Get into reading — and get a better life November 13, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, Culture, Education.Tags: Literacy, Reading Promotion
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I’m at the TD National Reading Summit, an effort by publishing types, librarians and others involved in the written word to figure out new ways of promoting the joys and benefits of reading.
It’s billed as the first of three meetings with the ambitious goal of rolling out a Canada Reading Plan that would tackle the twin challenges of getting people to read more, and equipping them to make sense of what they read.
The keynote speaker, Brazilian author Ana Maria Machado, summed it up this way:
Reading is more than literacy. In print does not mean it is true. Reading well means being able to turn knowledge into wisdom, to be able to tell what is accurate, and to understand how to check things that aren’t.
Her comments sum up the scope of the issue, something of which the organizers are well aware. A closing session identified the obstacles, as well as the goals, of a national reading plan that would be funded by both governments and the private sector.
The goals: Books (and magazines) available everywhere and at anytime. Literacy beyond the basic level. All ages and cultures included. Increased support for writers and publishers.
The obstacles: A complex issue, little clarity or understanding of the problem. A long term horizon. Little public awareness of the social benefits of reading. No organization in place to plead the cause.
I’m at the Summit representing Periodical Marketers of Canada, the association of magazine and book distributors, and a co-sponsor of the event.
It’s my contention that the best way to promote reading is by promoting individual reading “products.” That means more advertising and PR by publishers of their books and magazines to stimulate more reading.
A book publisher at my table said she couldn’t afford to do any more advertising. And that’s the big problem facing Canadian publishers and authors. Books are dying on the shelves — and magazines are being returned to the wholesalers — because the public just isn’t being told about the great reading that’s out there for them.
The Reading Summit marks a serious attempt to face up to the issue of under-use of our reading skills — and its consequences for Canada in poor productivity (workers who can’t understand manuals) and low levels of social involvement (more voters staying away from the polls).
Other countries are taking steps to raise reading levels. We heard examples from the Netherlands, Mexico, China, among others. If we don’t do the same, we’ll end up lagging behind such countries.
As well as promoting individual titles, they’re promoting reading as a satisfying and rewarding experience. We saw a great Spanish language TV spot depicting a boy orating romantically as he read aloud from a book. Cut to an audience of little girls swooning at his performance. Cut back to the boy now with a smug, self-satisfied smile. A fun spot that might actually influence boys — the hardest audience to reach — to get into reading — and get a better life.
But I left the Summit with a harsh message ringing in my ears. Patsy Aldana, publisher of Groundwood Books, told the story of an Ontario school board that bans the reading of books for pleasure during the school day. Get caught with such a book, and if you can’t explain its purpose, it’s taken away from you. An isolated case, I’m sure, but a reminder that maybe we need to start from the inside and make sure people charged with educating our kids share a love for reading. A fitting goal for the National Reading Summit.
The Giller: Awarding literature, or journalism? November 11, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Authors, Books.Tags: Celibacy of Priests, Giller Prize, Linden MacIntyre, The Bishop's Man
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The surprise win by Linden MacIntyre of the Giller Prize, at $50,000 the richest award in Canadian books, has been something of a stunner in the literary community.
His book, The Bishop’s Man, tells the story of a priestly fixer, Father Duncan MacAskill, who has been serving his church in the capacity of trouble-shooter, covering up the sexual aberrations of other Roman Catholic priests in the Cape Breton district of Nova Scotia.
I’ve not yet read The Bishop’s Man. It sits on my coffee table, along with the four other Giller short list nominations. I’m looking forward to getting into it. I’ll be making it my next read.
Anyone watching the Bravo TV cast of the Giller Awards Tuesday night must have been as surprised as those in the room that the judges chose it as this year’s winner.
After all, McIntyre is a broadcast journalist, host of the fifth estate on CBC-TV, and while he has written one previous novel, he’s not been regarded as an icon of Canadian literature.
Was the jury carried off by the topicality of McIntyre’s subject, some might have wondered. Did journalism triumph over literature?
Ironically, the page devoted to McIntyre’s win in the Globe and Mail this morning provided space for a second story: Catholic priest released on bail one day after sentencing for sexual abuse.
How do these things happen?
