Ministry of Justice writes off £56m on duplicate IT project

[wonderboy]

Ministry of Justice writes off £56m on duplicate IT project | Politics | The Guardian

Comments are golden...

[SpontaneousOrder]

Ministry of Justice writes off £56m on duplicate IT project | Politics | The Guardian

Comments are golden...

I worked on a project for MoJ to add welsh bilingual to the Libra system, which cost £4million. At the time it was costing a little over £1k a year for manual translations of documents when welsh defendants requested them.

The upgrade will have paid for itself in another 3 thousand nine hundred and ninety-five years.

[wonderboy]

I thought the comment saying that this highlighted "the emptiness of the government's pretended emphasis on growth and jobs, when they are simply exporting jobs to India".

The fact it is India is neither here nor there. The fact that these jobs are not in the UK *is* of national importance, and on this (the the previous) government's silence is deafening.

[xoggoth]

I am sure all these cold calls I get are from people in the UK. They may have Indian voices but they have names like Lucy or George so they must be British.

[original PM]

I worked on a project for MoJ to add welsh bilingual to the Libra system, which cost £4million. At the time it was costing a little over £1k a year for manual translations of documents when welsh defendants requested them.

The upgrade will have paid for itself in another 3 thousand nine hundred and ninety-five years.

This in a nutshell is what happens in so many companies.

Some one moans about a boring process they have to do as an exeception once or twice a month and decides it should be 'automated' which will only see the ROI in about 30 years.

People will start being told to man up, do you job or fook off and find another one.

[tomtomagain]

It always amuses me that these front-page failures are always described as "IT Projects". As if it has been done in isolation by some bunch of techies and gone wrong because of the technology.

Whereas we all know that an "IT" project in any large organisation is 10% technology and 90% business change. And change is hard.

I've seen some projects fail in my time but very rarely is it actually to do with the technology. It's usually because the recipients of the project never wanted it in the first place or couldn't agree on how it should work.

These large projects should not be described as an "IT Failure" but as the "Organisational failure". But then again that would be too hard for a lot of people to admit to.

[Doggy Styles]

Comments are golden...

Yes. The general gist is that the government should not have computer systems at all, because they are always procured from mates and are always fecked up.

[SueEllen]

I've seen some projects fail in my time but very rarely is it actually to do with the technology. It's usually because the recipients of the project never wanted it in the first place or couldn't agree on how it should work.

No they agree but when the personnel change the requirements change.

[tomtomagain]

No they agree but when the personnel change the requirements change.

Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they agree one day and change their minds the next.


But it's far too convenient to blame "IT" for large project failures ... much less painful than admitting that the reason the project failed was because issues within the wider organisation such as a lack of motivation with staff, poor oversight by senior management or that it was sabotaged by deep-rooted vested-interests.

[vetran]

Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they agree one day and change their minds the next.


But it's far too convenient to blame "IT" for large project failures ... much less painful than admitting that the reason the project failed was because issues within the wider organisation such as a lack of motivation with staff, poor oversight by senior management or that it was sabotaged by deep-rooted vested-interests.

I have seen plenty of times when the users try to blame IT when they have changed their mind, that's why I get every spec in writing.