£12 million States IT project a failure

Monday 21 July 2014

A major £12 million States IT project to update health and social services records has been a failure, and Health are gearing up to ask for another £12 million to finish the job that started in 2006.

A critical report by the States spending watchdog into the Integrated Care Records (ICR) programme has found that there are serious problems with project management within the States, with poor business cases, bad execution, and weak evaluation of lessons learned.

Committee chairman Deputy Tracey Vallois – who has recently announced that she will be standing as a Deputy in St John in October – says that the States shouldn’t hand out more money to complete the project until Health have proved that they won’t waste it.

She said: “The ICR programme was awarded a £12 million budget back in 2006.

“Its intention was to digitise and integrate health and social services patient care records. As our report makes clear, the ICR programme concluded without achieving that objective.

“Moreover, information given to the States Assembly was so poor that States Members may have had little or no idea that the programme came up short.

“During 2015, we will see Health and Social Services ask for another £12 million to finish the job. If and when that request is made, we urge the States to satisfy themselves that project management standards have improved before allocating any more public money.”

The committee has recommended that individual ministers should formally endorse capital bids by their departments to ensure that there is some political oversight, that the drafting of business cases must improve and that future Medium Term Financial Plans or Budget statements need to set out explicitly what capital projects will deliver.