Nineteen IT projects at DWP over-budget or lateThe Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) in Great Britain is undergoing a large transformation program involving more than 200 projects requiring IT development. The original estimate for these projects was £2.1bn, but the current estimate is now £2.4bn! An audit undertaken by the National Audit Office investigated 19 of the most important projects in the program and discovered that of the 19 audited all 19 would not meet objectives for budget or schedule! 9 were predicted to be over budget (presumably because they were tracking over budget at the time of the audit) and 10 were predicted to be late, again presumably because they were tracking behind schedule.A committee of MPs was formed to investigate the department and the committee chairman, Terry Rooney MP, said "This is an area of serious concern to the committee, as well as to the public." The committee is quizzing civil servants in the department on the state of the program. An example used to illustrate the problems with the program was the customer information system, a sort of Customer Relations Management system used by the DWP to manage its customers. The original budget for this system was £40m but has ballooned to £88m! The central payment system to be used for the payment of benefits was another example cited: the project was initially budgeted at £90m and the planned delivery date was October 2006. The project is currently estimated to cost £178m and isn't expected to deliver until 2011! The civil servants responsible for IT in that department defended their record saying "We have hugely strengthened department governance, and this allows us to see where the problems have come from. "We are now in a position to make sure that these types of overruns do not happen in the future." The measures they have taken to ensure that these types of overruns and missed deadlines doesn't happen in the future have to do with engaging project management professionals to oversee projects and ensure that they are properly governed. It would seem that in the case of the DWP, this can't happen soon enough. The implication for the project management profession is that as more and more scrutiny is placed on government spending, it increases the pressure to look outside of the current staff of civil servants and seek out qualified practitioners from private industry. The question isn't: "How much is that service going to cost this department?", but rather: "How do we ensure that we get the best qualified resources for our money?", and "How do we ensure the resources we engage are qualified?" The answer to both questions is simple: Hire project managers who have proven track records and only hire those with PMP® certification! If you don't currently hold that certification, now may be the time to investigate getting it. Economic times will become increasingly challenging for the foreseeable future and there will be |
more need to curb spending. If you're looking for a cost effective product for your  |
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