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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.

Posted: May 20 2007, 02:38 PM by alexbarnett | with 1 comment(s)
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Comments

Mark Bower said:

A couple of observations from some big Government projects I have worked on.  Firstly most government IT projects are huge, with huge outcomes and millions if not billions riding on them.  This seems to paralyse decision makers - afraid to make any kind of decision for fear it may be the wrong one.

Secondly there is a cultural desire to want to centralise control, rather than delegate to those in a better position to make decisions.  I wrote some more about that here:

blogs.msdn.com/.../i-don-t-want-my-people-to-think.aspx

(BTW I think I may have run into you once when i was interviewed for a job at BlueWave)

# May 24, 2007 9:46 AM