The Public Accounts Committee says the introduction of the Department of Transport's shared corporate services project was "one of the worst cases of project management it had ever come across." Intended to save £57m by 2015, the department's plan to share IT services will cost an extra £81m. Edward Leigh, the committee chairman, said:
"The DfT must now work to deliver a functioning system.... The Department must also overhaul its project management capabilities, closely examining the expertise of its project managers, setting up systems for subjecting future plans to rigorous challenge and, crucially, establishing incentives to officials for success and penalties for failure."
The computer system was inadequately procured and tested. Computer glitches took away staff holidays, accused them of being off sick and answered questions in other languages. Staff do not trust it. One civil servant told the National Audit Office:
"When you log on, it tells you in German that your password has expired."
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I can only paste below the comments of Friedman I wonder does nobody in government monitor or take resposibility for these financial fiascos?
There is another difficulty with political control of the economy which keeps even the best-behaved governments from using resources well. This problem was explained by the economists Milton and Rose Friedman in their book, Free to Choose. The Friedmans argued that there are only four ways to spend money:
1. Spend your money on yourself.
2. Spend your money on other people.
3. Spend other people's money on yourself.
4. Spend other people's money on other people.
If you spend your money on yourself, you look for the best value at the best price -- knockoff Pings on sale at Golf-ForeLess. If you spend your money on other people, you still worry about price, but you may not know -- or care -- what other people want. So your brother-in-law gets a Deepak Chopra book for Christmas. If you spend other people's money on yourself, it's hard to resist coming home real Pings, a new leather bag, orange pants with little niblicks on them and a pair of Foot-Joy spikes. And if you spend other people's money on other people, any damn thing will do and the hell with what it costs. Almost all government spending falls into category four. This is how the grateful residents of Ukraine got Chernobyl.
New Labour does 3 and 4; and regards it all as their own money, ie 1 and 2, so they can feel really good about themselves. Yuk.
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