My take, allowing that I’ve yet to read The Bishop’s Man, is that it’s a powerful narrative of the human forces at work in the corruptive and oppressive environment in which many good priests try their best to serve their flocks.
I’ll be interested in learning how McIntyre addresses the fundamental problem — the dogma of celibacy.
It is here that the problem lies, of course.
McIntyre and others may rightfully point to the failure of leadership in the Catholic Church that has seen abusive priests shifted from parish to parish, ostensibly to protect its own good reputation as well as the careers of its erring priests.
But to my mind, celibacy is an affront to the genetic reality of human beings. Practised as it is within the Catholic church, it becomes a perverted and pervasive lure that forces some priests to find alternative forms of sexual satisfaction. The problem will never go away.
I heard Linden MacIntyre this evening in a delightful interview with his wife Carol Off on CBC Radio’s As It Happens.
He allowed that he felt like a grate crasher at the Giller, and magnanimously wished that all five short listed authors could have shared the prize. He hadn’t expected to win, he said, short of recognizing that he had a “mathematical possibility” of coming out on top.
Then Carol let the cat out of the bag. Linden lost the $50,000 check handed him by Jack Rabinovitch! Happily, she recovered it this morning, crumpled into a tiny ball in an inside pocket of his suit.
Congratulations, Linden. You’ve demonstrated that journalism and literature can share the same coin.
Smitherman’s dubious mayoral credentials November 9, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: David Miller, George Smitherman, John Tory, mayoralty campaign, Premier McGiuinty, Toronto civic politics
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No loyalty, no sense of duty. That’s the image George Smitherman, Ontario’s Deputy Minister and Minister of Energy, projects as he sets out to become Mayor of Toronto.
At a time when the McGuinty government faces all the problems of a crumbling manufacturing sector and a deep recessionary budget, it has been very much in need of Smitherman’s continued service as one of the strongest of Ontario cabinet ministers.
Instead, he’s thrown this over in favor of stepping down to the municipal level in a bid to head up a civic administration that is, technically and constitutionally, “a creature of the provincial government.”
The text of his announcement is here.
The folks who write on Toronto politics are going to have a field day with this one.
Besides abandoning the provincial scene at a difficult time, Smitherman will take with him into his mayoralty campaign some heavy baggage from his days in Cabinet.
The billion dollar eHealth scandal began under his watch as Health Minister, although it didn’t come to light until his successor, David Caplan, was in that job. Problems over untendered contracts cost Caplan his job, but it’s said that many in the government feel Smitherman unfairly dodged the responsibility which properly belonged to him.
Then there’s the controversies over various alternative energy schemes Smitherman has been pushing in his role as overseer of Ontario’s new Green Energy Act.
Are these the credentials needed by a future Mayor?
The scuttlebutt around Queen’s Park is that Smitherman’s announcement of his mayoralty intentions was handled none too well. Rumors leaked out at the weekend resulting in media confirmations before most highly-placed Liberals were aware of the Monday announcement.
McGuinty’s chair of cabinet and long-time supporter, Gerry Phillips, has been called on to pick up the Energy portfolio. He’s held that job before, and is unlikely to want to stay long in a second run at it.
The upshot is that Smitherman’s move puts McGunity in an awkward position and leaves him vulnerable to charges of piloting a rudderless ship.
Smitherman’s reputation as an attack dog promises that next year’s mayoralty campaign will be a lively one. He’s no doubt counting on the short memories of voters by the time the campaign gets rolling.
With John Tory, the former provincial Conservative leader likely to come into the race the stage is set for a two-party fight in what has traditionally been a nonpartisan arena.
That raises another question. Is it really in the public interest that the job of Mayor of Toronto become a prize top be fought over by the three provincial political parties?
Either Smitherman or Tory would be a more effective mayor than the NDP-leaning David Miller, who won’t be running again.
But Tory’s record of straight-out, honest politicking — even though he’s had more defeats than he deserves — may earn him a lot of support when put up against Smitherman’s seemingly self-centered approach to public life.
Stand by for “a helluva ride.”
