Now the Labour Party's conference, which was held in Manchester, is finished, I've looked at the lessons and what went wrong on 13 large, government IT-based projects and programmes:
- Magistrates' courts
- Schools
- Intelligence Services
- GCHQ
- Passport Service
- National Health Service
- Rural Payments Agency
- Criminal Records Bureau
- HM Revenue and Customs
- Department for Work and Pensions
- Department of Health
- Department for Innovation Universities Skills
- Ministry of Defence
The analysis is tied in with an analysis and comment, to be published in Computer Weekly this week, on Labour's track record on managing big IT-based projects and programmes.
Ministry of Defence (EDS are one the METRIX consortium - why would you hire these people?)
The expected costs of the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) are £7bn - when Parliament was told the costs would be £2.3bn. The National Audit Office in July 2008 found there had been "major delays to the roll out of the first stage of the DII programme. The Department contracted to have 62,800 DII terminals in place at permanent defence sites by the end of July 2007. At the end of April 2008, only 29,000 had been delivered
"Currently the end date for installation of increment one is running 18 months late against the estimated latest completion date at contract signature".
The cost of the project was announced originally at about £2.3bn, but the latest cost estimate is £7bn, though not because of any fault of the main contractor EDS. The National Audit Office found the costs of the DII contracts with the Atlas consortium, led by EDS, are under firm control. The MoD paid EDS less than the supplier had originally expected because of an 18-month delay in the roll-out. The difference in costs is because the MoD was not open and candid when announcing the costs originally. The DII programme "assumed that the roll-out of infrastructure and terminals would be more straightforward than transpired," said the National Audit Office.
Allied article: Why can't new Labour get IT right?
