I think from an efficiency standpoint it makes sense to contract out to bigger players. Economies of scale are huge in software and IT since once it's written copying and running code is basically free.
The problem of course is that using someone else's proprietary, closed-source code makes you beholden to them. That's a problem for consumers but it's an even bigger problem for sovereign nations. Would be a great outcome if greater awareness of this problem lead to more state resources being invested in open source alternatives to proprietary software.
The economies of scale would work exactly the other way than you think. Right now, the same company can sell the same solution for the same money to 20 government agencies, ones that have broadly similar needs, because it costs too much for anyone else to compete with them. The company then extracts massive profit from every subsequent project, with none of the savings going to the government. And even if a new player wins some of the contracts, they have to start from scratch and thus need to charge similar prices.
If there was a government IT office, it could build this in house, and after the initial investment in building the base infra, re-use it almost for free in every government agency in the same country. In the context of the EU, they could even make moves to share this code with other governments, passing on the savings there as well.
>Economies of scale are huge in software and IT since once it's written copying and running code is basically free.
If that were true, then all these government IT projects from these infamous consultancies would all come in-time and under budget, but that's never the case, because every government wants things completely different than the other government, so it's never a just a copy-paste, fire-and-forget type of job.
oh it very much is. they just act and bill like it's not.
corruption requires costs you cannot verify after delivery. for construction it's the exagerated foundation which they only actually deliver what's needed and pocket the difference. for software it is the hundreds of rewrites that may or may not have happened and are now in the past.
i guess your pedantry is right. it would be much more expensive to pay for corruption without the "safety" of some well executed fraud... but now it's open season and nobody even have to care about looking innocent anymore.
On time and under budget is relative to what you set the budget and deadlines to in the first place. If these companies had to rewrite Excel from scratch for every client I guarantee you the budgeted cost would be a lot higher (and they'd probably still go over that figure).
Nobody suggested rewriting Excel or even customising libre office. These projects are often ERPs which get customised to the client's requirements. Chaos and ballooning costs often follow for all the usual reasons.
My point is "completely different than the other government" is only true to an extent. Even with significant customization, there's still a lot shared which benefits immensely from economies of scale. As you said, nobody's rewriting Excel.
> I think from an efficiency standpoint it makes sense to contract out to bigger players. Economies of scale are huge in software and IT since once it's written copying and running code is basically free.
I mean sure if it wasn't for the fact that those bigger players are going to be looking at this as a way to print money.
The problem of course is that using someone else's proprietary, closed-source code makes you beholden to them. That's a problem for consumers but it's an even bigger problem for sovereign nations. Would be a great outcome if greater awareness of this problem lead to more state resources being invested in open source alternatives to proprietary software.