Government saves £450m by rolling back IT projects

The government has saved £450m by rolling back IT projects and reducing departmental IT spend.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the government has saved £3.75bn since May last year as part of the coalition's cost-cutting drive. Of this figure, £150m has been saved by halting or curtailing spend on major IT projects and £300m by reducing spend on lower value IT projects, said Maude.

One of the biggest project cancellations was the scrapping of FireControl at the end of last year.

An additional £870m has been cut on consultancy spend and £350m has been saved by centralising spend on common services, while £300m has been saved by shrinking the size of the civil service.

However, since Maude last announced Cabinet Office cost savings of £3bn, no further expenditure has been cut through contract renegotiations with the government's largest suppliers, with the figure of £800m remaining unchanged since March.

The news follows a damning report from MPs which found the government sometimes pays 10 times as much as the standard commercial rate for IT projects.

Commenting on the £3.75bn in cost savings, Maude said: "We will continue to seek out and eradicate waste in government, while also delivering longer-term programmes of reform to ensure sustainable change and room for growth across the public sector."

Photo: Cabinet Office