The National Audit Office delivered a damning report on
the Home Office last week, blaming failures with new accounting
systems for the department's inability to deliver its accounts on
time.
The NAO report said, "The Adelphi accounting system could not
deal with failed payments processed through the Bank Automated
Clearing System, and Oracle consultants were employed to fix the
glitch between May and November 2004."
The NAO painted a different picture to that of the Home Office
in its Departmental Report 2004-05, published in June 2005. The
report described "successfully rolling out and implementing the
Adelphi finance system from May 2004". There was no mention of the
problems with the system.
However, the NAO said, "During 2004-05, there were significant
control weaknesses within key IT applications, which the Home
Office has now taken significant steps to address.
"Because of the difficulties in implementing the new accounting
system, the Home Office was unable to reconcile its cash position
during 2004-05, ie, match its own records of cash payments and
receipts with those shown on its bank statements.
"This is a key control for the prevention and detection of
fraud. Following significant work by the Home Office to investigate
a £3.035m discrepancy, it had to make adjustments of £946m to
reconcile its cash position."
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said, "At the time the
Departmental Report was drafted we were addressing all issues we
were aware of."
The Home Office did not explain why the report itself did not
speak about errors in the system or why it said the implementation
was a success. "A great deal of work has been done in recent months
to put right the problems highlighted by the NAO, which arose from
the introduction of a new accounting system in 2004-05," the
department said.