By Nick Heath, 7 January 2008 17:14
NEWS
An IT system to underpin England's new fire control network is facing a £70m overspend and two-year delay.
A parliamentary committee is demanding "urgent" action after the projected budget for the IT section of the FiReControl system swelled from £120m to £190m and its finish date slipped from 2009 to 2011.
The setback in the plan to network nine new fire brigade control centres that will replace the 46 existing centres in England was criticised by the Communities and Local Government (CLG) committee.
It urged the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to become better at co-ordinating complicated schemes involving a large number of partners and questioned the DCLG for saying the project showed its improved "delivery focus".
The report said: "The fact that the department cites a project two years behind schedule and 50 per cent over its initial IT budget as an example of how it is improving its delivery mechanisms highlights the persistent challenge that CLG continues to face."
A separate Firelink project to replace the telecommunications network for the fire service across the UK with a digital network, and fit new radio systems to 3,000 fire and rescue vehicles was set to be completed in December last year - but has been delayed until 2009.
The government faced staunch criticism last year after the Liberal Democrats claimed it had overspent on IT projects by more than £1bn.
Speaking at the time Stephen Timms, minister for competitiveness and former chief secretary to the Treasury, spoke of a commitment to reduce overspend on IT projects.
He said: "It's absolutely essential we manage public spending. We've been able to put right the legacy of underfunding [in IT projects].
"There will be an increase in public spending, which will put a new premium on efficiency."
Comments
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1. anonymous
Stalinist central control has never worked and never will work. History has shown that to be the case. Why else do these projects consistently fail the taxpayer?
We have regional devolution in all areas yet the Stalin Labour Gov seeks to regain central control through its Polit Bureau. The west spent many millions to defend against Communism and yet has adopted all of its policies!!
2. Roger Huffadine
Yawn....
3. Nick Cole
Principally because public sector projects start off as blue-sky wishful thinking, budgets are cut back with politically inspired unmovable deadlines.
No one (usually a senior administrator or sponsor) has the gumption to go back and change the spec or provide advice or even terminate the project as infeasible in practice.
Most public sector projects in reality are research, design and build based because of their non industry standard requirements and the need to accommodate many contradictory business constraints, and not leastthe enormous scale compared to a conventional business. Unfortunately the politicians don't understand any of this. It all means that public sector IT has to be allowed to deliver what is deliverable.
4. Chris Goodman
If it ain't broke don't fix it!! It might well make sense to merge smaller fire brigades, or even to split one brigade into parts added to a larger neighbour brigade. This would reduce HQs and thus save, as stopping all the painted signs and names all over fire engines, all across fire stations and on firemen's clothing.
I'm sure there a lot of "created" jobs that do not put out fires that can be RIFd.