Public accounts watchdog savages government IT procurement

Public Accounts Committee chairman slams Whitehall's procurement process

Leigh singled out the Rural Payments Agency’s "woeful implementation of the Single Payment Scheme"

Commons Public Accounts Committee chairman Edward Leigh MP has singled out government IT project management as the weakest area of public spending in a letter to his successor.

The letter sets out 10 ways in which the handling of expenditure should be improved.

Leigh explained that he fears that "IT procurement is particularly weak", with departments buying new systems without planning what they need and allowing for adequate testing.

"Time and again, departments have wasted millions on IT systems that fail to live up to their promise, they arrive late and cost hugely more than forecast," he complained.

He singled out the Rural Payments Agency’s "woeful implementation of the Single Payment Scheme" as being a cause of continual anxiety and hardship for farmers.

He highlighted the fact that the agency spent £350m on a cumbersome IT system that can be supported only at huge cost, and which is increasingly at risk of becoming obsolete.

He said: "The root cause of this debacle has been poor leadership within the agency and a lack of attention by the sponsoring department. "

Leigh also highlighted the MoD's £7bn Defence Information Infrastructure System, designed to replace hundreds of aging existing systems. He described it as "fatally flawed by poor planning".

"There was no proper pilot for [this] highly complex programme and the consortium implementing the project – led by EDS, a company whose track record of delivering government IT projects has not been exemplary – underestimated the complexity of the software it had agreed to create, with the result that, for over two years, it was unable to deliver a system that could safely handle material classified as secret," he said.

Leigh explained that these are by no means isolated instances and said that there were examples of bad procurement across most of government.

"What is galling is that there is a wealth of best practice advice and good examples such as the Department for Work and Pensions’ Pension Credit and Payment Modernisation Programme," he said.

Leigh attributed the successful delivery of IT projects to adherence to three common principles:

- ensuring senior level engagement;

- acting as an intelligent client;

- making sure that you have means of realising the benefits from the project.

"Problems have occurred where board-level engagement with major programmes and projects has been found wanting, resulting in a failure to identify and act on imminent risks to delivery," he added.

The letter was published in full in The Times.