Councillors in Haringey want to discover why costs on
the Tech Refresh IT project more than doubled to £24.6m without the
full council being told in time to curb the
overspending.
They will now raise dozens of questions on Tech Refresh at an
extraordinary meeting of the Oversight and Scrutiny Committee, due
to be held tonight (28 February).
Not all councillors were notified of the project's escalating
costs and lack of controls as the project progressed. Some now say
they would have expected the council's main internal auditor,
Deloitte and Touche, or the external auditor, the Audit Commission,
or both, to provide an early warning of the project's rising
costs.
Councillors want to know if the auditors had provided warnings,
which were not published by the council, or whether no warnings
were given by either the council or the auditors, and if so, why
not.
Information only became generally available after the cost of
the scheme rose from £9m to £24.6m. Although suppliers on the Tech
Refresh project have absorbed £5.5m of the overspending, the
council has still been left with a bill of £19.1m.
Deloitte and Touche's consultancy arm was involved in the
overspent project.
In a report published last month the Audit Commission said the
council "cannot demonstrate that the full additional £10m costs
represent value for money".
It identified "significant failures" in the running of the
project and said the project continues to represent a "significant
risk" for the council.
Tech Refresh began in June 2003 to replace the council's IT
infrastructure with "thin client" systems in which the applications
reside on servers, not on PCs.
Haringey wanted to give staff access to the web and mobile
computing. It also wanted to share information with the NHS and
police, and cut IT costs.
One concern is that if there is no pressure on auditors to issue
an early alert on IT projects that may be running out of control,
elected representatives such as councillors will be unable to take
action to curb overspending. At Haringey the full council learnt
about lack of controls and poor record keeping on the project only
after the costs had doubled.
Last week Computer Weekly's articles on the project were
mentioned at a full council meeting. One of the ruling Labour
councillors said Tech Refresh represented "a problem, not a
pattern."
A spokesman for Haringey said the council's executive committee
has approved an action plan - which it has published - in response
to the Audit Commission's report.
"We have been open from the start, reporting to committee and
answering questions from councillors in detail on a number of
occasions.
"The additional spending was dealt with in outturn reports on
the 2004/2005 accounts, published in June 2005, and was covered by
earmarked reserves in that financial year," he said.
"The Audit Commission report on this programme was not an audit.
It was a review report commissioned by the council to learn
lessons, and its recommendations have been accepted in full."
Haringey said Tech Refresh was virtually complete, and was
providing staff with the systems they need to deliver more
efficient services.