IT Disasters Again
Following the recent savaging of the government’s record in delivering IT related change by the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, the chairman of its Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh MP, yesterday told the press (story via Public Technology):
New information technology has the potential to make public services more efficient, effective, and accessible. Unfortunately we have seen too many disasters in public sector IT – projects that were late, over budget, or abandoned because they simply did not work. In light of the past, it is encouraging that the arrangements for scrutiny and oversight developed by the Office of Government Commerce appear to be paying off. Gateway Reviews, for example, are popular with departments and are leading to better control over projects and earlier warning of problems when they are properly used. However, there are still too many projects that enter the Gateway process too late and leave it too early. There is also a continuing lack of programme management skills in Departments, representing a major obstacle to successful delivery. And while a good start has been made by OGC, Departments need to further build their relationships with suppliers. Almost certainly there will be incidents of future projects where systems and processes are not properly applied. But with huge sums of taxpayers’ money and the quality of public services at stake it is essential that Departments embrace good practice and have the commitment to make IT programme and project failure a thing of the past.
All this was prompted by the release of a new NAO report Improving IT procurement: The impact of the Office of Government Commerce’s initiatives on departments and suppliers in the delivery of major IT-enabled projects. Head of the NAO, Sir John Bourn said:
Government Departments have a chequered history in the handling of IT-enabled projects and programmes. OGC has made significant strides in identifying reasons for past failure and in establishing structures, such as Gateway Reviews, that allow for increased scrutiny and independent check upon the feasibility and progress of IT-enabled projects and programmes. These remain, however, early days and my report makes recommendations to build on these foundations in order to reduce the likelihood of future failure.
Meanwhile, another of those e-government surveys that seem impossible to track down other than in press release format has warned (story via UKauthorITy.com):
Two thirds of public sector bodies are still a long way off e-government targets [...] With just over a year to go before the end of the 2005 deadline for 80 percent of public service transactions to be delivered electronically, most public sector organisations still have much to do finds a survey undertaken over the summer of 2004. According to the research most public sector organisations (68%) are still only either in the early planning stages or just testing systems. And only three percent of public sector organisations have achieved their 2005 e-government targets thus far, finds the survey commissioned by IT services provider Steria and conducted by Benchmark Research. Worryingly, less than a third of the rest claim to be close to putting everything in place. John Torrie, CEO, Steria in the UK, says, “My concern is that to achieve a tick in the box, organisations will implement systems without foundation, or worse still, implement e-services as a temporary measure that will have to be re-assessed in a very few years, all at the cost of the taxpayer.” The research also finds only 28 percent of private sector workers surveyed are aware of the government’s e-government objectives. This indicates that early successes and results achieved are not being effectively marketed to the citizen.
