Comments on: We need some tech savvy accountants in Parliament

By: Manoj Ranaweera

Manoj Ranaweera — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:43:29 +0000

Thanks for mentioning and tweeting http://www.edocr.com. From a sideline, it is unbelievable, the amount of expenses MPs and Ministers are allowed to draw. I see this as nothing but state institutionalized corruption. Western powers refer to politics in developing world as corrupt. I consider British politics as no difference from the rest of the world. They should all be held accountable, especially during these times of economic difficulties

Best regards
Manoj

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:10:27 +0000

Dennis

We do not have to have techy accountants, although they would surely help.

It would be helpful to have responsible leaders, 1/2 decent managers and then a P&L and Balance Sheet we could all understand. Budgets might even be zero-base for the 2010-2011 financial year, as by then we will rally be in trouble.

The IT spend on PCs is dwarfed by the NHS "Spine" project – I think it is about in England £ 13,000,000,000 and they still don't really know what they are doing. Likewise yesterday the Further Education colleges and DIUS over-spend by £ 6,000,000,000 because they did not have any financial monitoring system.

The government would be pushed to run a corner shop ; but we give it our taxes. Shame on us !

All the PFI, the un-funded pension schemes and the rest are off the balance sheet

The other day someone thought we were £ 250,000 per head in debt for the UK

By: Richard Murphy

Richard Murphy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:34:12 +0000

Dennis

You're right – they're not tech savvy

But a word in defence of Favid Drew – a friend of mine – he's not a guy I can imagine abusing postage stamps. He does have a big rural constituency that is a decided marginal which may explain the cost though

But let's also be realitsic – I'm political, know Westminster failty well, want change and really can't imagine how I could achieve what I have by being an MP

It is a bum job.

Richard

By: Jason M. Lemkin

Jason M. Lemkin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:49:34 +0000

Well I am not an expert in the ways of Parliament, but based on our EchoSign experience, I am pretty sure it's because they don't personally foot the bill as you note: "With a small business, it’s their money. With MP’s, it’s someone else’s – yours.". The one thing that ties together our 9,000 customers tiny/small/medium/large is they all having a strong incentive to go paperless — to make more money by closing customers faster over the web.

Government has not been a strong vertical for us, to say the least

By: Martyn

Martyn — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:00:16 +0000

Dennis,

Oh and the £2.2 million would have been substantially reduced had they used FOSS, which I bet they didn't – bet most of them are running around with top of the range Sony Vaio laptops running Vista or MacBooks.

Martyn

PS I know you are a Mac fanboy, but you have to pay for your own kit, so that is OK.

By: Martyn

Martyn — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:55:42 +0000

Dennis

Tx for the hat tip.

Martyn