Guy Kewney

Let me explain. Last week I went to my bank to sort out the mortgage. The manager’s PC was a standard Dell, and much to my astonishment it had a CRT display – retro, or what? But that shock was nothing compared to the jolt I got when she booted the thing up, for there on the screen, instead of the famous hour-glass, was an icon I’d not seen for more than a decade: the logo for OS/2.

I asked her what on earth was going on. “Oh, it’s local software. They keep saying they’ll upgrade it,” she muttered. “All the back-office stuff at head office is Windows, but we have to use this.”

She proceeded to demonstrate just how annoying incompatible software can be. She had to write down codes – or even print them out – before switching to a terminal connection to the head office database. Then she’d type them in, get them wrong, try again, and find that the data they had locally wasn’t available to the head office system anyway.

It was the sort of vaguely comical inefficiency I once pilloried the DVLA for after having filled out an online application form for a new driving licence. After I had filled in all the relevant fields and pressed “finish” a summary of all the data I’d given appeared on the screen. And at the bottom it said “Print” – and yes, I was supposed to print it out, put it in an envelope, and mail it to Swansea.

Understandably, I compared this mess with what was standard procedure in commercial outfits, and today, equally understandably, I wish to apologise to the DVLA. Given what I discovered at my bank, I think anyone who holds up the commercial sector as a paragon of IT efficiency is treading on very thin ice.

But that’s not all. My contrition also stems from the fact that last week, by coincidence, I had to renew my car tax. I logged onto the DVLA site. I entered my car registration number. I filled in the MasterCard payment details. And two days later, my tax disc arrived. The system knew about my insurance and about my MoT details, and that was that.

I know, I know, it shouldn’t be headline stuff: “Computer System Works As Expected”. But for me, it was the story of the week. All I have to do now is wrap my head around the implications...

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