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The Department for Transport's  shared services programme was forecast to cost £55 million and achieve savings of £112 million.  The programme is now forecast to cost over £120 million and save just £40 million.

SOUTH NORFOLK MP Richard Bacon has compared Whitehall’s attitude to information technology to a computer virus, as a new report finds that a contract to deliver a computer system for the Department for Transport failed due to inadequate testing. Mr Bacon said: “Whitehall’s attitude to IT is like a computer virus.  It is spreading across government and it is infecting departments”.

“The symptoms are the same every time.   First a department sets a ridiculously tight timetable for implementation, then the system is not tested adequately.  Once relations with the supplier crash, then the virus is likely to prove terminal”. 

“DEFRA has already been struck down with this virus, as has HM Revenue and Customs.  Last week we heard how badly the NHS has been infected.  Now the Department for Transport has been hit.  Whitehall needs to change radically its approach to IT, or this infection will continue to spread”. 

Mr Bacon was speaking as the National Audit Office published its report on shared services at the Department for Transport (DfT) and its agencies.  The report finds that the DfT used an existing contract with IBM to deliver the IT systems needed to develop shared services across the department.   The report finds that the DfT set a very demanding timetable for implementation and, as a consequence of the drive to meet the timetable, users had insufficient time to test the software.  As a result, the IT system proved unstable.

The shared services programme was forecast to cost £55 million and achieve savings of £112 million.  The programme is now forecast to cost over £120 million and save just £40 million.

23 May 2008
 

See also:
NAO REPORT: Shared services at the Department for Transport