Tories would Scrap ₤8 bn of IT Projects - Ian White, ComputerWeekly.com, June 29, 2009

The Tory party in England has said it would cut ₤8 bn worth of IT projects if elected. The announcement was made in response to a study that revealed that IT projects in England accounted for 1.4% of the GDP, or ₤16.5 bn per year yet only 30% of them succeed. This information is contained in a paper on the effective use of IT in government written by Liam Maxwell for the Centre for Policy Studies.

The degree to which the country has changed from paper or phone contact with the government to the internet is indicative of this failure. A London School of Economics study found that out of 142,000,000 contacts with the government, only 340,000, or 0.025% were made on-line. The massive investment in IT projects was intended to save the government money spent on supporting other forms of contact. The investment has obviously not succeeded in realizing the intended benefits. The Tories would scrap large IT projects which centralize data in favor of allowing individuals to manage their own data. The Tories estimate that by eliminating selected projects they could reduce government IT spending by 50%.

The Tories suggest that purchasing off the shelf software or services from vendors such as Google (Google Health) and Microsoft (HealthVault) would allow them to scrap large projects such as the countries ID Health Card scheme. They believe there is already sufficient political will to support scrapping that programme and the IMP (Interception Modernisation Programme) programme which enables wiretapping on Internet Protocol (Voice over IP) calls. Other large IT programmes may be too entrenched to easily abandon.

There could be massive fallout from this study if the Tories succeed in replacing the Labour government in England. The study could influence the current governments spending decisions even if the Tories don’t form the next government. Failure on the scale reported in the study will get everyone’s attention and remedies will be sought. The economic times the failures are being reported in will be an additional impetus for change.

The change would obviously be catastrophic for English project and programme managers managing government IT projects, but could be a boon for project and programme managers working in private industry. Off the shelf products such as HealthVault and Google Health are meant to offer economies of scale savings but must be customized to support the environment they are deployed in. Implementing these systems in England will still require large projects, although not as large as the home grown solutions. The lesson to be learned from the English government’s experience in IT is that IT organizations cannot support failed projects at the rate experienced in England. Projects must have clear goals and objectives and must meet those goals and objectives. Realization of the benefits planned for the project must be one of the goals and another must be that the project delivers within budget.

Project and programme managers are instrumental in helping their organizations avoid the mistakes made in England. The project manager cannot set the goals and objectives of the project, but can clearly understand what those goals and objectives are and then measure project progress towards them. Project management in this case means gathering the project information that indicates progress towards the goals and objectives and the communication of that information to project sponsors and other stakeholders. It also means having the backbone to tell the sponsors when the project is off the rails and will not meet the goals and objectives, or even that the goals and objectives are not feasible for the project.

The experience in English government IT obviates the need for well trained project and programme managers. A key source for that skill set will continue to be the Project Management Institute (PMI) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and the key indicator that a project manager has acquired that knowledge will continue to be the Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification managed by the PMI. For more information on certification, please go to our PMP® information section at: http://threeo.ca/pmpcertifications29.php. For information on how you can use our downloadable interactive training product, AceIt, please visit our AceIt section at: http://threeo.ca/purchaseaceits107.php.