MP Edward Leigh says the Ministry of Defence might just as
well have bought eight turkeys as eight Chinook Mk3s. We would go
further, although admittedly with the benefit of hindsight. We
suggest that the £259m used to buy the Mk3s would have been better
spent on turkeys.
The criticisms made by Leigh, who is chairman of the Public
Accounts Committee, apply not only to Chinook helicopters. He was
drawing attention to the naive and inept specification of software
- a problem that has beset large-scale IT-related projects in
government for more than 20 years.
And so it is easy to imagine how the £259m spent on Chinooks that
will not fly could have been better spent on turkeys.
A visitors' centre could have been built for the birds on the
expansive lawns in Whitehall, where they could live their lives in
luxury and become tourist attractions. Their lifestyle would be
advertised under the banner: "The £259m turkeys".
To the departmental heads and ministers who come and go, and who
are temporarily responsible for commissioning duff helicopters and
IT systems in government, the centre would be reminder that there
should be evidence of accountability, in this case public
embarrassment, when taxpayers' money is wasted.
In the centre's "history" section there would be accounts of
permanent secretaries and ministers who gave assurances after each
disaster that the lessons had been learned. This section would
exhibit details of projects with names such as CHOTS, Chinook Mk2
software, Trawlerman, Operational Strategy, Folios, Pathway and
Libra.
Elsewhere, the "future" hall, with its exhibits of possible
turkeys, would feature the national programme for IT in the NHS and
the project to support the introduction of ID cards.
An alternative to the visitors' centre would be for the government
to act on Computer Weekly's Shaking Up Government IT campaign, by
publishing at least summaries of Gateway reviews on IT projects and
introducing legislation that enshrines the need for accountability
to Parliament in a statutory framework.
If openness and honesty on the progress of IT projects were
mandatory, there would at least be more incentive for departments
to get it right.
Given a choice between transparency and a visitors' centre, what
would the government do? We sense that Downing Street, on reading
this and taking advice from IT suppliers, would immediately begin
preparing a business case for systems to help administer the new
centre.