, except for the data centre of course.
One way that the user can be fulfilled is to provide a certain amount of money on their first day in a new job for IT equipment (you'd have to specify what the minimum specification was for the devices) and if the user wants a better device then they can pay for it.
The 3 or 5 years later, or if the device was stolen or broken, an additional amount of money was found for a replacement, but the user can keep the device (after all the companies data and access software was removed of course) or send it back to the manufacturer for recycling, this means that the user is responsible for the device, security etc and all the company has to do is goto into the cloud, pay for servers (I understand that HP are looking at a leasing model for servers) and ensure that your data is kept secure.
Basically use the lease car business option scheme, I had a certain amount of money to spend on a monthly lease in my last company, if I wanted I could spend up to an additional 20% from my own money to upgrade.
Geeting back to Government IT, this sort of scheme kills two birds with one stone, it gives SME's a chance and it forces the IT companies to recycle leased products WIN WIN WIN