RCMP commissioner warns IT failures will have 'catastrophic' consequences

I've lived through similar situations in the US.

In fairness, its a difficult call to get right as distributed IT is so clearly a waste of money, and some services, like email and hosting scale easily.

The problem in a big bureaucracy is that adopting a real shared service model is an incremental process, but that's a slow and difficult march that requires a lot of high level political support.

Ripping off the bandaid is tough, and seems more achievable. Bold action usually gets the bigshots promoted away by year 3. But you end up stealing smart people to big things, and the scrubs are left doing the little things -- but the little things like distributing cellphones are critical too.

It's a harsh reality and difficult to execute -- most of the successful examples are mostly from private sector and are mostly bullshit.

More context: The RCMP had a reputation long before shared services was a thing. For decades they never adapted their recruitment and training, continuing policies that drove tech-savvy individuals away from the force. (Google around. In recent years they've dramatically lowered recruitment standards to bring in younger blood. You don't even need to be Canadian any more.) The result is a force that seems to never get along with technology. Phones and radios just never seem to work properly.

I've taught more than a few cops (IT law / forensics) and have attended many lectures by RCMP officers claiming to be tech "experts". They aren't. The RCMP live in a very tight knowledge bubble.

Ontario started this years ago, but phased. So clustering of like ministries at first. It is far from perfect, but the trajectory has been positive. Standards and homogeneity of the core services and base layers have made for far more reliable computing. Not fed in size, but still 100,000 users in addition to the public facing stuff is still large.

RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) are a pretty unique police service. Depending on the area of the country they can operate as everything from federal law enforcement right down to local police services. In many rural places they operate as all levels of law enforcement all at once, something you wouldn't find in the US. The vast territory and mandate they cover makes for some unique challenges.

They're mostly equivalent to the FBI, except they have personnel which handle local police services in counties or regions which would not otherwise have local police services.

It's been happening for quite a while now. This is hardly the first critique of Shared Services Canada.

> It's the poster-child definition of "big slow bureaucracy" and it's asked to pull off high complexity feats at large scale, with little, uncompetitive money to offer to recruits (in comparison to the private sector)

If you have good reasons why you cannot offer so much money, there are still options available to attract smart people for the job: Just give them a lot more intellectual freedom to do "the right thing" (instead of having to implement political compromises) and give them the authority to be really allowed to do so. Also not every smart person who can, say, program really well "is a startup guy". There are people who prefer a "more safe, plannable career" - here public service has something to offer. Also it might be a good idea to have the job at still attractive places that have a very low cost of living: What is interesting is "salary minus cost of living". So these jobs can still enable a higher standard of living than, say in SF or NY, while paying much less.

TLDR: There are lots of other ways to attract smart people if you have serious reasons why you cannot offer so much money. But you have to be willing.

Please consider joining a for-profit organization in the private sector that provides Software-as-a-Service to enterprise government customers.

I am the co-founder of one such company, Binti. We are making a distinct positive impact on government IT, without needing to be employees of the government.

Rarely if ever and yes, respectively.

I upvoted you because I feel it's a legitimate question. One thing I've found in my various experiences with the RCMP is that they generally seem to take a lot of pride in their work and role. The ceremonial events involving the horses and red uniforms are pretty impressive.

This, I think, spills over into their day-to-day work too. I've been pulled over for traffic offenses and have only experienced the utmost professionalism. All very "matter of fact" with no bullshit. Road-side stop checks for impaired driving have gone very smoothly. I called once to report a collision I had with a deer and she ribbed me a little: "when did the accident occur?" "around 9pm" "great, thank you. I've got you all written up here for hunting without a license and hunting after dark. Do you have a pen handy for writing down the file number?" And recently I was at a remote beach and found a woman who had clearly ingested a substance of some kind and was pretty messed up. We talked and she was alone and a long way from home. RCMP dispatch handled it well, and 10 minutes later the officer handling the case called me back to ask for more specific directions and to thank me for taking the time to help her keep people safe.

Do they have an impeccable record? No. But in general they are vastly different than the police forces generally covered in the media.