Legacy technology may well be a factor in government waste but a bigger problem seems to be the belief in the promises of technology to deliver government programs more efficiently and at reduced cost, when often the result is the exact opposite: less efficiency and higher costs. If there is one recurring theme in the Auditor-General's reports over the years, it is criticism of the optimistic costing, re-baselining, scope growth, and weak early challenges of federal IT projects. Government waste is often the result of organizational politics within the bureaucracy. Oversized IT departments within some departments that still find it necessary to outsource much of the so-called innovation to big IT firms is a revealing indicator of the incestuous nature of this beast. It is time that government tech be designed to serve citizens and not the bureaucracy. Canada's efforts at bureaucratic reform are becoming a joke. We need to look to countries like Estonia, Denmark, Singapore and New Zealand as examples of what is possible in bureaucratic efficiency. Let's start with a simple question: what do citizens need?