NY Times’ Best Sellers – real or doctored? November 5, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, media.Tags: Best Seller lists, Book & Periodical Council, BookNet Canada, Chapters/Indigo, New York Times List
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I’m at the storied Arts & Letters Club in Toronto for a discussion on what drives book sales. Is it best seller lists, or good reviews?
But the most controversial issue to come out of the discussion — for me, at least — is the assertion by Noah Genner, president and CEO of BookNet Canada, that even the New York Times’ vaunted Best Seller lists are often “editorialized.” This means, he said, that they omit books whose sales would qualify them to be on the list, based on their editorial judgments of what really belongs there.
Here’s part of the current Times Best Seller list, as posted on the Times’ web site:
Hardcover Fiction
Top 5 at a Glance
1. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown
2. THE SCARPETTA FACTOR, by Patricia Cornwell
3. PURSUIT OF HONOR, by Vince Flynn
4. NINE DRAGONS, by Michael Connelly
5. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett
Hardcover Nonfiction
Top 5 at a Glance
1. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, by Mitch Albom
2. SUPERFREAKONOMICS, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
3. WHAT THE DOG SAW, by Malcolm Gladwell
4. TOO BIG TO FAIL, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
5. ARGUING WITH IDIOTS, written and edited by Glenn Beck, Kevin Balfe and others.
Fool me, here I thought Best Seller Lists were based on actual sales reports from booksellers.
Maybe this is why another panelist, the redoubtable Toronto bookseller Ben McNally, called the lists “idiocies” that are either “worthless” or “useless.”
The lone book reviewer on the panel, Geoff Pevere of the Toronto Star, conceded that lists are becoming “news in their own right.” He said people want information in such short bursts that lists of things are becoming replacements for stories about those same subjects.
Trevor Dayton of the big bookseller Chapters/Indigo, said he thought Best Seller Lists contributed to the “cultural conversation” by offering people something to talk about “around the office water cooler.”
And he made no apology for their front of store displays of these titles. “What else would we do?”
The discussion, sponsored by the Canadian Book and Periodical Council as part of its Idea Exchange series, was meant to settle the question of what most drives book sales.
But it was left to Kim McArthur, president of publisher McArthur & Company, to pin it down as to the most powerful sales tool for books.
It’s personal appearances by authors, she said.
If you want to sell books, go on author tours.
Her view was reinforced by Trevor Dayton. He said they get a spike in sales whenever an author appears on radio or TV, especially the CBC or, in Toronto, on the popular CITY-TV outlet.
Genner also slammed the Maclean’s magazine lists. BookNet, the industry tracker of book sales in Canada, takes in data from 11,000 retailers and uses these numbers to compile its own best Seller list. But one-quarter of the market (especially Walmart) is still not participating.
And another thing: Throughout all this discussion of books, best sellers, and awards, Margaret Atwood’s name was never mentioned!
Please go home, Prince Charles November 3, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, History, Politics.Tags: Abolition of monarchy, Prince Charles, Royal visit to Canada
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Having been brought up to be polite, I’m addressing Prince Charles with this plea: “Please, go home.”
The current visit by the Prince and his woman, titled the Duchess of Cornwall, is being treated pretty much Ho Hum by most of the public and the press. It’s hard to compete with swine flu.
Of course, being a Royal visit, it does bring out the usual infantile blathering that inevitably accompanies such occasions.
This time it’s Rose DiManno, in the Toronto Star, making much of the fact that the PM upstaged the Royal guest by “plagiarizing” part of a speech Charles gave on a visit 15 years ago. It was some nonsense about how every time the Prince visits Canada, a little more of the country seeps into his bloodstream, and from there, “straight to my heart.” What baloney.No self-respecting speechwriter would ever commit such tripe to paper.
The upshot of all this, according to DiManno, is that “The Royal We were not amused … scooped on his own best line by the Prime Minister of Canada.”
All this happened on Charles’ first stop-over in Newfoundland. The fact that the country’s biggest newspaper could find nothing more to say about the visit than to make a fuss about who upstaged whom, is pretty solid evidence of how remote the monarchy has become from Canadian life.
For most Canadians, the House of Windsor is nothing more than a historic curiosity.
The fates of the Royals — and the powers behind the thrones that pull the strings — always make interesting reading.
