Audit Office analyses successful IT projects

National Audit Office identifies three themes for successful IT implementations

The National Audit Office (NAO) has today published a report designed to highlight common themes across successful IT projects and how they can be cloned by the public sector.

The NAO report features 24 IT-enabled programmes and projects sourced from both the public and the private sectors in the UK and abroad.

From them, the National Auditor picks out three “common threads” of success: senior-level engagement; active participation on behalf of clients; and winning support for change, including assessing the success level of the project.

Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, said, “IT projects in the public sector have too often been associated with failure –- this report provides an opportunity to change that. Learning from experience is not just a case of appreciating what went wrong, but also encompasses understanding what went right. Success can never be guaranteed, but it should not be an unfathomable mystery. The common threads among these IT programmes and projects are evidence that a favourable outcome is not a matter of luck, but is the result of sound judgement.”