ID cards and the worst of public sector IT failures

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Government IT projects are infamous for failing, going over-budget, and even being shelved.

A report last year showed that the government wastes £274 million on defunct IT projects each year, with a separate review noting that the government doesn't seem to be too good at learning from its mistakes.

Not every public sector IT project is a giant, steaming mess of failure - really - so try to keep that in mind as you read about the large IT projects that didn’t go quite as the government planned.

ID card woes

On one hand, it’s hard to call the ID card project an IT failure. It is up and running. Sort of. Cards have been doled out to foreign nationals, even if card readers don’t exist yet.

The main problem with ID cards is the politics. It’s clear to any project manager that big projects need buy in before they go ahead, and this one simply doesn’t have it. A lot of voters don’t want it, and the Conservatives have said they’ll scrap the project if they’re elected.

Really, even if the database were perfect, and card readers existed, this project would still draw criticism. That's because so many people simply don’t want it. Pair that with the tech troubles, and it's hard to call the ID card project a success – but that doesn’t stop the government from calling it that, of course.

NHS IT not very healthy

Digitising health records is necessary, but this isn’t the way to go about it. The £12.6 billion National Programme for IT is four years late and it’s only going to get worse following contractors dropping out.

One NHS trust even said its new IT systems had caused a backlog in treating patients. A report earlier this year showed nine of 31 systems needed "immediate action."

Child Support Agency a "turkey from day one"

Dubbed a “turkey from day one” by auditors, the £381 million IT system at the CSA wasn't just a failure, the tech managed to down wider reforms and the agency itself too.

Even though the system was years late, it still launched with 14 critical faults. Such technical issues meant 250,000 non-compliance issues hadn’t been dealt with, meaning £3.5 billion in child support never got paid. Fixing the errors will cost some £320 million.

"The agency threw huge sums of money at a new IT system which was intended to underpin the reforms," said Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Public Account Committee (PAC). "The Department for Work and Pensions never really knew what it was doing in dealing with the contractors EDS and the system was a turkey from day one."

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