Whitehall IT projects face complex challenges, Nista report finds

The whole life cost of government IT projects totals £36bn, according to the newly created National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s (Nista’s) annual report – however, several of them are struggling.

The report assessed the status of projects in the Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP) based on a traffic light rating system. Notably, the Home Office’s Police National Database programme, which includes transitioning the database to cloud-native architecture, was rated ‘red’.

The programme includes migrating hosting to the Law Enforcement Cloud Platform, replacing the Oracle database and middleware, as well as delivering application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow police to analyse and export information from the database and allow for searches across national police datasets.

While the project was rated “amber” in last year’s report, it is now “red”, mainly due to the Home Office’s milestone impact assessment late in 2024, finding a five-month delay to delivery. Following this, the programme went through a full reset.

However, the report said that in May 2025, the Investment Committee (InvestCo) declined the contract change notification by the Home Office and “chose to pursue a contingency option”.

“The programme is now preparing for a further Nista-led Gate 0/3 Review, which will evaluate the progress of the contingency approach and inform updates to the Full Business Case ahead of the next InvestCo meeting in December 2025,” the report said.

The report also found issues with the government’s flagship digital identity programme, Gov.uk One Login. While the project to replace 190 different accounts and 44 different sign-in options into one single login across government has progressed steadily over the past year, it still retains its “amber” rating by Nista.

This is mainly due to the project, which is managed by the Government Digital Service (GDS), being large and complex, as well as depending on other departments taking part.

“The rating remains amber due to the complexity of the roadmap and ongoing dependencies on other departments for onboarding and benefits realisation,” the report said. “These interdependencies present delivery risks that require continued active management. The scaling of internal capabilities and steps taken on accessibility and digital inclusion are progressing positively, but overall deliverability is still contingent on cross-government alignment and sustained engagement.”

HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC’s) Making Tax Digital programme also retains its “amber” rating. The project to digitise the UK tax system has previously been fraught with delays, constant changes, increased costs and a lack of transparency.

The programme was originally due to be completed by 2020, but HMRC has continually moved the timeline, and the current date for completion is 2030.

Originally set at £226m, HMRC has spent more than £600m so far, and the estimated cost during the lifetime of the programme is more than £1.3bn.

“The amber delivery status recognises that the programme continues to navigate a challenging and complex delivery environment, but remains on track to deliver successfully,” the report said. “Over the last year, the programme made significant progress and remains on track against its critical path plan.”

Several other digital government programmes are also rated “amber”, including the Customs Declaration Service, the NHS programme to introduce electronic patient records into all secondary care trusts, and the Pensions Dashboards Programme.