Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has described the 'stupendous incompetence' of the Department for Transport's shared-services project.
The computer system was inadequately procured and tested, unstable when it was switched on and on one occasion issued messages in German, says a report published by the Public Accounts Committee on 16 December, 2008.
The committee said the project was "one of the worst" it has seen and blamed the Department for Transport's senior management.
"Remember that this was an efficiency drive aimed at saving £57m by 2015. It now looks like the taxpayer will have to stump up £81m to pay for it," said Edward Leigh, chair of the committee.
"The senior managers responsible for this failure, as in the case of other recent large-scale project failures to come before this committee, have not been properly held to account."
The project to set up an in-house centralised shared services centre in Swansea was approved in April 2005, with the aim of providing human resources, payroll and finance support to the central department and its agencies.
Encouraged by the success of the NHS Shared Business Services joint venture, the department drew up an accelerated timetable for implementation. The centre was scheduled for completion in April 2008.
However, the committee found that the planning and management was extremely poor. Although the DfT knew its initial assumptions were incorrect just two months after the project started, it stuck to its original plans.
"The department knew that it was pushing things with such a tight timetable but, without robust challenge to such a risky strategy, ploughed on confidently. The result was lamentable," said Leigh.
Contributory factors, according to the report, were poorly skilled and inexperienced project-management staff, inadequate system testing and poor definition of governance structures.
Original estimates put the cost of setting up the project at £55m, with gross savings at £112m up to March 2015. This would have saved the DfT £52m. The department now estimates the project will cost £121m and produce benefits of £40m.
"The DfT must now work to deliver a functioning system which provides benefits and which its users trust," said Leigh. "It must also overhaul its project-management capabilities, closely examining the expertise of its project managers, setting up systems for subjecting future plans to rigorous challenge and, crucially, establishing incentives to officials for success and penalties for failure."
Talkback
Yet again we have another costly management failure in the Civil Service - and yet again there is no acceptance of responsibility by those responsible for the waste. Senior and middle management must be made to take career responsibility for their errors and failures and must either be sacked or demoted down to below their ability and competency ceiling.
With pay levels higher than the private sector and gold plated pensions must come responsibility and acceptance of job loss for failure.
"Although the DfT knew its initial assumptions were incorrect just two months after the project started, it stuck to its original plans."
You've got the answer right there. The Civil Service culture seems to have a really big problem with admitting mistakes, even to the point of changing it's mind where a problem isn't really anyone's fault. I guess in issues of politics and such there isn't any problem with ploughing on with a broken system. It will waste money and time. It will be slower and less effective. It will however, with enough manpower chucked at it, work.
Computerised systems are based on a very rigid and unforgiving logic. Bureaucrats seem to find the absolutism of computer logic completely alien. If something is just plain wrong in computer land, it won't work no matter how many people you throw at it or how often you declare it to be policy that it is actually right, it is still just plain wrong.
I know that's a gross generalisation, but as a trivial example, if the paper form has slots for 3 entries and occasionally needs a fourth, you can just write it in. If the computer form has 3 slots, you get 3 slots. snowpainting the fourth on the monitor just ain't gonna work.