Guardian Online today reports that "Government IT chiefs have attacked computer suppliers for contributing to IT disasters by making 'lies' and 'exorbitant claims'", quoting e-envoy Andrew Pinder as saying that projects had failed because of "incompetent workmanship" from "crap suppliers".

Such an honest analysis will be welcomed by those committed to ensuring that the public sector reaps the potential rewards that the modernising government agenda is aiming for. However, the procurement system remains heavily geared towards those large suppliers who specialise in taking enormous sums of public money for projects that fail to deliver, and despite all their well-known failures, these companies continue to be seen as a safe choice whilst many genuinely innovative and (more importantly) genuinely committed companies are passed over by overly bureaucratic evaluation processes.

Without a hint of irony, the Guardian also reports - on the same page - that "Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) has won the contract to run the [programme management] office, overseeing IT providers to the health service" KBR, part of Halliburton, the oil-to-military support services group formerly run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, is also partly responsible for running the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected "terrorists" are held in cages (indefinitely, without trial), and where several people have been beaten to death in the past year.