The National Audit Office has begun an investigation
into the £5bnDefence Information Infrastructure (DII)contract - a programme that has run intomajor problems, as revealed by
Computer Weekly and Channel 4 News this month.
The Ministry of Defence awarded a contract for the Windows-based
DII, described by the NAO as one of the largest IT programmes in
the world, to the EDS-led Atlas consortium in March 2005.
The project aims to replace separate networks and systems with
150,000 terminals running on a single IT infrastructure for the
army, navy and air force, at 2,000 defence sites worldwide.
Under the original plans 70,000 terminals were due to have been
delivered by this summer, but fewer than 17,000 were live by the
end of October. The MoD said the numbers are now "ramping up".
The NAO will examine how the DII was planned and designed, how
the implementation has gone to date, and whether the right
governance and management arrangements are in place to enable
continued delivery in the future.
The NAO is also expected to investigate the MoD's decision to
award a further contract to Atlas before there was sufficient
evidence that its earlier work had represented value for money.
The public spending watchdog, which plans to publish its
findings in the summer, said the department's "most important
business change and projects depend on elements of DII being
implemented successfully and on time".
MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee who
has regularly asked questions on the DII contract, said he welcomed
the NAO inquiry into the MoD programme. He said he had serious
concerns about its progress, the problems encountered, and whether
its scope could be cut back.
The leaders of the DII project have defended it. In an interview
with Computer Weekly, the MoD's DII programme director Bob Quick
and Howard Hughes, chief operating officer of Atlas, did not deny
there have been difficulties, but they said the scheme was on a
sound footing.
The NAO's decision to investigate the DII shows that it is
prepared to report on large IT-based programmes part-way through a
10-year contract. In the past, the NAO has reported on IT-based
projects when they have been curtailed or abandoned because of
serious problems.
Last June, the NAO broke with tradition and reported on the
NHS's National Programme for IT when contracts awarded under the
scheme had run for less than three years. The contracts are worth
£6.2bn and are due to last 10 years.
The Ministry of Defence split the Defence Information
Infrastructure contract into three increments. The MoD's original
plan was to award the first increment - worth about £2.3bn - to the
Atlas consortium and assess the consortium's performance before
awarding the further two phases. But in December 2006 the MoD
decided to award Atlas a further phase of work, worth about £750m,
before the first increment had finished and been fully
assessed.
New DII contract awarded before first phase assessed