home >> PROJECTS3 >> CORPORATE TECHNOLOGIES >> ID CARDS >> 3 - IT procurement - the government's record
There have been a number of high-profile and expensive disasters in IT procurement during the lifetime of the current government, some of which are described in more detail in the company profiles above. While the companies involved in these projects must take some of the blame, it would be a mistake to ignore the role of poor planning and mismanagement by government departments. It is beyond the scope of this briefing to diagnose the causes of the government's failures in IT, but a few snapshots might help suggest where the process breaks down.
It is interesting to note that in at least one area - the preparation of contracts - the government is moving in the opposite direction from industry. A recent article in The Lawyer on legal firms involved in public sector IT contracts reveals that most major private companies now keep such work in-house, but according to IT partner Michael Chissick from Field Fisher:
The Government has no lawyers who deal with technology procurement. They're fantastic at drafting legislation and I couldn't touch them on planning, but they have no technology expertise. The Government is the dream client.[50]
In other words, the government is contracting out the writing of major IT contracts even as such a strategy is abandoned by industry.
The closed nature of the procurement process has also provided grounds for concern, including among parliamentary committees. Five years ago, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was set up to monitor and improve standards in outsourcing. One of its roles is to carry out 'Gateway' reviews of the progress of major technology projects at key stages of the procurement and implementation process. These reviews have usually been confidential, but in April 2005 a report by the Public Accounts Committee on the impact of the OGC recommended:
... this Committee believes that, to further enhance external scrutiny, there is a strong case for the publication of Gateway review reports, particularly given the repeated failures of public sector IT-enabled projects and programmes in recent years.[51]
Yet the Home Office has refused to publish any of the Gateway reviews on the ID cards scheme, which suggests both that limited external accountability continues and that the content of the reviews is damaging. Similarly, the Home Affairs Select Committee, in its report on identity cards in July 2004, was, 'concerned about the closed nature of the procurement process which allows little public or technical discussion of the design of the system or the costings involved.[52]
IT industry views on government procurement
"The ID card scheme has been characterised by a lack of openness, honesty and transparency."[54]
Among the IT industry press, there is little doubt where to look for some of the causes of government IT failure:
[...] too often ministers and suppliers encourage each other to think big: to launch something that is immeasurably more complex than what has gone before, to beat the rest of world, to do it quickly, but in stages, and with as little transparency as possible.
Little can be done to force adherence to good practice in the public sector other than by legislating for accountability and transparency, and allowing rigorous external scrutiny of the feasibility and progress of projects by disinterested parliamentarians, the media and taxpayers.[53]
So far the ID card scheme has been characterised by a lack of openness, honesty and transparency. Information about progress has been published selectively or not at all, and it is not unusual for potentially serious problems to be played down in parliamentary questions, statements to select committees and answers to media questions.[54]
Tony Collins, Computer Weekly, 2/11/05 and 6/12/05
Blame the contractor, sure, but (sympathy for EDS) if you go to the contractor with something vague, then continually change your mind as the project goes ahead, your costs will climb, it'll be late and it won't work. So I think we should bar ourselves from specifying an ID scheme until UK.gov has passed its IT proficiency test.[55]
John Lettice, The Register 2/12/04
Not only are so many of these systems failing to provide the benefits that are touted for them, they are frequently very expensive. Curiously, government persists in the belief that everything is better if it is done by a commercial company. But government, being government, has to introduce unwieldy procedures for procurement that work in favour of large suppliers who have huge overheads and very patchy track records.[56]
Martin Brampton, silicon.com 16/8/05
Companies themselves are sometimes sceptical of the government's processes: Andy Vernon, PA Consulting Group's public sector specialist, told silicon.com recently, 'One key cause of government IT delivery failures is the scale and complexity of the initiatives undertaken.'[57]
It is difficult to find any praise for large-scale government IT procurement practices, other than an occasional claim that the situation is 'improving', with smaller projects and more openness, neither of which applies to the ID cards scheme. This makes it difficult to believe that this next major IT project can escape the same problems of cost-overrun, delay and failure to deliver functionality which have plagued previous efforts.
References[50] - The Lawyer 'How Masons doubled its IT turnover with a perfect match' 3/10/05 www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=116852&d;=122&h;=24&f;=46 3/10/05
[51] - Public Accounts Select Committee report 'The impact of the Office of Government Commerce's initiative on the delivery of major IT-enabled projects - Conclusions and Recommendations' 6/4/05 www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmpubacc/555/55504.htm
[52] - Home Affairs Select Committee report 'Identity Cards' paragraph 216 6/7/04 www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmhaff/130/13002.htm
[53] - Computer Weekly'Whitehall must embrace honesty and openness to succeed with IT' Tony Collins 2/11/05 http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/11/02/212683/
WhitehallmustembracehonestyandopennesstosucceedwithIT.htm
[54] - Computer Weekly 'Opinion: openness, accountability and awareness of risk are vital for ID card scheme to succeed' Tony Collins 6/12/05 http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/12/06/213266/Opinionopenness%2c
accountabilityandawarenessofriskarevitalforIDcardschemetosucceed.htm
[55] - The Register online magazine 'UK.gov IT: it's broke, how can we fix it?' John Lettice 2/12/04 www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/02/dwp_letters/
[56] - silicon.com 'Government and IT don't mix' Martin Brampton 16/8/05 http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39151363,00.htm
[57] - silicon.com 'Can new strategy stop government IT disasters?' Dan Ilett 17/11/05 http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39154309,00.htm
Download