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A review of the Government's IT overhaul has found that "many of the financial benefits" that the new £63m system promised will be delayed – or won't be delivered at all.
The Integrated Technology Solution (ITS) was a project to replace the Government’s disparate finance, HR, inventory and asset management, health and safety and supplier systems and moving them onto cloud-based technology.
The project was initially earmarked to cost £28m in the 2020-23 Government Plan, which increased to £40m in the 2021-24 plan, and then £62.5m in the next one.
In a report published today, the Government's spending watchdog - Comptroller and Auditor General Lynn Pamment - found that there had been "insufficient" focus during the course of the project on quantifying its financial benefits and making sure they come to fruition.
£3m in total savings were attributed to the project – but Ms Pamment found that those benefits are now “not expected to begin to be realised until 2026”.
In the project's Full Business Case – which provides justification for a project and evaluates its benefit, costs and risks – the projected financial benefits were set at £1.8 million per year from 2024 onwards.
However, the report found that “formal arrangement for the oversight and governance” of the financial benefits of the project are in fact “unclear” beyond 2023.
Pictured: The Comptroller and Auditor General, Lynn Pamment.
The report criticised the fact that the Government does not have a plan to track ITS-related benefits beyond the end of 2026, with the Comptroller and Auditor General explaining that she “would expect the formal monitoring and reporting of benefits to be extended to 2030 if best practice is to be demonstrated”.
The report only examined governance around the project, and its predicted financial benefits. It didn't cover the operational problems experienced since the system went live.
When the system change came into force at the end of last year, around 8,000 outstanding payments totalling £22 million were discovered by the government. ITS "teething issues" also resulted in over 25 local schools requiring additional hands-on assistance to help address concerns about paying pupil's fees through the new system.
Pictured: The ITS system is intended to enable the Government to use modern, cloud-based systems for finance, human resources, procurement, and asset management.
In October 2021, the C&AG issued a previous report which considered the lessons that could be learnt from the implementation of the new taxation revenue management system, and evaluated the design and delivery of the ITS programme up to the end of August 2021.
This report made 16 recommendations for the Government to implement as the ITS programme progressed. The latest report shows that 12 of the 16 recommendations made in the C&AG Report from October 2021 had been implemented with two not implemented, one partially implemented and one where further enhancements could be made.
Lynn Pamment, the Comptroller and Auditor General, explained that the ITS system forms "one part of a significant investment being made by Government in digital modernisation".
She added: “My review has identified some elements of good practice in the way in which the ITS programme has been managed.
“However, there is a need for Government to improve its management of strategic risks in major programmes, to ensure that sufficient specific business-unit level approval of functionality is gained prior to ‘go live’ and to enhance its processes tomonitor the realisation of the benefits expected to be delivered over a sufficiently long time-span.”
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