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On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:42:57 +0000 james kilty <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hello > > I mentioned I had written to my (Lib Dem) MP about the Conservstive > response to Labour Government IT policy and reminded him that previous > replies from ministers about things I had asked about suggested they had > little understanding of IT and the politics of proprietary software. I > suggested we as a LUG might at least give an outline of an ideal > Government policy on IT, which he would forward to Don Foster who is > Shadow Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport. > > He said that the Party has a proud tradition of consideration for the > productive use of modern IT. > > Is anyone willing to start this off? This would be a chance to summarise > the ways you would solve the major issues in respect of IT in the UK and > promote best practices for the present and future. Government should stop moving the goal posts. The first reason the pharmacy side of the NHS IT scheme has gone so far over budget is that the entire basis of the mechanisms and protocols were abandoned and then redesigned time and time again. In the meantime, the frontend software was still being developed and now we're left with code that started out for one design and now has to be mangled to work with the redesign. Bad organisation leads to bad code. The second reason is that each frontend is proprietary and so doesn't share any of the implementation code which is just insane. Not only are there five frontends but each frontend reinvents the entire software stack against a moving target! Government doesn't understand Agile programming, especially the Scrum framework that is so common in free software. The older Waterfall design can work but only if the top level (the specification) remains largely unchanged throughout the rest of the implementation. If you're going to keep changing the specs, you cannot expect a procedural schematic workflow to give you decent code - you must go agile. Free software methods would mean that the specification would lead to an implementation library with language bindings (think dbus) and then frontends would use that library to communicate with the rest of the system. When the library changes API, each frontend migrates to the new API instead of having to reinvent the entire library in their own proprietary systems. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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