Failed: Seven out of 10 gov IT projects

Seven in 10 government IT projects have failed, according to the chief information officer of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Speaking at the Government IT Summit this week, Joe Harley called for projects to be completed at a lower cost to the taxpayer and said the government's aim is to reduce the number of project failures to just one in 10.

He said: "Today, only 30 per cent of government IT projects and programmes are successful. We want 90 per cent by 2010/11. We want to achieve a 20 per cent overall reduction on IT spend in government, including reducing the total cost of a government laptop by 40 per cent [in the same timescale]."

Harley said the criteria for judging the success of a project included whether it was delivered on time, on budget and to the quality promised. While private sector IT projects had a similar failure rate, government IT projects needed to be more efficient both in terms of cost and delivery, he said.

Harley added: "The government spends £14bn per year on IT in the UK. It's not sustainable as a government to continue to spend at these levels. We need to up the quality while reducing the spend."

One government project that has been heavily criticised in terms of missed deadlines and inflated costs is the troubled NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), which is overseen by Connecting for Health (CfH).

Andy Burn, head of information management and technology planning for CfH, said, while the project has achieved some successes, taken as a whole, it has failed so far. "The programme still has three wheels still on. It's not in hand in some respects but it is in others. At a local level, progress has been made over the years. At an organisational level, less [progress has been made]. The challenge is joining up services - we've been struggling with that for quite some time."

Burn added it would take a lot of work to put NPfIT back on track. "Inevitably, with the size of the programme, we're bound to be up against the wall. For the next decade, not for the next year."

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK