This is just one among a string of high-profile failed IT projects in the public sector, and one more black eye for EDS, the company charged with implementing the project. Even the recovery plan that EDS drew up to restore the computer system to order missed its targets and there is now no date for having all old cases on the new computer system.
It is a fiasco of the highest order, to be sure. But EDS does not appear to be the only party at fault; the Department for Work and Pensions was, we are told, unclear about its specifications from the outset, and then kept changing these unclear specifications throughout the development phase.
However badly technology failed the CSA, it did so because of a failure to crystallise the vague aspirations of the people who would use the systems, and then to communicate solid designs to the people who were to build them. It is, of course, an age old problem. George Bernard Shaw noticed that the English and the Americans have enough trouble talking to each other even with a common language. What chance do techies and non-techies have with, essentially, no common tongue?
In the world of IT, it all comes down of course to the importance of good specs, which is something that non-techies are notoriously bad at. Good specs are the essence of a successful relationship, and it really should not be that hard: if it can't be written down as a simple rule, it should not be accepted.
In the case of the CSA and EDS, poor specs should have been identified as a problem right at the beginning. That the CSA couldn't understand specifications is a scandal -- but so is EDS' failure to refuse to do the work until the design was completed correctly. These people couldn't collaborate to design and build a £500 garden shed, let alone a half-billion pound IT system.
The select committee must find out why both parties failed in their jobs. We suggest an old journalistic formula: follow the money. Meanwhile, let this failure be an abject lesson to anyone involved in IT projects: if you don't have good specs, you'll be working blind.
Talkback
The importance of a formal education and the ability to read, right and comprehend and elimination of pure wind from both sides is also an apt title.
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell
As a computer professional of 35 years, I was surprised with the following comment in your article,: "so [ie scandalous] is EDS' failure to refuse to do the work until the design was completed correctly'.
What work?
What would you have EDS do, commence programming something vague and non-specific? How much MORE money do you think THAT attitude would have wasted?
No, EDS is perfectly correct in demanding accurate specifications and a complete design.
I have no specific information on this project, but generally the type of failure your article describes lies with the process.
Where users are unsure of how a computer system can be used to automate their tasks, an educational component needs to be costed and introduced into the project. That, and the use of skilled, professional Business Analysts, would possibly have avoided yet another blunder.
However you achieve it, USERS MUST specify their requirements clearly. Without clear requirements, the project will fail. Every time.