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Public sector 2008: Failures and successes

The government had its share of IT failures and controversy this year, but it’s had some success too.

By Nicole Kobie, 31 Dec 2008 at 12:45

The failure of big, expensive public sector IT projects was a common theme this year – as it probably is every year – with busted student grant systems and stalled motorway communcations projects and other failures worth £274 million.

The popular and well-loved – at least at the IT PRO offices – Oyster travelcard for London transport even had tech trouble.

But the biggest not-quite-yet failure is the NHS National Programme for IT. The £12.6 billion programme will see patient databases go digital and hospitals all linked up – assuming it ever happens, of course.

Among other deployment issues, major supplier Fujitsu Services walked away from its £895 million contract in May, leaving BT to pick up the pieces – and leaving the project at a “standstill” according to opposition parties. Will things improve in 2009? Of course – but such optimism is only possible because things can’t get much worse.

In a similarily depressing vein, the public sector was infamous this year for losing data. Sure, the private sector has data breaches too, but not as many as our civil servants, especially those in the Department of Health. Kicked off by last year’s ridiculously massive HMRC data breach, this year saw hundreds of breaches across a variety of government agencies. Click here to read the 11 lessons government really should have learned by now to prevent data breaches.

And if all that isn’t enough to make you turn to anarchy for your New Year’s resolution, last month marked the beginning of the rollout of UK identity cards – and the fingerprint database that backs it up. The first round are going to so-called foreign nationals – people applying to stay in the UK to study or marry – but they’ll be issued to proper British citizens beginning next year at a cost of at least £30 per card, plus the billions to develop the back-end systems.

Love them or hate them, you should know about them – click here to read our roundup of what you need to know about the controversial identity card and database scheme.

And if you’re not a fan of databases, don’t forget the plans for a [a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/606816/government-to-spy-on-email-using-12bn-database" target="_blank"]