The UK spends more on ICT than any other country except the US. Over the past 8 years, the present government has spent £108 billion on ICT. Yet it was ranked 13th in the last Accenture e-Gov Survey, conducted in 2006. (Building the Trust, Accenture). Over the past decade, there have been approximately 20 multi-billion pound ICT-led projects, and yet for the most part the experience of the public has not matched the public money expended.
Labour’s IT procurement process has been marked by a catalogue of failures, late deliveries and cost overruns:
- HMRC’s IT Bill Has Trebled in Four Years. The total cost of Cap Gemini’s ASPIRE contract with HM Revenue and Customs for the provision of IT services has more than trebled from an original estimate in 2003 of £2.83 billion over ten years to an estimate of £8.5 billion by 2007. Cap Gemini’s overall profits from the contract could now be as high as £1.1 billion (PAC, HM Revenue and Customs: ASPIRE – the re-competition of outsourced IT services, 12 June 2007, pp5-6).
- NHS Computer system over 10 years late and £10 billion over budget. NPfIT was originally intended to be a 3-year project, budgeted at £2.3 billion. It is now likely to take over 13 years to complete, at a cost of over £12.7 billion. While it counts as a failure on value for money alone, it has also failed in other critical respects. As an example, its Choose and Book utilization was targeted to be 39 million bookings (NAO report, May 2008); its actual bookings were only 6.7 million. In addition, the very front-line providers that the Labour government are always “protecting” and praising never bought into the programme–by November 2006 (according a Medix survey), only 11% of doctors thought NPfIT was a “good use of NHS resources.”
- Job Centre Plus’ £360 million Customer Management System lets down vulnerable benefit claimants
The new Customer Management System (CMS) used in Jobcentre Plus is designed to gather data over the telephone for new incapacity benefit, income support and Jobseeker’s Allowance claims. The estimated cost of the project is £362 million (The Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus: Second Report of Session 2005-06, Work and Pensions Committee, March 2006). However: -
- In January 2006, it was reported that 40 per cent of claims were failing to be processed by Jobcentre Plus’ Customer Management System (CMS), and that Jobcentre Plus staff were often forced to process claims manually (Silicon.com, 30 January 2006). Stephen Timms, the then Pensions Minister, admitted there had been ‘glitches’ in the system (Computing, 18 January 2006).
- In March 2006, the Work and Pensions Committee noted that ‘the service delivered by many Jobcentre Plus Contact Centres to their customers suffered a catastrophic failure in the summer of 2005. This led to additional hardship amongst the most vulnerable in society. A mix of IT problems, staffing issues and poor change management planning was to blame, in our view’ (The Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus: Second Report of Session 2005-06, Work and Pensions Committee, March 2006).
- Foreign Office communications – £60 million over budget. In October, the Foreign Office admitted that its new Telecommunications Network, due to go operational in May 2010, is likely to cost £60 million – or one third – more than the original £180 million estimate (Hansard, 25 October 2006, Col.1904WA).
- Home Office probation service computer system – 70% over budget
The National Audit Office has criticised almost every aspect of the IT system, which was supposed to provide a national infrastructure for the probation service. The system has so far cost £118 million – 70 per cent more than initially projected.
The management system CRAMS was initially budgeted at £4 million but has reached £11 million – and this figure is still increasing. The network is technically in operation in 38 of the 42 local probation areas, but CRAMS has had “serious problems”, causing it to be used by only a small proportion of areas. The NAO blamed the Home Office for “poor specification of expected outputs, weaknesses in service monitoring and inadequate control of purchases”.
I have checked the Hansard entry quoted for the FCO communications network, and the system in question is shown to end, not be “due to go operational”, in May 2010. As per the Hansard entry, this system went into operation in May 2000.
I hope to see this corrected.
Regards
Colin
The UK has perhaps the most most oligarchic Government IT market in the world. Smaller contract sizes will help break this but Government must take bold steps to reduce the dominance of a few suppliers, who have a significant financial interest in protecting the status quo. This is also harming the UK’s IT industry as innovative businesses are seen as a threat and treated as such.
The current drivers from Government reward complexity and do not allow for any real degree of change. The suppliers are then able to make significant profits from ‘change requests’ – IT systems are only as valuable as their ability to change in a fast-paced world.
The internal project management skills of the Civil Service need urgent attention – as highlighted in the NAO Report – Delivering successful IT-enabled business change (2006). Managing IT projects is a specific skill, so Government should focus on building a specialist team for managing these projects, rather than seeing it as a generalist role.
The success criteria for projects is still vague – the often-cited DVLA system only deals with 30% of vehicles, while the DWP (customer base online = 51%) only dealt with 0.25% of its total contacts online.
IT is not the origins of the problem. Once centralised departments are created, with ambitions for total ownership of the customer experience then everything else follows.
IT just implements an unworkable delivery model, badly.
For example: It is my legal duty to pay the right amount of tax and give the correct information. I could do that via my bank account, using “store and forward” to provide load management. I could also choose do that via accountants’ systems.
None of this requires an HMRC provided customer experience. They could simply focus on keeping the back end running.
Other organisations could target other groups.
DON’T outsource it.
Look at the EAGA experience, they get blames (by the NAO) for poorly specified contracts and effectively remain in thrall to DEFRA by contractual mechanisms.
Dis-intermediate and let the market work.
From a hardware perspective it is important to have a reliable robust infrastructure that reduces the need for an expensive complex desk top estate. The use of thin client and “Zero Client” significantly improves the security and user experience at the desk top end. Its total cost of ownership and long term scalability make it an ideal technology for any Government. The government departments can then run from a centralised data centre(shared services) sharing resources and cutting down on application costs. All this can be run over an IP protocol something the Governments are encouraging IP vendors to make available to all.
for more information on how these technologies fit it to a single unified estate please contact me.