In a report published on Thursday, the National Audit Office said that the late running of the Ministry of Defence's programme to replace hundreds of computer systems with a single, secure infrastructure has so far deprived the department of savings from switching off legacy IT.
The contract to develop the £7.1bn Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) was awarded to the Atlas Consortium, led by EDS, in March 2005. In the National Audit Office's (NAO's) view, a number of important achievements were made during the first years, but there were problems with two key elements of the programme: the roll out of new computer hardware and the creation of software.
These problems caused major delays, according to the report. Although nearly 63,000 new computer terminals should have been installed at defence sites by July 2007, at the end of April 2008 fewer than half that number had been delivered. There have also been significant delays in installing new terminals on Royal Navy ships and submarines.
Both the MoD and its contractors underestimated the complexity of rolling out the project, according to the NAO. Implementation was carried out in an identical way at all sites, regardless of their complexity, size and the condition of supporting services.
Regarding costs, the NAO found an increase of three percent on the MoD's original estimate, and warned that any additional increase may limit the ministry's ability to meet its remaining requirements.
More positively, the report stated that, where the DII has been introduced, it has been running well.
Tim Burr, head of the NAO, said: "It was always going to be a demanding task for the MoD to replace its diverse information technology with a single, high-quality system."
"The MoD started with a clear vision of what it wanted to achieve and acted to address known risks. But the programme has run into difficulties and further concerted action will be needed to increase the rate of roll out of terminals and to deliver the remaining software," said Burr.
Key recommendations in the report include:
- The department should pay more attention to land and buildings when planning any major business-change programme
- When negotiating future roll out, the MoD should stick to its existing principle of only paying when equipment has been fully installed
- The MoD should keep detailed records of the extra costs incurred by delays in the DII, to get the best settlement from its contractors
