Bugs in the Public Sector

September 28 1993

COMPUTERISATION projects in the public sector usually promise impressive gains in efficiency and service to the public. All too often, the returns are rather less impressive.

The computerisation of the UK Passport Agency was supposed to reduce staff by 20% and allow passports to be processed in five working days. Earlier this year, the National Audit Office reported that computerisation had failed to reduce staff costs and that it was still taking up to 20 days to get a passport.

Meanwhile, the London Ambulance Service's #1.2m computer system for despatching vehicles to emergencies was scrapped after claims that several patients may have died because of delays in sending ambulances.

The installation of an on-line computer system for the payment of benefits in the Department of Social Security - the subject of this book - is no exception. Claimed to be the largest non-defence computerisation programme outside the US, it has taken more than ten years to complete.

The cost, #1.8bn, is more than double the estimates at the start of the project. The expected savings have dwindled and the promised reductions in staff numbers have failed to materialise.

Worse, the payment of benefits continues to be criticised by the NAO, the ombudsman and MPs, with unacceptable error levels in unemployment benefit payments and delays in paying the new disability benefits launched last year.

Major computer projects are notoriously hard to pull off, and the private sector has had its own problems. The Stock Exchange's Taurus project, was designed to allow paperless dealing and settlement of share bargains. Conflicting user requirements made Taurus so unwieldy that it was cancelled earlier this year.

At the heart of the public sector's difficulties - at least until recently - has been a culture that favours administration and procedure rather than management and change. Increasingly, ministers and mandarins have seen the value of bringing in outside consultants as agents of change.

In the case of the DSS computer project, the consultants came largely from Andersen Consulting, the management consultancy wing of accountants Arthur Andersen. Ivan Fallon, deputy editor of the Sunday Times, documents their efforts in this book, explaining their heroic efforts to force through a strategy devised before their arrival against the resistance of many in the department.

The delays and the cost over-runs would have been much greater had it not been for the efforts of Andersen Consulting, the book claims. This conclusion is hardly surprising, given that Andersen sponsored its publication. No doubt the firm's clients will receive complementary copies.

The Paper Chase is not likely to be a best seller. Nor does it deserve to be. It is a confusing and slipshod account which does little to illuminate the issues.

Some sales are guaranteed by the copious lists of names of those involved in the project. But even those who played starring roles in the epic may be disconcerted when the story peters out at the end with only a cursory evaluation of the success of such an important project.

There is a good book to be written about managing change in the civil service. It would need to look at the obstacles to good management in Whitehall, and the steps that have been taken to overcome them - including the creation of executive agencies and the empowerment of managers. This book isn't it.