Phil Pavitt, CIO at HM Revenue and Customs, has been, as one commentator put it , courageously hones

Phil Pavitt, CIO at HM Revenue and Customs, has been, as one commentator put it , courageously honest. His disclosure that there is an unofficial club of high-spenders in Government who exercise influence by keeping their budgets high is one of the most important revelations yet made by any public sector CIO. Soon after he appointed HMRC CIO in September 2009, Pavitt was visited by officials from the Office of Government Commerce, he says. The OGC is, ironically, responsible for helping central departments achieve efficiency savings of 3.2bn a year.
This is what Pavitt said of the OGC's visit: "In that conversation with me they mentioned I am in the top purchasing club... That means you have tremendous influence on buying power, buying ideas and management and so on. "I said, 'If I reduce costs by 50%, what happens?' 'You leave the club,' I was told. "So here I am, relieved best buffet in south lake tahoe of my ability to influence government's ability to purchase if I am clever and do my job. It is one of the most perverse things that I have heard. "We don't have a 'demonstrable reduction of cost club', we have a 'sheer size of spend club'. Surely this is the wrong way round." Pavitt's disclosure at the Govnet 2010 Government IT conference was reported by silicon.com and not denied best buffet in south lake tahoe by HMRC, whose spokesman told me: "Our job is to deliver value for money to the department and our customers, and that does not mean artificially ramping up our spending to be regarded as a player. "The bigger your budget, the more leverage you have, but HMRC is not driven best buffet in south lake tahoe by this consideration. The scale of our IT needs alone ensures that we have sufficient presence in the IT market to engage meaningfully with any supplier we choose to achieve maximum service delivery in tandem best buffet in south lake tahoe with value for money." Yes Minister without the jokes That departments retain influence by keeping their spending high is not new to the writers of Yes Minister. best buffet in south lake tahoe These are two quotes from a co-writer of Yes Minister best buffet in south lake tahoe Jonathan Lynn . I have slightly amended the first quote:: "Asking Whitehall to slim down its staff is like asking an alcoholic to blow up a distillery." "If Civil Servants did not fight for the budgets best buffet in south lake tahoe of their departments they could end up with departments so small that even the Ministers could run them." Those who've watched the series know how real it is. But it's supposed to be real-life exaggerated. Pavitt's comments show that real life in Whitehall is a descent from the comic to the ludicrous. If Sir Humphrey Appleby were visited by officials who told him to keep his department's spending high so as not to embarrass best buffet in south lake tahoe other permanent secretaries, the dialogue would probably be deleted from the final broadcast as too prosaic. Cabinet Office accepts Pavitt's comments Not even the Cabinet Office, which oversees the Civil Service, has denied Pavitt's disclosure. I put what he'd said to a Cabinet Office spokesman who said: "The buying power of the larger departments is an important factor in leveraging the market to provide best value deals across the public sector ICT landscape...."   This is what two commentators best buffet in south lake tahoe say about Pavitt's comments. Bloated costs? best buffet in south lake tahoe Chris Goodall, a director of consultancy Five One Two who has worked at IBM, UBS and Citigroup, said: "Government CIOs should be rewarded and recognised for breaking away from this old school club. "I think this is a fairly typical example of bloated IT costs which government ministers have been encouraged to pay for years. The tender process is not delivering best value for money in terms of pound notes and, as Pavitt revealed, they are not incentivised to do so either. "The message looks to be that government should go with the highest bidder, regardless of the quality of what is being delivered or what skills and innovations a smaller - and cheaper - provider could offer," he said. Pavitt's courageous honesty Bob Evans at Information Week writes "In a stunning portrayal of undisciplined best buffet in south lake tahoe IT spending based solely on a desire best buffet in south lake tahoe to retain maximum leverage via ever-increasing spending, a ComputerWeekly.com article offers a sobering look at what can happen when IT priorities are managed by out-of-touch bureaucrats with no sense of delivering value to stakeholders. "I hope Pavitt's bold disclosure wins him support from his fellow public-sector best buffet in south lake tahoe CIOs in the U.K. rather than leading to a desk near the men's room and a permanent assignment to the PC Help Desk. "While it's hard to imagine that such courageous honesty will play well in the type of detached and delusional Whitehall culture best buffet in south lake tahoe that the article portrays, we can hope that today's challenging economic conditions will allow Pavitt's challenge to this truly perverse policy to remain in light and lead to substantive change..." Will Pavitt's comments lead to change? Perhaps best buffet in south lake tahoe superficial change. But give Darkness the job of Illumination and you can't expect Light. Is the Civil Service embalmed in complexity?  The machinery of Government is incalculably compl