IT contractors may wonder why most of Whitehall’s IT projects are running behind schedule when the government employs 8,000 IT staff.
According to a recent article in Computer Weekly, the executive director of the Major Projects Authority admitted that more than 50% of major schemes are over budget and/or behind schedule.
The MPA was created last April with the remit to improve the delivery of projects within the government. A lot of these projects focus significantly on IT. An academy is also being set up to teach people the technical awareness and leadership skills they need to run major projects.
For many years, the government has outsourced the leadership of projects and it is hoped the new academy will see project success rates increase to 80% by 2017.
Civil Service head Bob Kerslake explained that the government appears to focus on large ambitious projects rather than breaking them into manageable chunks.
In addition to outsourcing the leadership of projects, the government outsources 70% of IT roles. Organisations often outsource when they don’t have faith in the ability of their own staff, but is that necessarily a sensible move for the government?
It might find it more beneficial to centralise IT for the entire government in one department. Taxpayers would undoubtedly prefer to see the coalition using highly skilled in-house staff rather than spending the budget on outsourcing. A centralised IT department could prioritise projects and if the government needs people to run it, there are probably plenty of IT bosses in the private sector who would be up for the challenge.
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Image: Old computers by eurleif
