UK: Too Complicated to Upgrade from IE6

LBJay said:

It is therefore more cost effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users.”

Translation from government speak:

"We need the money to pad our salaries, so we'll stick with what we have until it jumps up and bites us in the a$$. Then we'll blame Microsoft for it's "lack of security measures".

Actually you got it wrong:
"Nobody wants to pay the taxes required to provide the services that the people demand so we will have to DO MORE WITH LESS again and again and again" Then we will wait for the people to demand more tax cuts while demanding more services again and again and again."

Grow up and try looking at the real culprit - yourself

They should have kept up during that time. As with anything, let something go without maintenance and it will fall apart.

I have to agree with bobtran - the government here has been cutting taxes for quite some time, and spending billions (more) on the military than it normally would in peacetime. Eventually, you have to start cutting programs, cutting budgets, etc to keep the barge afloat. I've watched my own local and state governments cut all afterschool programs, almost all but the basics for special education, close 50% of the libraries, and lay off 30% of teachers and aides, not to mention the layoffs of ~35% of administrators for the schools. There have been decent-sized cuts in emergency and civil personnel (fire, police, social services, parole employees, etc) as well as budget shrinks and thus salary cuts to the people who are left employed in these jobs afterwards.

Eventually, people have to realize that they must pay for the services they want or demand, or they will have to do without. This includes relatively low-priority IT budgets (compared to other government budget line-items) in most governments - the populace must cover these items by paying for it in sales taxes, or in property taxes, or in some other form of tax. Since the governments here rely mostly on sales taxes, property taxes, and income taxes to generate revenue, the laying off of millions of people over the last few years, coupled with people cutting back spending and losing houses (thus not paying property taxes) have had enormous negative impact on the budgets governments have year over year, not to mention obviously having no surpluses to invest in long-term opportunities that can increase government coffers down the line. It's actually pretty tragic what's happening here, and it's not over - upgrading from IE6 to IE8 is the least of the government's worries when it comes to spending on "fixing" things, given the budget shortfalls expected for the next 3 -5 years. I'd rather they stay on IE6 and use that money to pay emergency personnel, teachers, keep services running, etc.

I realise that this is an emotive subject and will by it's definition have some political comment attached, but this discussion is now entering areas which are in breach of forum rules

Thread closed before it goes too far