UK Government's love of IT complexity

@tonyrcollins has been posting quotes on his blog from the BBC Radio4 File on Four programme about IT public sector projects in the UK, including the IT problems hurting farmers.

• A terrible price for the Government's love of IT complexity?
• Bright people at IT suppliers treat ministers as playthings 

So where is that podcast? I'm sure I must have already downloaded it ...

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The programme opens with a comment by Edward Leigh, the retiring chairman of the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee.

"We the taxpayer are paying enormous sums to people for these IT projects, to run them for us, and to waste money for us. So I think once a general election is over whoever wins I hope will take a scythe through all these precious IT systems."

Here is Dr Phyllis Starkey MP, chair of the parliamentary select committee, talking about a failed system for the fire service.

"There have clearly been massive mistakes about the way in which the project was first formulated and the way in which the contract was originally drawn up with the main contractor and they've led to huge delays and massive additional costs to government and to the various fire authorities."

Aha, I just got to the bit where Tony Collins himself appears on the programme. For those of you that don't know him, Tony is the executive editor at Computer Weekly and has been a public observer and critic of public sector IT in the UK for a long time. Very sound.

I was particularly interested in Edward Leigh's suggestion that ministers are subject to the illusion that it is easy to add functionality.

"They’re very short-termist. They want to create a quick impact …[and] are very naive about IT systems and the cost of IT staff, so they’re taken for a ride by very bright people who earn very large salaries in the private sector running these companies."

“Ministers come they go and they add onto these things like a Christmas tree. You need one simple – piloted – [system] … you stick to it. Rough-justice politicians just keep changing their minds – constantly new ideas – and of course they are just playthings for the private sector."

But will anything change after the election? Tony Collins sounds a note of caution: A few big IT suppliers may have Tories over a barrel. So more of the same then?

Generous to a fault

CSC Chief Executive positive about NPfIT despite "political rhetoric", reports Tony Collins (Computer Weekly, Feb 2010)

CSC boss says "we are going to work something out that satisfies their needs as well as ours". How very generous of him.

Procurement and Risk

The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has published some (mild) criticism of the Defence Information Infrastructure project, contracted to EDS by the UK Ministry of Defence [Report (pdf) via The Register].

"The Ministry ... says that there's no need to worry about the risk budget being two-thirds gone at this point as it is normal for emergencies to appear early rather than late in a project."

But that of course depends how risk is managed. One possible approach is to try and eliminate or reduce uncertainty early in a project, before expensive commitments are made. However, the PAC has identified some outstanding risks.

• The longer it takes to complete the implementation of DII, the greater the risk that one or more of the Department’s legacy systems will fail.

• The Department did not conduct a pilot before commencing full implementation, even though the DII Programme was complex and the timetable ambitious.

The continued presence of this kind of risk in the programme suggests that "emergencies appear early" looks like an optimistic hope rather than a management achievement.

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Note: Last summer, the DII received qualified praise from the National Audit Office [The Register, July 2008]. The NAO has itself been subject to criticism for its cosy relationship with large contractors such as EDS, especially under its former comptroller Sir John Bourn [Private Eye, Guardian].

Louise Ferguson

Blogging in November 2004, Louise Ferguson writes

This has not been a good year for major public sector IT projects.

She lists several of the failures, and identifies two common threads.

1. An attitude of 'we know best' on the part of senior decision makers, leading to unwarranted assumptions about how people work, erroneous requirements specifications, and finally systems that are not fit for purpose.
2. A belief that IT, merely through its existence, changes business processes and people's behaviour.
   

CSA Fiasco 2

I have written a brief analysis of the CSA Fiasco, together with Philip Boxer, which illustrates some of Philip's ideas about complex system design. This is still in draft form, and we are keen to get suggestions - does this make sense? how can we improve the document? how can we use this material to develop commercial opportunities?

Public Sector IT - The CSA Case

CSA Fiasco

At the UK Child Support Agency (CSA), an IT system costing £456m is widely expected to be scrapped, following the resignation of CSA boss Doug Smith. On top of the cost of the IT system itself, the CSA has had to write off over £1bn of debt. In addition, there is incalculable cost to other stakeholders - in particular, the CSA's "customers".

According to some sources, contractor EDS has already conducted its own postmortem, describing its own system as "badly designed, badly delivered, badly tested and badly implemented".

CSA Boss Quits	ePolitix.com, TheRegister
Government Under Pressure	ePolitix.com, Guardian Unlimited
EDS	ePolitix.com,
Commercial Secrecy	TheRegister
Waste of Public Money	TheRegister

Defence Information Infrastructure

The UK Ministry of Defence is about to sign what is thought to be the largest IT contract in Europe - a ten year contract addressing the needs of nearly a third of a million users at 2,000 locations. This involves a major development programme over the first three years, building and installing a single system to replace a diverse set of legacy systems, due to be fully operational by the end of 2008. This is to be followed by a seven year support programme.

MOD link

DII is not the largest public sector IT programme in the UK. The NPfIT is considerably larger, but is split into several procurement contracts. But DII is the largest public sector IT programme to be assigned in a single contract.

The MOD currently spends around £600m a year on IT. The development programme is supposed to cut this bill by 20%. 2000 civil servant jobs will be shifted to the successful bidder.

At present, there are two rival consortia in the frame:

Consortium	Leader	Led
"Atlas"	EDS	Fujitsu, General Dynamics
"Radii"	CSC	BT, Thales

The winner will be announced in February 2005.