What is it with government and IT projects?

Kronos

Kronos

Kronos

Soldato
Joined
11 Nov 2009
Posts
4,784
Location
Edinburgh
Yet again the government has wasted £107 million on failed IT projects over a 12 month period. With the biggest loss by the Ministry of Justice who spent £56.3 million on a system designed to save costs on admin tasks such as HR and payroll but decided to outsource to the company that set up the system in the first place.

Authorities in government, councils, the civil service, health boards ETC seem to believe that the cheapest is best and don't seem to have heard of that old adage you get what you pay for. In the real world this is usually true and it is necessary to pay the extra and get something fit for purpose and reliable.

But these people seem to think that wasting money is OK as there is never ever any come back for the many failed decisions made each and every year.

On a personal note through a Freedom of Information request I discovered my own health board has wasted millions on a failed IT system that no one could use,which could not talk to the many other systems installed thought the NHS hospitals covered by my board. Another request discovered that hundreds of thousands of pounds had been spent on over priced consumables such as toner,printer ink, DVD'CD's ETC
 
Last edited:
I think there are 4 problems which contribute to this.

Firstly, that the tendering process always causes a race to the bottom, with the lowest cost bidder normally winning.

Secondly, they are the lowest bidder because they make claims about what they can achieve for very little but are not realistic about how much this will actually cost.

Thirdly, that staff in government often have no clue about how these systems work and therefore fall for the claims.

And fourthly, because this has gone on for so many years and therefore the new systems are building on old systems which never worked in the first place. This makes it more difficult to make something which actually works, lowers the expectations of staff who are used to having a system which doesn't work properly and means that the system has to be more complex to accommodate the old system.

I'm sure there is more to it but its certainly what I've noticed in the short time I've been working at a large council.
 
Lil old me said:
I think there are 4 problems which contribute to this.

Firstly, that the tendering process always causes a race to the bottom, with the lowest cost bidder normally winning.

Secondly, they are the lowest bidder because they make claims about what they can achieve for very little but are not realistic about how much this will actually cost.

Thirdly, that staff in government often have no clue about how these systems work and therefore fall for the claims.

And fourthly, because this has gone on for so many years and therefore the new systems are building on old systems which never worked in the first place. This makes it more difficult to make something which actually works, lowers the expectations of staff who are used to having a system which doesn't work properly and means that the system has to be more complex to accommodate the old system.

I'm sure there is more to it but its certainly what I've noticed in the short time I've been working at a large council.
Click to expand...

An excellent summary of the issues/problems. Nice one.
 
From experience, it's poor project management, always selecting the cheapest option, project teams and technical teams made up almost entirely of ex clinical staff with low IT knowledge, and IT departments more concerned with image than delivery (I.e. push out a broken system to meet the deadline rather than take the bad image of delivering something late).
 
Last edited:
It's not just a government project thing, there's just more interest in wastes of public money for obvious reasons. GOV.UK is widely considered to be a success due in part to the way it was managed differently to other projects, on a comparitively tiny budget.

The government will be getting dinged on change requests and this is where the costs add up, because it often turns out that whichever MP wanted this new IT system as a vanity project isn't actually any good at managing software projects.
 
frankly if you are in charge of a project that fails due to mismanagement (rather than say the company you contracted going bust etc) then and wastes hundreds of millions but sorry you should be fired for incompetence/negligence.

yet in the public sector it seems you just carry on moving up the seniority ladder of promotion.
 
Lil old me said:
I think there are 4 problems which contribute to this.

Firstly, that the tendering process always causes a race to the bottom, with the lowest cost bidder normally winning.

Secondly, they are the lowest bidder because they make claims about what they can achieve for very little but are not realistic about how much this will actually cost.

Thirdly, that staff in government often have no clue about how these systems work and therefore fall for the claims.

And fourthly, because this has gone on for so many years and therefore the new systems are building on old systems which never worked in the first place. This makes it more difficult to make something which actually works, lowers the expectations of staff who are used to having a system which doesn't work properly and means that the system has to be more complex to accommodate the old system.

