Last month’s blog about Birmingham City Council’s financial woes inspired me to delve deeper into the issue of IT in local government – and, in fact, IT solutions more widely.

I won’t stray into political discussions about funding for local government in England. But one of the most striking aspects of Birmingham City Council’s recent financial problems was a (very) large cost overrun associated with an IT project.

Last month’s blog about reimagining IT systems started out with a slightly different introduction from the version eventually published.

But even though I could see the need for the change, I was still slightly disappointed at having to let go of my initial inspiration. When I said this, my colleague mentioned this was an example of the old writer’s adage: ‘kill your darlings’...

When I see how organisations approach their IT system implementations, I often think, “There has to be a better way."

The approaching winter solstice has got me thinking about the different traditions and festivals that have light and reflection as central themes. There’s Christmas of course, and also Diwali and Hanukkah, to name just a few. And as well as the many words associated with each event, there are numerous pictures, symbols and icons, too...

There’s an old business management adage: ‘You can’t control what you can’t measure.’ And while the phrase might sound obvious, it isn’t just management speak.

I’ve had several discussions recently about the need to allow data in one system to be used to control processing in another. These conversations have involved both developers and designers...

The UK air traffic control failure caused chaos on the busy August bank holiday. Thankfully, all flights could land safely. But the incident caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled or delayed.

As someone who works in IT, I felt an inevitability to the way the problem developed...

Over the years, I’ve been involved in many meetings between customers and suppliers.

Here, I explain why the key to project success is being loyal to the project, rather than taking sides.

After a problem has taken place, you may find yourself thinking, ‘I should have seen that coming’ or ‘I should have seen that happening’.