2,500 Business Systems to perform just 15 Functions? – The European Commission, of course

I have some (very limited) sympathy with the complexity of running an organisation like the European Commission (EC).  However, this is astounding.  ComputerWeekly.com reports that the EC has blocked publication of proposals to tackle “extraordinary levels of waste” in its 500m IT budget.  However, it has confessed that more than half of its IT costs are unaccounted (whatever that means exactly) and that it has 2,498 business systems performing just 15 different business functions.

For functions like Policy Lifecycle or Grant Management, that is equivalent to 20 different systems for every directorate performing the function.

This has nothing to do with a hackneyed debate on open source versus proprietary software.  It is just (lack of) management and/or leadership.