Foreign Office tech overspend leads to project trimming

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has overspent on two IT projects which has forced it to rethink some of its development plans.

The cost of implementing the revamped FCO Telecommunications Network (FTN) has ballooned from £180m to £240m, while the Future Firecrest project to upgrade its desktop systems worldwide is expected to cost £26m more than the £332m originally predicted.

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This has been compounded by the need to spend £6.5m simplifying its Prism project, an Oracle-based enterprise resource planning platform to rationalise 30 different IT systems.

Other IT systems have been cut down, with "financial constraints" forcing funding for the iRecords electronic document management system to be cut from £26.5m to £5.1m and predicted spend on an FCO web platform reduced from £13.5m to £9.7m.

Meanwhile the £6.5m planned spend on Prism will simplify the system and reduce support costs.

A spokeswoman for the FCO explained the overspend: "FTN is the FCO's telecommunications network. £180m was the estimate in 2000, in the intervening eight years the FCO has deployed many new applications creating a significant additional demand for network capacity.

"The £60m represents the cost of this additional usage. It is a cost that has enabled a flexible and cost effective response to increasing international pressures and commitments.

"We are now undertaking some additional work to simplify and update the structure of Prism, made possible by the evolution of our business requirements."

She said the Future Firecrest programme had not overspent "at a programme level" as funding had been moved from associated projects such as iRecords but said the quality of the final systems would not be affected.

The Future Firecrest programme has seen 3,000 computers installed at FCO offices in London and Milton Keynes, with new machines and infrastructure planned at FCO sites in Athens, Tbilisi in Georgia, and The Hague from late summer 2008.

The funding figures were revealed in a written answer to parliament by foreign office minister Meg Munn.