Carrying out IT projects in the public eye

A Home Office project hardly seems complete without a pasting from the National Audit Office (NAO). The department certainly gives the appearance of a serial offender in the production of dodgy IT projects.

This perception is made worse by the fact that many of the systems for which it is responsible are in the front line of public services.

When a police, passport or immigration project goes wrong, it tends to go spectacularly wrong. The passport delays of 1999 - both caused by poor IT implementations - managed to upset just about the entire nation.

The problems of the last year may not have been on that scale, but they have still proved very costly.

In 2001, the NAO reviewed spiralling costs and low uptake of the National Probation Service's case recording and management system. Last month, Computing reported that the probation service has decided to scrap the project.And so far this year, the NAO has already criticised the police radio network Airwave, on the grounds of unreliability and a failure to work across different emergency services. To add to the bad press, the system has also been accused by police officers of causing health problems.

Then there's the problems the audit office hasn't covered yet. Last year, the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee slammed the police national computer for the fact that some 65% of its records needed updating.

And there was the delay to the criminal records bureau, designed to automate the procedure of employers running checks on staff working with children or the vulnerable. The £400m project, run by Capita, was due to go online last summer. It finally managed this on 11 March this year.

Other departments are attacked for their IT, of course, but the Home Office seems to take the most flak. Part of the problem is that the department represents those who, in the eyes of techies, seek to encumber technology through legislation.

Then there's the liberal suspicion about nearly all Home Office projects: accusations of Orwellian increases in state power.

Both in project management and in legislation, the Home Office has the feel of an organisation that doesn't understand IT. Which is a shame, seeing as it's responsible for its regulation.

The volume of criticism tends to drown out the achievements of frontline IT projects: systems which unite the emergency services, pilots in PDA notebooks, or innovative voice and data networks linking rural police stations (Computing, 16 May).