I'm sure there is more to it but its certainly what I've noticed in the short time I've been working at a large council.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100% regardling the RFP / tendering process...

I have worked for a public sector out sourcing company and the rebids / contract renewals are often awful... Normally some service delivery manager accepts a contract for less money and much more work, fails to meet expectations to the client, causing a huge headache for the workers.

I have spoken to a few contracting IT PMs in the publIc sector, they all said they have to jump through red tape to justify their decisions to make sure none of the permie staff gets made redundant. The culture is a no win situation.
 
Remember that only government projects are publically audited in such a fashion. I've been involved with contracts with private sector companies that have the same difficulties and end up costing the customer a lot more than they thought originally - but these costs normally can be hidden by the time it gets to publish the annual report.
 
DWP computer systems were better when it's IT department (ITSA) was in house. Once it got privatised/outsourced to EDS (who then got bought out by HP) things started to go to ****.

I mean, how can it possibly be a bad thing when 40% of the total contract value goes to America as profits?
 
There should be a law that contractors for government should sign a absolute agreement to stay in budget, with penalties for being otherwise.

At least it should keep out the useless companies, even if it would ultimately be more costly, it should be more efficient.
 
StriderX said:
There should be a law that contractors for government should sign a absolute agreement to stay in budget, with penalties for being otherwise.

At least it should keep out the useless companies, even if it would ultimately be more costly, it should be more efficient.
Click to expand...

would this law also include that the government cant change the requirements repeatedly?

cause that's what causes a huge amount of the cost rises?
 
StriderX said:
There should be a law that contractors for government should sign a absolute agreement to stay in budget, with penalties for being otherwise.

At least it should keep out the useless companies, even if it would ultimately be more costly, it should be more efficient.
Click to expand...

Ch-ch-ch-change request!

Fixed Price means Fixed Scope, and the scope at tender stage is never exhaustive and 100% correct. Most people don't even know what it is they want.
 
amigafan2003 said:
I mean, how can it possibly be a bad thing when 40% of the total contract value goes to America as profits?
Click to expand...

This blows my mind surely it would make more sense to keep it in the UK not only would we get back some of the money were essentially reinvesting in british buisness.
 
Skeeter said:
Ch-ch-ch-change request!

Fixed Price means Fixed Scope, and the scope at tender stage is never exhaustive and 100% correct. Most people don't even know what it is they want.
Click to expand...

So, Hewlett Packard have £1.7bn contract with the DWP.

How often do you think they say "no" to the DWP?

The fault with mismanagement of IT contracts lies squarely with the government departments 99% of the time. Of course, when it all goes **** up, the government department blames the supplier, and the supplier usually stays quiet out of fear of losing thier other contracts.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Skeeter said:
Ch-ch-ch-change request!

Fixed Price means Fixed Scope, and the scope at tender stage is never exhaustive and 100% correct. Most people don't even know what it is they want.
Click to expand...

Which is why PFI contracts were brought in, so that the government only ever had to define in vague terms what the service was and could leave the detail up to the contractor.
 
scorza said:
Remember that only government projects are publically audited in such a fashion. I've been involved with contracts with private sector companies that have the same difficulties and end up costing the customer a lot more than they thought originally - but these costs normally can be hidden by the time it gets to publish the annual report.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt that for a minute but the waste particularly when it comes to my health board can affect services elsewhere so could directly affect me. Where technology plays a major part of our lives organisations such as my health board seem to still be in the dark ages as they obviously do not employ the right people particularly where IT is concerned.

A quick example was I need a copy of my video-fluoroscopy file and was told initially that as it was on a DVD with other patients file then it would contravene the Data Protection act to give me a copy. When that failed they then said that as the file was in a propriety file format I would be unable to open it. Both excuses where bulls doo doos. But obviously they did hot have a knowledgeable IT person to refer the matter to so hence these rather silly excuses both of which would have cost money in time postage ETC telling me in writing as my health board doe not do email again it uses the Data Protection act as the reason.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom