Then I remembered the recent failure by Harvey Norman to implement SAP for a second time. It was a Multi-Million dollar project that had to be scrapped for a second time after it had already cost the company large amounts of money.
And it occurred to me - large scale IT implementations are difficult. It doesn't matter if it's a small company, a global business or a government department; it's hard no matter what. The difficulty of the execution is simple - IT systems are emergent. Large amounts of complex parts interact with people (further complex parts) and come together to form something that is often greater than the sum of its parts. The best IT solutions are ones that have been built and then re-build from scratch or started off simple and gradually had more components added. Unfortunately for businesses that rely on IT infrastructure to do business that's just not possible.
So why does the government get so much flack for failed projects?
The question more related to this blog - how do these expectations relate to selling solutions into the government space? Often this results in long tender and bid processes with multi-faceted multi-vendor solutions required to solve horrible regulatory restrictions. Yet government tenders are often a lucrative source of income for companies large and small alike.
I think that with a truly tailor made IT solution it could be possible to streamline operations in all government departments and deliver a solution that can actually remove red tape. The big question, how do you approach such an entity with the idea of real, practical change?
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