A book that traces Britain’s Royal lines back more than 2000 years should satisfy anyone who wishes to get beyond high school British history. It’s Royal Line of Succession by Hugo Vickers, and covers every regime from the Kings of Wessex in the 6th century to the present day. Lots of coats of arms, and family trees.
While it’s true there’ll always be a core of Canadians who like the Royals — witness the fact that Hello magazine flies off the newsstands when a Royal is on the cover instead of a Hollywood celebrity — support for the Monarchy is steadily declining in Canada.
According to a new poll, 39 per cent of Canadians think we should sever all ties. But only 31 per cent want Charles as king, compared to 41 per cent who would rather see the throne pass directly to his son, Prince William.
So maybe our disenchantment with royalty is a personality thing, caused by our distaste for Charles ? I hope not, because really, he’s not all that bad a guy. Has some enlightened views on modern architecture (hates it) and he worries about climate change.
But what Charles Windsor thinks is irrelevant to the real world. If the Royals had gone into useful occupations — like medicine, engineering or even architecture, they might be more highly regarded. But none of them have ever done a useful day’s work in their lives — unless lending their prestige to charitable causes counts as “work.”
Australia has done a better job of facing up to this than Canada, even though their vote on abolishing the monarchy went astray over disagreement as to what should replace it.
Some day, Canadians are likely to be asked to throw aside their apathy and render an opinion on our future. I suggest a simple question:
Should Canada drop the Monarchy and become a Republic. Yes or No?
If that passed, we could then get on with devising a replacement — like an elected President within a parliamentary system whereby the Prime Minister would still be the head of government.
Does it all matter? Probably not very much. And Canadian politicians, being adverse as they are to taking a stand on any issue, will drag their feet as long as possible.
But at least it might get our minds off swine flu.
Requiem for the National Post October 30, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Broadcasting, Business, media.Tags: CanWest Global, Conrad Black, Leonard Asper, National Post
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The long, painful and inevitable death throes of The National Post — at least in its present form — seem near an end.
In Toronto, a court spent most of Friday (October 30) mulling a request from CanWest Global Communications Corp. to roll The Post, along with its other newspapers, into a new corporation separate from CanWest TV holdings.
The accounting strategy is to free up the newspapers from the colossal debt of the company’s TV arm, now around $4 billion.
Grant Robertson has an engrossing story on the failures of debt-laden CanWest in the current ROB Magazine. You can read it here.
The papers, market leaders in major cities such as Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal, are all money-makers although all are bearing wounds of the recession, and the fragmentation of media markets caused by the Internet.
But the National Post is a different animal. Launched by Conrad Black in 1998, it was meant to provide a Toronto outlet for his cross-country chain of former Southam newspapers.
It also shook up Canadian journalism. Espousing a frankly right-wing bias, it brought excellent analysis and features to readers at a time when the dominant Globe and Mail was about as dreary and predictable as a newspaper could get.
From day one, the advent of the Post forced the tired Globe to wake up and reinvent itself. To its credit, it has done so, brilliantly, and is now a far superior paper to what it was eleven years ago.
The Post has never turned a profit. It lost $60 million in 2001 and is said to now be losing a million and a half a month. It owes CanWest’s parent holding company $139 million.
The big mistake of the Asper family — first the late Izzy Asper and now son Leonard — was to fund their acquisitions via debt. Now, carrying a debt load that its reduced earnings can’t handle, CanWest’s future is bleak.
Will it get so bleak that there’ll be no solution but to stanch the losses of the National Post by killing it off? And would that be enough to save CanWest from a take-over by bottom-feeders? Probably not.
A solution short of shutting down the Post completely would be to resize it as business daily, like its predecessor the tabloid Financial Post. Some potential buyers are said to be weighing this possibility.
But a successful newspaper needs to find a multi-layered audience. The Toronto Sun has done it with a weird three-way mix of heavy sports, tons of ads from electronics retailers, and crazy right-wing columns and editorials. It’s worked for the Sun, because none of these three demographics gives a damn about what else is in the paper.
