Disaster recovery, what's that?

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has cancelled a £23m global IT project because it failed sufficiently to take into account potential terrorist threats.

The contract was signed just four months after the 11 September attacks.

Officials admit that, despite the worldwide publicity and huge hype about disaster recovery at the time, the "ramifications of the attack took time to work through the system".

Nearly £10m has already been spent on the global Focus knowledge management project, which covered an intranet, directory and database system linking FCO offices and embassies.

The business case was agreed in October 2001, and the six-year contract signed with Fujitsu Consulting in January 2002.

It was cancelled in March 2003 - after costs shot up to £42m - because it was felt that the addition of disaster recovery features would make the project too expensive.

"The scope increased because of 11 September," said an FCO spokeswoman. "After that we appreciated the need for a disaster recovery capability, which led to an increase in both hardware and complexity, and increased training and support costs."

The FCO admitted that the implications of the terror attacks were not immediately appreciated, and that the lengthy buying process was already underway.

"The project went ahead because the whole round of tendering had gone through without the disaster recovery aspect, and the ramifications of 11 September took time to work their way through the system," said the spokeswoman.

However, Liberal Democrat IT spokesman Richard Allan was unconvinced.

"You don't need an 11 September to predict that you need robust disaster recovery systems linking embassies in far-flung places where there are 101 ways they could be threatened," he said.

For the £9.5m already spent the FCO will keep the directory system, which it hopes will save £2.5m over the next five years, and an online discussion facility.