Eight years on and the system has still not been rolled out, and is not expected to do so until some time next year.
The latest cost overrun has come to light in a parliamentary committee meeting, in which Alex Allen, the accounting officer of the Department of Constitutional Affairs, was grilled.
The project’s cost has risen steadily throughout its lifetime. ICL’s original bid was increased to 184m pounds ($340m) once it was named the preferred bidder, and the contract was renegotiated in May 2000 to 319m pounds ($589m) after problems with the software. In 2001, the contract was cut to only include the delivery of hardware, with the government signing further deals with other companies for software and its delivery. The cost of the overall project rose to 390m pounds ($720m) in January 2003, but now increases in delivering the software has pushed the total up even further.
Not only are the costs of providing the products and services increasing, but the fact that the system is not up and running creates further costs. Allen said courts were hampered in being able to collect fines because the IT systems were not yet linked up on one platform.
While it has been argued that the government should have canceled Libra years ago, it is intent on completing the installation even though it is has put out for tender contracts for new computer systems for the whole of the department. Allen said it plans to roll four contracts into two. The other three are with STL and Accenture for application development, and Cable & Wireless for web hosting. He said the new contracts would build on the existing infrastructure and software.
