Only a minority of government IT projects are taking
steps to measure whether they are delivering on their targets,
according to a report published this week by the
Public Accounts Committee.
The public spending watchdog's report,
Delivering successful IT-enabled business change, includes
examples of government business-change projects that have been
underpinned by IT. But it notes that only a third of those IT
projects that have delivered against expectations have analysed how
they achieved their aims.
On current estimates, the government is spending between £12bn
and £14bn a year on new or existing IT and related services, as it
bids to deliver improvements in areas such as health, education,
and law and order.
"The risks are high and, given a history of past failures,
government departments need the structures and management processes
to secure greater success in IT-enabled programmes and projects,"
says the report.
However, it warns that most projects do not complete Gate 5 of
the government's
Gateway IT-project review process. It is this stage which
assesses how departments have benefited from the IT investment.
The report says that work on the
Payment Modernisation Programme, which covers the payment of
social security benefits direct to claimants' bank accounts, shows
that by regularly reviewing IT projects after completion, and
setting up dedicated teams responsible for ensuring that the
project delivers, the government could get better value for money
on IT investments.
Public Accounts Committee chairman Edward Leigh, says, "Not all
major government IT projects end up on the rocks - as the
successful Payment Modernisation Programme and Pension Credit
scheme have shown. If more large IT projects are to be similarly
successful, departments will have to understand what was done to
make things go right."
Figures in the report show that up to June last year, only a
third of IT-enabled programmes and projects completed a Gate 5
review within a year of delivering the project.
To improve on this, government departments should appoint a
senior manager to ensure that Gate 5 reviews occur within a year of
a project becoming ready for services to exploit new IT processes
to their full potential, the report says.
Other problems identified by the committee include ministers
receiving too few briefings on the progress of critical IT projects
and a lack of continuity of senior ownership of these large-scale
projects.
Despite the Office of Government Commerce recommending that
senior responsible owners (SROs) be retained for the life of a
project, ministers are still not sufficiently engaged to halt
failing projects early enough, says the report.
It reveals that only half of senior responsible owners have
quarterly meetings with their minister, and a fifth have no
meetings at all.
The committee is also concerned about the level of experience of
many SROs.
"More than half of SROs are in their first SRO role, and nearly
half spend less than 20% of their time on such duties. Lack of
relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of
post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled
change," it says.
Only a third of
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