Government IT projects squander £1.5bn

The cost of cancelled or over-budget government IT projects has now topped £1.5bn in the past six years.

But plans are in place to revolutionise the way departments manage their technology programmes, according to a document leaked to vnunet.com's sister title Computing.

The aim is for a two- to three-fold improvement in the success of government projects by June 2006, says the document written by Whitehall buying arm the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

Achieving the target would have a big impact on project over-spend.

The latest Computing survey into government IT spending shows a 50 per cent increase in the amount of money squandered on mismanaged projects since its previous study nearly two years ago.

Treasury minister Paul Boateng admitted last week that his department doesn't know how much has been wasted since Labour came to power.

In response to a written question from Labour MP Derek Wyatt, Boateng said: "The information requested is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost."

High-profile disasters taken into account in Computing's research include the £698m wasted on the cancelled Pathway project to develop smartcards for benefits payments, and the £134m overspend on the magistrates' courts Libra system identified by the National Audit Office last year.

"In business no group of shareholders would stomach the losses, over-runs and even pretty poor software that successive governments have made," said Wyatt.

"The opportunity cost value is hundreds of small new hospitals and schools. Perhaps civil servants who fail frequently should lose their jobs."

A key plank of the OGC reforms is the creation of so-called Centres of Excellence to provide programme management for each department and its related agencies.

"A Centre of Excellence is much more than a programme office, because its remit is to provide a continuous overview across all of the department's portfolio of programmes, not just co-ordinating and reporting on the programmes but challenging what must be delivered and how," says the report.