Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

HM Revenue and Customs has replied promptly to my question on whether it had over-reacted to the missing child benefit CDs by stopping its staff from sending faxes to employers of changes to taxpayers' tax codes.

It has emerged that the extra security protection on the missing child benefit CDs might have been nothing more than Winzip release 8.

The National Policing Improvement Agency has scrapped a “world-first” secure, online crime reporting system which helped to reduce crime by linking the public and police forces across the UK.

The multi-million pound project is now the subject of a legal dispute between the National Policing Improvement Agency and IT supplier Qinetiq.

Apart from the use of the system during the London bombings, one of the lesser-known successes of the Police Portal was the part it played in the arrest and conviction of a 43-year-old man over dozens of offences related to thefts from churches.

When any major IT project is cancelled it's rarely easy to establish exactly what has gone wrong and why. The customer often accuses the supplier of being late and delivering a system that's not fit for purpose. Those who work for the supplier sometimes wonder whether the customer has cancelled a contract because it no longer needs, or wants, or can afford the system it ordered.

In the case of a project to replace the Police Portal, which has been cancelled by the National Policing Improvement Agency, it's again unclear what has gone wrong and why. These are the events leading up to the cancellation of the project and the legal dispute with Qinetiq, the supplier of the replacement Police Portal.