Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast cover image

Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast

54: Serco, Sailors and Spies

Jul 9, 2020
Richard Brooks reveals governmental lessons from COVID-19. Heather Mills and Sarah Shannon discuss sailors' struggles due to complacent shipowners. Francis Wheen reports on the Barclay brothers' bugging feud.
44:35

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

  • The success of the furlough scheme during the pandemic can be attributed to in-house IT specialists handling the project instead of outsourcing to big IT companies.
  • The COVID-19 testing and tracing efforts have shown that a more localized approach, led by local public health officials, is more effective than relying on a centralized operation with inexperienced workers.

Deep dives

Big Tech, Big Government, and IT Contracts

The podcast episode discusses the unlikely success of recent IT contracts between big tech and big government. Despite previous failures in similar projects, such as the NHS IT system, the furlough scheme designed for paying workers during the pandemic has actually worked well. This success can be attributed to the fact that the project was not outsourced to a big IT company but handled by in-house IT specialists who were able to act quickly and efficiently.

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