FactCheck: Do government IT projects ever work?
Updated on 16 June 2006
Late and over budget? Often, but not always...
The claim
John Thurso (Lib Dem MP, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross): Can [the Prime Minister] tell the House of any major government IT project that has been delivered on budget or on time, or which works?
Tony Blair: There is one that is quite closely linked to the identity card idea, which, of course, is the passport system. It required a complicated computer project and it has worked extremely well.
Prime Minister's Question Time, 14 June 2006
Background
Later today, the National Audit Office is expected to criticise the progress of the government's multi-billion pound NHS IT project, 'Value for Money'. It's a project Health Minister Lord Warner admitted last month was already two and a half years behind schedule and three times over budget.
Two days ago - with an uncanny sense of timing - Lib Dem MP John Thurso asked the Prime Minister about the likelihood that another new IT system - for the introduction of identity cards - will work, given the government's track record on computing systems.
"Can he tell the House of any major Government IT project that has been delivered on budget or on time, or which works?", Thurso asked. In reply Tony Blair cited the passport system, which he said is "closely linked to the identity card idea" and is an example of a complicated computer system that works "extremely well".
So is Blair right to hold the passport sytem up as an exemplar of government IT and is the poor reputation of these projects deserved?
Analysis
The roll-out of a new IT system for passports in 1999 gave Labour a summer of headache-inducing headlines. Hundreds of people were forced to cancel their holidays when delays and complications left the Passport Agency unable to issue passports on time.
As the backlog mounted, emergency measures were introduced. Taxpayers were eventually landed with a £12m tax bill for the delay, including £16,000 spent on umbrellas for members of the public queuing outside passport offices.
According to the National Audit Office report into the delays, the problem arose because management failed to check the new system and make sufficient contingency plans. The delays coincided with the high season for holiday-making and took place as government simultaneously introduced new rules around the issuing of passports to children and babies.
The project was not delivered on time or on budget and the expected efficiency savings from the introduction of the new system did not emerge - failing two, arguably all three, of Thurso's criteria.
The unit cost of producing a passport from 1999-2000 was estimated at between £15 and £15.50, compared to the target of £12.
Thurso was surprised Blair cited the passport system. He said it was one of "endless examples of systems experiencing huge delays and over budget."
But even Thurso concedes that the passport system now works well, and public sector IT expert Michael Cross says that once the initial glitches had been ironed out it has been held up as a success.
The Passport Agency - now part of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) - has topped the Comparisat customer satisfaction survey for the third year in a row, beating public and private sector organisations such as Amazon, eBay, Marks and Spencer and Tesco, with customer satisfaction at 97 per cent.
Cross says there is a feeling that government is getting better at IT systems and despite problems with the systems for Tax Credits and the Criminal Records Bureau, there have been "no real fiascos".
But the new NHS IT system is expected to take decades rather than years to complete and the ID cards system, the most ambitious IT project to date, was subject to a rethink this week.
"This could be the biggest fiasco of all," Cross told FactCheck.
A large percentage of complex IT projects - whether in the public or private sector - run into trouble. A landmark survey of IT failure in 1995, The Chaos Report, produced by Standish, a US-based consultancy, found that, within larger companies, only 9 per cent of IT projects come in on time and on-budget. Governments face extra levels of control when procuring, designing and implementing IT systems that don't apply to the private sector, but for Thurso the "sheer scale" of government IT incompetency cannot be excused.
Cross describes the government procurement system as bizarre. "It's designed as a mechanism for tearing up money." Thurso concurs and adds that it is based on procedures that private sector IT companies abandoned in the 1980s.
A recent academic research project into the performance of government IT backs up their concerns. Comparing the UK?s IT record between 1999- 2003 with public sector IT projects in six other countries, the UK?s record was described as "unenviable" with a "pattern of a high level of individual project failures across a wide range of agencies".
The report blamed the speed and regularity of new legislation being adopted, which means that IT systems are not adequately planned, tested or implemented but which are "constructed post-legislation from scratch, often within very demanding timetables."
Verdict
The passport system is an odd example of success for Blair to choose. It was over budget and delayed. Nevertheless, it has since been held up as a system that works well. So it fails two out of three of Thurso's criteria.
Overall, figures suggest that IT projects - public and private sector alike - regularly cost more, and take longer, than promised.
FactCheck Rating: 3.5 (How ratings work)
Sources
National Audit Office report: The UK Passport Agency: The Passport Delays of Summer 1999
Government IT Performance and the Power of the IT industry: A cross-national analysis
IT hiccups hamper passport issuing at embassies, 24 Nov 2005
Passport fiasco cost taxpayers £12m, 27 Oct 1999
Related links
More Technology, New Media, Internet reports
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