Common theme of failed public sector IT projects is the lack of proper governance, writes John Collins

This week's report on e-government by the Comptroller and Auditor General, John Purcell, had a depressing air of familiarity about it for those involved in the local technology sector.

Purcell's report found that of the 161 online projects funded by Government in 2000-2005, which had a combined cost of €420 million, just 74 were delivered and operational by mid-2006, 44 were partly implemented, while 23 were abandoned. Even for projects delivered "in most cases, the claims of benefits achieved are relatively non-specific".

"It's a case of the same old, same old," said Pat Millar, managing director of project management specialists Clarion Consulting.

In his view a common theme of failed public sector IT projects, from the HSE's Ppars fiasco to the over-ambitious Public Services Broker highlighted this week, is a lack of proper governance.

"They don't seem to have the proper structures in place to manage them," says Millar. "The projects get bigger and bigger, but the experience level of the people put in charge of them is not changed."

He says in his own consultancy there are projects that he will give to a staff member with two or three years' experience, but if the project doubles in scope he will hand it over to someone more experienced.

There are good examples of major e-government projects delivered well, but they tend to be in the larger Government departments and agencies such as the Revenue Commissioners, Department of Agriculture and Department of Social and Family Affairs.

Martin Murphy, managing director of HP Ireland, says these successes should form the basis of a new model for the future. He suggests that the civil servants with proven skills in key areas such as project management and analysis, contract negotiations and legals should be pooled in a central agency.

"Let the individual departments decide on their own strategy, but a central agency should handle procurement and management of the projects," says Murphy.

A well-established concept in IT is getting "business sponsorship" for any project. Rather than the IT department or the chief information officer (CIO) being expected to push every project through, senior managers champion them and grease the wheels to get them delivered. "Clearly the level of business sponsorship is not what it should be in the public sector," says Millar. "Department secretaries should be taking ownership and saying if this doesn't work it will be on my head."

Shane Dempsey, the newly-appointed director of the Irish Software Association (ISA), believes that it is not the technology or the consultants that cause projects to fail or run over budget, but the cultural and change management issues.

"If a civil servant sees that a piece of software is going to replace even a part of their job, there is going to be resistance to the change," says Dempsey.

An analysis of the HSE's Ppars HR and payroll system, which has cost over €130 million, shows that one of the fundamental errors committed was not optimising the existing systems before attempting to computerise them.

Dempsey says that after the Ppars over-runs were revealed, the ISA felt the public sector would move away from using the larger consultancies but instead it has become more reliant on them. The ISA believes the reliance on the large multinational consultancies is at the expense of its members such as Curam and Fineos, whose software has been used for ground-breaking e-government and state-sponsored computer projects around the world.

"Maybe we should be looking at a blended partnership model where extra points on public sector tenders would be given to large consultants that partner with small to medium enterprises," says Dempsey. "It's not about buying Irish, but getting the best solution for the public sector."

To be fair to the big consultancies they have been responsible for some of the e-government successes. Accenture was the main supplier on the hugely successful Revenue Online Service, while Siemens did much of the heavy lifting on the Department of Agriculture's Animal Health computer system, both of which were highlighted as successes.

On the debit side, Deloitte was the main supplier on Ppars, while BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) was awarded a €22 million contract in 2003 for an online passport project which has not proceeded.

"If they are using the big consultancies there is no reason they can't bring in someone else to manage the project and provide oversight and governance," says Millar. "That way the government department is not just dealing with the provider who has an interest in the project getting bigger."

Murphy suggests that a risk-sharing model with the private sector, as has proven successful in the delivery of new roads on time and on budget, should be considered.

"Why should we procure IT in a different way than roads or other large infrastructure projects," says Murphy. "We already operate managed services contracts where we face fairly exacting penalties for non-provision of service."

It's not as if the private sector has got the implementation of projects totally cracked either. A survey carried out last September of 100 CIOs in the Republic and the UK found that a third of all projects implemented each year end up over budget. The typical over-spend was 10 to 20 per cent, but the research found that a quarter of all IT projects end up more than 50 per cent over budget. While that is a far better hit rate than the current crop of e-government projects, it is still a long way from perfect.

During the dotcom boom many Government department and agencies lost a lot of their brightest IT staff to the private sector - largely due to the better salaries on offer. "The gap in pay is not the issue it was, but for a lot of people the public sector is still very frustrating to work for," says Millar. As a result, he says it is difficult to attract innovative people to the public sector.

Despite the bad news this week the public seems to have an insatiable appetite for e-government. A survey last September found 78 per cent of the Irish public want improved access to public services through modern technology.

The Comptroller found that, if anything, the targets for e-government were just too ambitious, but the worry now is that investment would cease just when it is most needed.

"At a high level, turning information into services is a national imperative," says Murphy. "We have to continue doing that and investing in information and communications technology in the public sector."