The Department for Transport planned and implemented its shared services project with ‘stupendous incompetence,’ MPs have concluded in a withering report.
The cross-party public accounts committee said the DfT’s efficiency drive was ‘one of the worst cases of project management’ it had seen. The project was aimed at saving £57M by 2015, but will end up costing the department £81M, the committee predicted.
The ‘overly optimistic’ plan was for the DfT to introduce shared services within one year, and for all its agencies to be using the system by April 2008.
To date, only the central department and two of its seven agencies are using the shared service centre in Swansea. ‘The department knew it was pushing things with such a tight timetable but, without a robust challenge to such a risky strategy, ploughed on confidently,’ said Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the committee. ‘The result was lamentable.’
He said the underlying computer system was inadequately procured and tested, resulting in an unstable setup when it was switched on. ‘Staff do not trust the system which is hardly surprising when we hear that on occasion, it took to issuing messages in German,’ he added.
The DfT’s performance indicators showed a very poor and variable level of performance for the whole of the first year of operations and, in some cases, the service was worse than that previously provided.
It also failed to provide experienced project managers for the scheme, according to the committee.
‘The DfT must now work to deliver a functioning system which provides benefits and which its users trust,’ said Leigh. It must overhaul its project management capabilities, set up systems for subjecting future plans to rigorous challenge, and establish incentives to officials for success and penalties for failures.
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