2 in 3 government IT projects fail. Solution? Start a government IT project.
You might have noticed I have little confidence in the ability of governments to successfully execute IT projects. My skepticism is well founded I think, and the latest numbers provided by the UK government itself give me no reason the think otherwise - the CIO of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) speaking at the Government IT Summit this week said:
"Today, only 30 per cent of government IT projects and programmes are successful. We want 90 per cent by 2010/11. We want to achieve a 20 per cent overall reduction on IT spend in government, including reducing the total cost of a government laptop by 40 per cent [in the same timescale]."
So the CIO of the failed IT projects department Joe Harley has set out plans for another government IT project as the solution to failed IT projects: to reduce the number of project failures to just 1 in 10. Unfortunately, as much as this project gets my support in principle, the 2 in 3 chance that this government IT project will add to the heap of failed government IT projects gives me little to get excited about.