Michael Gove versus the consultants

Excellent article here about government IT projects and the ways in which a future Conservative government would end up wasting lots of money. Well worth reading and educational for anyone who, like me, had a general but uninformed prejudice against big IT projects which give lots of money to consultants but in favour of big government social programmes.

The article takes as a case study Michael Gove's school vouchers policy and shows what new IT systems and policies would be needed to make it happen. It concludes:

'No doubt if you suggested to him that he was planning a consultants' bonanza he'd be appalled – getting Big Government cut down to size in education is what he wants to achieve. With the best will in the world, Michael Gove is not the kind of steely-eyed, detail-oriented, battle-hardened administrative genius who could shepherd a project like this through to completion. He's a moderately engaging opinion journalist who writes a regular column about not being able to find two socks that match. Gove versus Consultants is a fight of the century to put alongside Cats v Cream or Audley Harrison v Licence-Payers.'