NAO calls prison IT a 'spectacular failure'

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A National Audit Office (NAO) investigation into the National Offender Management Information System has called the project a "spectacular failure".

Today's report found it had been hampered by poor management leading to a three-year delay, a doubling in project costs and reductions in scope and benefits.

It said the initiative's original aim at its launch in response to Lord Carter's Correctional Services Review in 2004, to build a single offender management IT system for the prison and probation services, will not be met.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts called the project "a spectacular failure". And he stated: "What they delivered was a master class in sloppy project management."

But the report did point out that National Offender Management Service has managed to reduce the numbers of databases used from 220 to three, and that it had recently made progress in getting the project back on track.

The project was originally supposed to be introduced by January 2008, and had an approved lifetime cost of £234 million to 2020. But the NAO found that, by July 2007, £155 million had been spent on the project, it was two years behind schedule, and the estimated lifetime project costs had more than doubled to £690 million.

Overall, the report concluded that many of the causes of the delays and cost overruns could have been avoided with better management that understood the project's technical complexity.

It continued its damning findings by adding that budget monitoring was absent and change control weak. In addition, the main supplier contracts were designed in such a way that sufficient pressure could not be brought to bear on them to deliver to time and cost.

In January 2008, the National Offender Management Service began work on a rescoped programme with an estimated lifetime cost of £513 million and a delivery date of March 2011.

Although the report recognised that management opted for the lowest cost approach, which would deliver the service’s revised needs, this option did not have the best benefit to cost ratio.

Tim Burr, National Audit Office head, said: “The initiative to introduce a single offender management database has been expensive and ultimately unsuccessful."

And Leigh added: "This Committee hears of troubled government projects all too frequently. But the litany of failings in this case are in a class of their own. A new project team has been brought in. They cannot afford to repeat these kindergarten mistakes."

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