So Accenture may be pulling out of their £6.2 billion NHS deal. Is this going to mark the end of major Government consulting engagements? Is Accenture's reputation going to survive this one (after they screwed up the DWP as well)?Are we all going to point and laugh?It's a shame. This looked for a while to be one of the most innovative, publicly beneficial engagements I've seen.

Clearly our public sector cannot afford to pay suppliers adequately, and so the farce develops whereby the most effective supplier has no option but to withdraw.So why is there not enough money in the public sector purse to fund transformation? Because the public sector wants it all: on the one hand a hugely inflated internal staff, paid ever more for ever less. On the other, an army of suppliers paid ever less for ever more.Something has to give, and frankly it should not be the fees of consultants who work 14 hour days on these projects. Instead, I say sack half the public sector. Now THERE is free money if ever there was some, which could then pay for honestly priced programmes delivered by 3rd parties.

Just a to note: it's not in any way a consulting engagement. It's an outsourced IT service.