Analysis: Why Whitehall is programmed to fail with computers

By Neil Tweedie

NEW Labour loves IT. No matter how many times government computer projects go bottom up, spewing out tax credits to those not entitled to them or messing up passport applications, the great monolithic departments of state just can't launch enough of them.   

Political analysts would probably say that it has something to do with Tony Blair's fascination with importing private-sector efficiency into the public sector, combined with an authoritarian instinct to control the population through enormous data bases.  

The trouble is that the Civil Service doesn't really do efficiency. Huge computer projects, which can be a nightmare even for tightly-run private companies, are incompatible with Whitehall's no-blame culture.  

Take the House of Commons public accounts committee report warning departments that they needed to pay closer attention to learning lessons from information technology fiascos. That was in 1983, when computers were, as far as anyone can remember, powered by steam.  

No one in the corridors of power took the slightest bit of notice. In 2004, 21 years after the committee's report, the National Audit Office said exactly the same thing in another report, Improving IT Procurement.  

But still the disasters continued: the Passport Agency breakdown in 1999 that resulted in hundreds of holidaymakers missing flights; the failure of the Home Office asylum seeker database in 2000; the Probation Service system scrapped after consuming pounds 120 million; the suspension of the insecure Inland Revenue online tax filing system in 2002; the Child Support Agency system which cost pounds 456 million; the Criminal Records Bureau vetting delays that cost applicants potential jobs and, just recently, the news that the Inland Revenue system has given away pounds 1.9 million in unjustified tax credits.  

Tony Collins, of Computer Weekly magazine, believes that most come down to lack of accountability and ministers promising quick fixes to boost their profiles.  

"In private companies, you are looking at projects that run for a month, a year or two years,'' said Mr Collins.  

"In the public sector you are dealing with projects stretching out over years - maybe a decade. You could have two changes of Government in that time, or numerous changes in project management. So no head is going to roll.  

"The assurances now being made about the NHS system are worthless because the ministers making them won't be there.''  

Mr Collins said government systems rarely failed because of implicit problems with software. The problem was far more likely to be a minister's insistence that the system be changed at short notice for political advantage.  

So obsessed was Whitehall with cutting costs that flawed bids would be accepted simply because they were cheap. The number of computer contractors capable of introducing big systems, such as the American firm EDS, was also small, limiting choice.  

And now, the Government faces the biggest challenge, dwarfing the NHS project. The identity card database will have to store and disseminate biometric data on 40 million adults. It could cost as much as pounds 19 billion, according to the London School of Economics, and will not protect the country against terrorism - its original stated aim.  

No one believes the project will run smoothly but at least the computer contractors will be in work.