According to an article in Prospect magazine this month, there is a survey due out next year of seven countries which finds sharp variations in the proportion of government IT projects that are eventually scrapped. Britain emerges as the world leader in cancelling or producing non-functioning government IT systems. Japan and the Netherlands had the fewest failures. The researchers say the reason Japan only had one cancelled project in the past twenty years is that failure is unthinkable there, so there is a strong incentive to make systems work. Contractors will put more resources into a project, even if they end up making a loss. Civil servants will draft in more staff and allow contractors to recoup losses in the future. So it has a low scrap rate, although it may end up paying higher prices. This definitely has a ring of truth to it; the Japanese emphasis on long term relationships over cost.
As for why British government projects are particularly prone to failure, the author of the article identifies five factors. Firstly scale - big government organisations like the NHS seem to seek out large suppliers, whereas in the Netherlands, large scale projects are split up into small packages of work. Secondly lack of professional skills in software engineering, particularly within the civil service. Thirdly the procurement process is very lengthy, locking public bodies into a technology which is already obsolete by the time the system goes live. Fourthly - multiple stakeholders, cutting across many different agencies, making leadership difficult. Finally, vulnerability to policy swings and mission creep. An example of this is the introduction of tax credits, sprung on EDS with little notice.
Research conducted by the US National Institute on Aging
gets extensive coverage by the media delighted to discover that Brits aren't uptight, Americans disagreeable and Canadians unassertive etc.
Unfortunately you have to pay to get the original article in Science magazine, but I have a couple of comments based on what I can glean.
First, it is indeed hard in intercultural research to avoid the problem of basing your conclusions on data which is formed from what people tell you they are like (which might be what they want to believe they are like), rather than what they are actually like. So it's always good to look at this kind of research which tries to find out how people actually behave.
Secondly, this research could still be biased, in that apparently the raw data came from the National Institute on Aging's surveys which were seeking to dispel stereotypes on the elderly, so the researchers were already in 'debunking' mode, and weren't specifically focused on cultural differences when they did the research, which might well have made the questions and answers less pertinent.
My business partner in Chicago sent me this article from the Chicago Tribune (pay to view unfortunately) about how Saudi men and women are flirting by using Bluetooth, in order to connect without flouting the Wahhabi Islamic regime they live under. Unrelated women and men caught talking risk being detained by the religious police. Connecting by Bluetooth means contact is not even going through the phone company, so is less traceable. There is little the government can do to control it - it even tried to ban camera equipped phones last year but backed off because cameras have become a feature in most phones.
Bluetooth flirting, which often includes exchanging images such as babies blowing kisses or animated belly dances, sentimental messages or romantic songs has replaced the previous way of flirting which was to toss phone numbers at women through car windows or in shopping malls.
According to a survey by an independent research agency, SKOPOS, there are distinct differences between Americans and 'Europeans' (interesting that there must have been enough similarities between Europeans compared to Americans that they could lump Europeans together) with regard to mobile gaming.
Americans tend to play mobile games for much longer periods than their European counterparts, with 33 percent admitting to playing a single mobile game for more than twenty minutes at a time, compared with just 21 percent of Europeans.This high percentage is backed up by the fact that 45 percent of US gamers 'play to win' - returning to the same game in an effort to beat previous high scores and retain a competitive edge. Just 17 percent of Europeans admitted to playing the same game to beat high scores.