It seems to me Canada isn’t big enough — especially while we’re recession-ridden — to support two national newspapers. The Post has become what I call a “broadsheet tabloid” — a paper printed in the traditional large size format of a serious newspaper, but with big headlines and sensationalist content that is better suited to a tabloid. And the two don’t mix.
Margaret and me at Harvard October 27, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Authors, Books.Tags: book awards, Giller Award, Governor-General's Award, Margaret Atwood, Writers' Trust Awards, Year of the Flood
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It’s Sunday night in Cambridge and the crowd has lined up for more than a block to get into the Unitarian Church Meetinghouse to hear Margaret Atwood read from — and perform bits of – her new book, The Year of the Flood (Doubleday.)
We hadn’t expected to encounter Canada’s pre-eminent author during our weekend visit to Boston. A casual examination of an events magazine told us she would be in town, so we headed out on the “T” to Harvard to catch the reading.
Margaret Atwood is deep into the third month of what is probably the most gruelling book tour of her career. But it’s one she’s obviously enjoying. She was having great good fun reading, answering questions, and singing one of the hymns she’d written for God’s Gardeners, the church devoted to the melding of science and religion that she’s invented for her 40th book.
Ms. Atwood says Flood is neither a sequel nor a prequel to Oryx and Crake, her 2005 work that took readers into the same abandoned territory as her latest opus. She admits it’s a dystopian outlook she offers, but insists that it’s a destination we’re bound for if we don’t change our ways.
All the same, the message comes with an infectious spirit of deviltry. The same deviltry that must have seized hold of her when she created her two protagonists who begin the book as the only survivors of a natural calamity: Ren, a trapeze dancer trapped inside the upscale sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God’s Gardener who’s locked herself up in a luxurious spa “where many of the treatments are edible.”
I had to wonder whether she had as much fun writing Flood as she’s having in talking about it. I suspect not. But Ms. Atwood clearly enjoyed being back at Harvard where she spent four postgraduate years.
She let us in, by the way, on the fact that she’s used many Harvard buildings and locales for settings in past works.
Amid the good humor of the evening, it seemed to me that Ms. Atwood was a bit defensive about the bleak future she depicts. Asked if she didn’t agree that we’re better off than at any time in the past, she answered with a question: “Who do you mean by we? The billion people in the world who are starving to death?”
My answer would be: Yes, we are better off. The fact there are more people starving now than ever is because there are more people now than ever. But a larger proportion of the planet is living better than at any time in the past.
Asked whether she thinks the demise of mankind (it’s assumed it will come) will result from misuse of technology or from some psychological cause, Ms. Atwood opted for a combination of both.
And she graciously gave mention to The Golden Mean, the novel by Annabel Lyon that’s made the short list of Canada’s three biggest writers’ awards (while The Flood has been shut out). She said it’s the book she’s most recently read, and greatly enjoyed.
The Flood is being driven by the biggest PR campaign ever mounted for a Canadian book. Margaret Atwood has been everywhere in the media: op ed pieces, interviews, author readings (supported by musical performances) and an international tour that takes her to, for instance, Chicago on November 6th.
Considering the usual discreet, “gentlemanly” promotion given Canadian books, I’m wondering if this intense, high profile campaign has anything to do with the reluctance of the award juries to short list The Flood. It’s been overlooked for the Giller, the G-Gs and the Rogers Writers’ Trust award. All this fuss a bit “unCanadian” perhaps?
Doesn’t matter. Any writer would sell their soul to have hundreds line up the way they did after Sunday night’s reading, Atwood books in hand, to meet the author and go away with a precious signed copy.
The end of ‘The National’? October 27, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Broadcasting.Tags: CBC-TV, Peter Mansbridge, The National
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They’ve finally done it — it’s the end of The National on CBC-TV as a serious, trustworthy, watchable account of the day’s news.
Their endless tinkering with proven program formulas reached its nadir last night with an abysmal, production-poor effort that is certain to drive away more viewers than it will attract.
CBC’s reliance on confusing, rainbow-colored graphics that provide nothing but a distraction is truly mind-boggling.
Its focus on contrived news such as Adrienne Arsenault’s report from London on the survey showing Canadians are indifferent to the monarchy is troubling to anyone who cares about understanding what’s important (or even interesting) in today’s world. Ho hum – we’ve known for decades that Canadians don’t give a damn about Prince Charlie. For the past thirty or forty years, we’ve viewed the Queen as no more than a nice lady.
