Total Toll system - failed govmt IT projects

[jam1et]

[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3317197.stm[/url]

I cant believe the government are serious about this. They have such a poor track record for implementing IT systems (and this is just a small selection!):

The MOD recently wasted £120 million on a failed stock control system. £12.2 million was salvaged but £118.3 million was written off as a loss.

£77 million was wasted on a scrapped system for processing asylum applications.

Project failures in the Nirs2 system (National Insurance recording system) have cost more than £1bn since 1997.

The dalayed (2 years late) MOT computeristion scheme is £8.4 million over budget (expected to raise to £9.6 million).

A 10-year, £1 billion contract with EDS to upgrade hardware and communications infrastructure at 600 tax offices around the UK has already a cost £1.04bn, and has been predicted to rise to nearly double, £2.4bn, by the project's end.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!!

Well at least we now know where all our taxes are going.

So dont worry folks, they'll start the project, chuck a £billion at it, then maybe another £billion or two for good luck, then realise it isnt going to work and just throw it away. We have nothing to fear!

And I cant wait to see what a balls up they make of the ID entitlement cards system.....

[Marshy]

As far as I can tell, these projects go off the rails due to pinstriped chinese whispers.

The award of the contract AND the initial requirements capture seem to go hand in hand and, therefore, it seems to be done by the pintripe suit brigade at customer and prospective bidder.

Ergo, great big deal is signed and fanfared to the press etc. Then the techies get their teeth into it (on both sides) and discover that the things that have been agreed to can't be done, and the stuff that really needs doing isn't in the contact... and will cost more to put in there. Repeatedly.

Et voila. Government IT project.

[james_j]

Oh well, Brown can always raise our taxes still further to pay for all these cock ups and borrow even more. At the last count he will borrow something like £37 billion in 2003/04!!!!

[puggit]

You forgot to add Red Ken and Capita for the congestion charge

[Psychobert]

Several reasons for the continual inability to get these projects right.. The IT service providers, (its almost always outsourced) do not understand the business sufficently well to realise that the internal people are unable to write requirements accurately or completely. Hence the specifications are then wrong, and as the budgets are almost always cut midway through, the testing windows are compressed such that frequently they fail to find problems which manifest themselves at go-live, (or shortly after as the other thing that gets cut is the training budget so not infrequently the system goes live with noone knowing what to do with it). Add to that the commercial nature of the IT guys, (fair enough they are in business afterall), and the pathetic inability of a large number of senior civial servants to actually make a decision, or indeed realise there is a difference between thinking aloud and forming a coherent strategy, and the whole thing is biund to go belly up.

Guess who spends far too much of his time trying to sort these problems out then?

And relax..

[mondeoman]

All the more reason for minimalist Governemnt