The Arts Council is to face a “robust” oversight system to ensure the recommendations of a report on how it wasted more than €5.3 million of taxpayers’ money are enacted.
An independent review was ordered after the arts organisation’s controversial IT upgrade initiative cost the State €5.3 million before being abandoned.
The conclusions of the review into the controversy at the Arts Council lay much of the blame at the door of senior management, but there are also criticisms of the board and the Department of Arts and Culture, which funds and oversees the council.
Minister for Arts and Culture Patrick O’Donovan said his department would establish a “robust” oversight system to monitor implementation of the 149 recommendations contained in the report.
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The report, commissioned by the department, was produced by an expert advisory committee chaired by Prof Niamh Brennan and including Dr Margaret Cullen and John McCarthy.
“The old adage, ‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ holds very true for this project,” the report finds.
There is sharp criticism of how the council’s senior management worked, finding it “lacked cohesion” on the IT project.
“We heard several accounts of interpersonal clashes between senior people in the Arts Council, including for example raised voices at meetings, as well as arguments amongst senior staff in front of junior staff and external parties.
“Aside from the cultural impact of low senior management cohesion, we consider that these divisions contributed negatively to senior management preparation for, and oversight of, the project.”
It added: “Through interviews conducted, we are aware that staff below senior management level raised concerns about the project risks but that these concerns were not addressed or escalated to the board by senior management.”
The report finds that some of the unplanned and uncosted changes to the project were made because the council had not reformed its own processes, as had been planned.
“We were told that this decision was due to staff resistance to streamlining grant-application processes, as had originally been planned,” it said.
The report also found the Arts Council had ignored the warnings from one potential bidder for the contract – but that as the process progressed, it relied on third parties to check on its progress.
“We consider that both the Arts Council management and the board did not sufficiently direct and oversee the project.
“Neither did they address the risk attached to the reliance on third-party suppliers. We noticed an Arts Council practice of getting third-party suppliers to check the work of other third-party suppliers.”
There is also criticism of the board, which it said had performed “suboptimal” oversight of the project, though it said there was a “pattern of decisions not coming to the Arts Council board for approval”.
It said the board showed “blind acceptance” of the advice from Arts Council management and third-party suppliers.
It said that “a more rigorous and questioning approach by the board could have achieved at least some measure of project rescue – but no one shouted stop.”
In a statement, the Arts Council said it “fully acknowledges the findings of the expert advisory committee’s review and accepts its conclusions. The shortcomings identified should not have occurred, and we regret the impact this has had.”
There is also criticism of the Department of Arts in the report, but it said its examination did “not reflect the Arts Council’s assertion that the department was kept informed of each step of the project”, it says.
However, it adds: “When the department became aware of the multiple increases in the project budget, matters related to the project were not escalated within the department to the appropriate level. It is also surprising that the department did not appear to grasp the significant shift in the project’s objectives that we outlined earlier.”