Even the set on the new National looks dismal. They’ve got Peter Mansbridge standing around like a school teacher about to bring out the strap, while errant pupils like Amanda Lang (business reporter) and Wendy Mesley (muck-raker) line up for their punishment.
For years now, the CBC’s been trying to fight audience losses. It’s strategy has been to opt for more American low-brow shows like the dreadful Jeopardy and to glitz up its graphics in the hope that style will win out over substance in pursuit of younger viewers.
CBC: People who want wavy colors (pink, blue, orange) fluttering over their screen aren’t interested in the news. You won’t get them, anyway.
I have a marvelous idea: Prop a man or woman in front of a TV camera and let them read the news, calling in correspondents around the world whenever you have some meaningful film to show. This is what the BBC does.
And by the way, I resent losing BBC World News at 6 on CBC Newsworld (or News Net or whatchamacall it). I always admired the job Evan Soloman did on CBC Sunday, but his new “Power and Politics” format (what else is politics about but power?) just doesn’t excite.
We appear to be watching yet another unfolding CBC disaster that is sure to embarrass and antagonize what’s left of a loyal audience, without any offsetting gains.
For another opinion on The National, here’s Greg Quill’s take in the Toronto Star.
The real problems at eHealth October 22, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Health, Politics.Tags: eHealth Ontario, electronic health records, technology failures
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It’s being called “the billion dollar boondoggle,” the attempt by the Ontario government to create an electronic health record for everyone in the province. The idea is to harness computers and the Internet to improve patient care, safety, and access to medical services.
So far, it’s not going very well. eHealth Ontario has been roiled by controversy over millions of dollars in untendered contracts that went to past associates or close contacts of its president and chairman. Both are gone, resigned or fired. And the Minister of Health, David Caplan, has had to resign.
eHealth represents the second abortive attempt by Ontario to bring its Ministry of Health, OHIP, and the province’s doctors and hospitals into the electronic age.
“Smart Systems for Health” was launched with great fanfare in 2002. It was going to “revolutionize health care delivery with an electronic health information sharing network.”
It failed to deliver on its promise and was replaced by eHealth. Today, nearly a thousand people work for eHealth at seven locations.
According to its web site, work is going ahead. One example: tenders are now out to establish a Diabetes Registry.
Other priorities are online management of prescription medications and a program to reduce wait times in hospital emergency rooms.
In all the fuss, there’s been virtually no light shed on the real problems at eHealth: what actually has or has not been achieved to date. The media have been singularly uninterested in examining the operations of this agency. I’ve not seen a single example of investigative journalism applied to the problems of eHealth.
These problems have been easy pickings for the Opposition parties. They don’t seem interested in getting a real reading on the agency’s work. They prefer to concentrate on the scandal over untendered contracts, rather than on what work’s been done under those contracts.
Now, they’ve got an even juicier target: the $25 billion deficit disclosed by Finance Minister Dwight Duncan in his economic update.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Ron Sapsford, was equally unforthcoming on eHealth’s operations when he appeared before the Legislature committee that’s investigating what’s gone wrong at the agency.
His main message was that none of it was his fault – the eHealth bosses had ignored his warnings about following “proper procedures” in awarding contracts.
It would be helpful if someone in authority could explain exactly where eHealth stands in fulfilling its goals.
Here’s a tip: Around half of all technology projects fail and have to be abandoned. It costs corporations and governments hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
This is the “dirty little secret” of the technology industry that no one talks about.
In the U.S., the Computer Audit association says half of the executives they surveyed report their companies have “killed” a technology project because it didn’t deliver as promised, or the company’s needs have changed.
In Britain, a survey of call centers by the Customer Experience Foundation showed that overruns and delays usually add 90 per cent to the cost of a project. New systems fail fifty per cent of the time.
“The expectation of frequent failure was epidemic,” the CEF says.
There’s no defense for untendered contracts in public business. But a contract scandal shouldn’t be allowed to cover up more serious problems of non-delivery.
That’s the real explanation that eHealth owes us.
