The Department for Work and Pensions did not
retain sufficient IT management skills in-house to manage a £381m
outsourcing contract with
EDS to provide new systems for the
Child Support Agency.
This contributed to problems with new systems which were a
factor in the
Agency failing to collect £3.5bn in child maintenance, the
Public Accounts Committee has concluded.
“Having outsourced most of its IT capability to EDS, the
Department did not maintain the
capability to be an intelligent customer,” the committee said
in its report.
“It needs to strengthen its independent in-house IT capacity to
challenge the validity of assurances given by IT suppliers and keep
up to date with both technical and commercial developments in the
IT industry by recruiting a cadre of high calibre IT
professionals.”
IT outsourcing experts have long said the failure of contracts
in giving their expected benefits is often down to poor management
from within the customer.
The PAC, which audits public spending in the UK, said
the Agency had been working with EDS since February this year
to stabilise the new IT system by fixing 500 defects that were
still present three years after it was introduced.
The Committee also noted that the number of uncleared
applications had improved up to December last year.
However, Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the PAC, said: “The
Department for Work and Pensions never really knew what it was
doing in dealing with the contractor EDS and the system was a
turkey from day one.
“The department also spent £91 million on bringing in external
advisers, but there are no records of where more than a third of
this money went,” he said.
The government is due to introduce a new organisation, the Child
Maintenance and Enforcement Commission to replace the CSA in 2008.
“The government must keep an iron grip on this new organisation to
ensure that the lessons have been learned from the CSA debacle,”
Leigh said.
Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain said: “We know that
previous reforms have not worked, that is why we are replacing the
CSA with a radically different child maintenance system. We have
learnt lessons from the past. The new system will lift children out
of poverty, give power and choice to parents, enforce
responsibilities, and deliver value for taxpayers.”
Child Support Agency: a history of IT failure >>
The Department for Work and
Pensions >>
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