A member of the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee
has called for the blacklisting of IT suppliers that oversell their
products, services or consultancy.
Labour MP Austin Mitchell says that blacklisting would
discourage suppliers from taking advantage of taxpayers and making
mistakes.
In a
Commons debate on the work of the Public Accounts Committee, he
said of IT contracts: "All too often, departments seem incapable of
dealing with the wily stratagems and sales patter of consultancy
salesmen, particularly from the big houses, who offer expertise,
but over-praise the product in question and forecast that it can do
more than it actually can."
He added: "Departments, in turn, try to set too many objectives
to be accomplished, which always leads to failure in IT contracts.
When we try to do more with an IT system than it can bear, it
inevitably breaks down and performs inadequately. There is failure
on both sides, on the part of the department and the
salespeople.
"We see that problem in various reports before us."
Mitchell referred
to several big IT projects, including the NHS's £12.7bn
National Programme for IT (NPfIT). He said departments need
better advice to "put them on a more secure and effective platform
for controlling the suppliers of IT systems they deal with".
He added: "No taxpayer pound should be the source of easy
profit. That is an absolute maxim. However, in consultancy and IT
services, the taxpayer pound has been a source of far-too-easy
profits. We need to control that, exact penalties where necessary
and blacklist firms that are over-selling in that fashion to see
that they do not make the same profits and mistakes in future."
Another member of the Public Accounts Committee,
Richard
Bacon, said of the NPfIT that the government considers that
value for money has been obtained because the contracts require
that suppliers are not to be paid until they have delivered. "But
the position is not quite as simple as that," said Bacon who added
that in some instances "suppliers have been paid by the back
door".
Fuller account of Austin Mitchell's comments - IT Projects Blog
>>