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The litany of failed government IT projects is like a roll call of grievous misfortune and “stupendous incompetence”, as a House of Commons Public Accounts Committee once said, referring to an IT project slated to save £57m but which ended up costing £750m. Sound familiar? From the disastrous NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), which squandered an unforgivable £12.4bn of taxpayers’ money before the plug was pulled, to GCHQ’s £41m budget to move its systems, which ended up costing more than £300m, and a lot more projects besides, the list of infamy just keeps growing. Mother of all curses Why do so many government IT projects fail so spectacularly? Did someone in government break a dozen mirrors, walk under a ladder and shoot an albatross out of the sky, all on Friday the 13th? In a recent report – Government’s approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges – the National Audit Office (NAO) nailed several reasons why government digital ambition often takes a nosedive, recommending alternative approaches to ensure ...