Whitehall IT cock-ups cost £1bn a year

BOTCHED computer projects and budget-breaking IT upgrades in Whitehall are wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, it was revealed yesterday.

A dossier shows the Government has already overspent £2bn on improvements over two years. But when the bill arrives for a new computerised NHS system, that figure is expected to soar.

The project, which had an original budget of £6bn, is now expected to cost taxpayers £30bn. The Conservatives, who compiled the data, said Ministers had a track record of failure for delivering IT projects within time and budget.

Many of those ordered by Whitehall departments have already been scrapped. Examples include a new court computer system, which had an original budget of £146m but ballooned to almost £400m.

This was described by Edward Leigh, chairman of Westminster's Public Accounts Committee, as 'one of the worst PFI projects my committee has ever seen'.

The cost of simply moving computers at the GCHQ spy headquarters, originally estimated at £20m, hit £450m after running into unforeseen problems. A new national insurance payment system was delivered £90m over budget after 'flaws' in the £170m system had to be corrected.

And a new IT system for the probation service, which had a budget of £85m, came in at £35m more than predicted. The project had seven managers over seven years.

An 'asylum seeker processing system' with a budget of £80m was scrapped for being 'flawed'. And, with a budget of £1bn, the creation of a new benefits card payment system was abandoned after running up a bill of £698m - £571m to the Post Office and £127m to the Department of Social Security.

Critics have pointed out that the £1bn wasted on IT projects every year is desperately needed elsewhere. It would pay for 40 schools, ten hospitals, 46,893 nurses, 39,782 teachers, 13,969 doctors, 34,585 police, 39,211 soldiers or 222,000 hip replacements.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the dossier raises huge doubts about the Government's ID cards bill, due to receive its second reading later this month. The cost of the scheme has already increased from £3.1bn to £5.85bn, pushing the price of each compulsory card up from £77 to £93.

Experts at the London School of Economics predict the final bill for the massive project ? which involves storing scans of 44m Britons' eyes, fingerprints and facial features on a central database ? could hit £18bn, with cards costing £300.

Mr Davis said: 'The Government's shambolic record on delivering technology both effectively and on budget totally undermines their claims that any ID card system would be robust. If this system fails, not only will our security be exposed, but the taxpayer will be left to pick up the bill.'

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID campaign, said: 'The Government's track-record for taking on complex IT projects only for them to run into difficulties is all too clear. There is no reason why ID cards should prove any different to this litany of failures.'