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» QOTD: Consultant's Curse
Phil Windley, CIO of Utah, has penned very interesting thoughts on the problems in using Open Source Software in government.
His list includes sales droids, consultants, lack of open source culture, risk and lack of IT lobbying.
He couldn’t have put it better!
Very often, solution to every problem is about identifying a vendor or a contractor. After meetings, vendor prepares glossy reports that can be paraded from meeting rooms to meeting rooms.
I’ve had experience reading reports larger than the Constitution of India (believe me, Indian Constitution *is* voluminous) for simple problems; prepared by consultants. I’m not saying that all consultants are bad. You need to identify consultants who make your problem their problem. Not the other way around. Famous big firms (hint - the guys who couldn’t even do proper accounting) tend to make solutions first and then identify problems for you where their solution can fit in.
This mentality where the decision makers feel safe by outsourcing the responsibility won’t help you. It will all end up in a blame game and your customers will go somewhere else.
So, know your problem, identify possible solutions - not the implementation details, but answers to "what will make my problem go away" and only then look for outsourcing. You really don’t want vendors to cook up your problems.