Commons committee recommends publication of Gateway reviews of
Whitehall IT projects.
Parliament last week launched its heaviest attack yet on the
culture of secrecy that surrounds government IT projects.
After an exhaustive eight-month inquiry, the House of Commons Work
and Pensions select committee has published a report into public
sector IT project disasters.
The 99-page report by the Labour-dominated committee takes on the
lack of transparency and the inability to comply with best practice
that have characterised so many public sector failures and lays out
a programme for putting things right.
Committee chairman Sir Archy Kirkwood MP gave the government two
months to come up with an adequate response or, he said, the
committee "would simply return to the attack".
In a key recommendation the committee threw its weight behind a
campaign by Computer Weekly for Gateway reviews of risky government
IT projects to be published.
In addition to the publication of Gateway reviews, the committee
wants the publication of strategic, outline and full business cases
on all major IT projects. The business cases set out the effect of
a project on an organisation's cash flow and balance sheet, show
how risks will be managed and what are the contingencies.
The committee also recommended a study by July next year into the
likely effect of implementing a UK statutory framework similar to
the Clinger-Cohen Act passed by president Clinton in the US in
1996. The legislation could improve compliance with good practice
and strengthen accountability of departments to Parliament and
other stakeholders.
The recommendation was made despite Peter Gershon, head of the
government's efficiency review, questioning whether the US
legislation has had a marked effect on the success of
projects.
Computer Weekly gave the committee oral and written evidence on why
an enactment in the UK of the act's most successful clauses would
help avoid further failure in government IT-related
programmes.
Treasury minister Ruth Kelly announced last month that she would
consider a statutory framework. But it is the committee's call for
the publication of Gateway reviews which will pit its MPs against
the Treasury's Office of Government Commerce and some top civil
servants who are determined to keep the documents secret.
The committee was unable to obtain any reviews or summaries of
Gateway reviews, which were carried out on IT projects at the
Department for Work and Pensions. The committee was told that
public spending watchdog the National Audit Office provided
scrutiny and oversight.
But the committee, although praising the work of the National Audit
Office, said the NAO's reports were published after IT disasters
had occurred and could not cover all major IT schemes. "Current
projects need to be subject to current scrutiny," said the
committee.
The government is not obliged to act on the report's
recommendations. But Kirkwood said the committee would return to
the issues raised by the report if the government and the
department do not engage in a "sensible" debate on the
findings.
Ministers usually respond to select committee reports within two
months of publication.
"The committee's finding are a vindication of this publication's
Shaking Up Government IT campaign," said Computer Weekly editor
Hooman Bassirian.
"But the road to IT disasters is paved with good reports. The
committee's work needs to be followed by action and we are
heartened by the determination of Sir Archy Kirkwood [the committee
chairman] to see it through.
"Our campaign is not the final word, but the start of a
conversation on how to make government IT projects deliver
successes."
Lessons from the inquiry
- "The vision of using effective IT accurately and speedily to
process data to the benefit of customers, taxpayers and staff is a
prize that is clearly worth pursuing"
- "Our main recommendations for improving the success rate of IT
systems centre around improving accountability. We believe that
greater openness is important in its own right, but should also
lead to a higher success rate"
- "The necessary standards and methodologies of best practice are
already in the public domain. The trick seems to be to get key
people - from ministers to project teams - to comply with the
standards"
- "We have yet to see evidence of brave decisions by ministers to
re-focus or delay projects at an early stage. We suspect that too
often civil servants may find it extremely difficult to say no to
ministers, or if they do, may only do so when it is too late"
- "In our view, the decision to shed its skilled IT staff
undermined the Department for Work and Pensions' ability to monitor
or assess the work of its IT suppliers"
- "It is clear that issues around culture, staff training and
working patterns were not given enough attention by managers.
Change management has been recognised as crucial to successful
IT"
- "It is a lucky caller who gets put through to somebody that can
retrieve the relevant files onto their screen and extract the
necessary information before the computer crashes. Defective IT can
have an adverse effect on staff morale."
Source: Departments for Work and Pensions, Management of IT
Projects, Making IT deliver for DWP customers report
Shaking up government IT >>