Government IT Projects
Large government IT projects over a number of years have been beset with failures which have cost billions (Table 1). Often systems are abandoned and written off. Work has to restart. The most prominent failure has been the UK NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfiIT) which did not result in a central patient database of electronic health records, and in which the Choose and Book system was only abandoned in late 2014.
Table 1. UK Public Sector Information Systems Failures (note that other governments do have significant IT failures too)
|
Acronym
|
Project Title
|
Start Month
|
Cancellation Month
|
Outcome
|
Financial Loss
|
Source Report
|
|
C-NOMIS
|
National Offender Management System
|
June 2004
|
Dec 2007
|
Partial delivery of revised system
|
£41 million
|
NAO (2009)
|
|
FIReControl
|
National Fire Incident Management
|
July 2004
|
Dec 2010
|
Nothing delivered
|
£469 million
|
NAO (2011)
|
|
NPFit
|
National Patient Record and related systems
|
April 2004
|
Sept 2011
|
Partial delivery Choose and Book. Non-delivery of core electronic patient record system
|
£2.1 billion
|
Committee of Public Accounts (2011)
|
|
Child Support Agency CS2 System
|
CSA Payments system
|
July 2000
|
Oct 2005
|
Live system abandoned
|
£152 million
|
NAO (2006)
|
|
Rural Payments Agency
|
Single Payment System
|
August 2006
|
Oct 2009
|
Live system replaced due to failure
|
£350 million
|
NAO (2007)
Computer Weekly, (2009)
|
|
e-Borders
|
Advanced passenger information programme
|
2007
|
2014
|
Cancelled
|
Over £412 million
|
Computer Weekly, (2014)
|
Tasks
Question 1. Produce a description of the FIReControl case study and identify possible reasons for the failure of this government IT system. To what extent has the failure to do with the technology and to what extent was it to do with the management, organisational and political structures? Are there any lessons we can learn about the role of IT systems in organisations and the connection between organisational structure and politics?
Question 2. Investigate the current state of the Universal Credit IT system. Produce a brief overview of the Universal Credit IT system and how it reached its precarious current position. Produce a table that compares FIReControl and come to some conclusions on how we might protect the taxpayer from bankrolling future IT failures.