UK taxpayers have been left with a £26bn bill from delayed, over-budget or cancelled IT projects, The Independent reported today.
The paper highlighted 10 notorious Labour IT bungles, headlined by the £12.7bn programme to modernise the NHS. According to The Independent, just 160 of the 9,000 health organisations were successfully delivering electronic patient records under the scheme.
Other failures highlighted included a Department for Transport project that was supposed to save £57m but ended up costing £81m and the National Offender Management Information System (C-Nomis) that was abandoned in 2007 after £155m had already been wasted.
“IT is supposed to improve public sector services, not run up sky-high bills with poorly managed and ineffective projects. Only by looking again at its approach to IT procurement will the public sector truly recognise opportunities to liberate staff from unnecessary administrative workloads and deliver real savings for the long term,” said Alan Smith, senior vice president for UK & Ireland at workload automation firm UC4.
The Independent’s top 10 roll call of IT shame:
£12.7bn The National Programme for IT
£7.1bn Defence Information Infrastructure
£5bn National Identity Scheme
£400m Libra system (for magistrates’ courts)
£350m Single Payment Scheme system (SPS)
£300m GCHQ box move of technology
£155m National Offender Management Information System (C-Nomis)
£106m Benefit Processing Replacement Programme
£88.5m Prism IT project
£81m Shared Services Centre.
