Why is government IT jinxed?

The suspension of the Inland Revenue’s flagship Internet self-assessment service, for security reasons, is only the latest piece of bad news about government IT projects. Like other aspects of government procurement – the Dome, the railways, defence – the integration of new computing power is bedevilled by delays, snarl-ups and cost overruns. After all, the Inland Revenue site closed after the government spent £1.9m on advertisements designed to get 315,000 people to go electronic. In the event, just 39,000 bothered.

Electronic filing of PAYE data and VAT returns have similarly poor levels of take-up. Altogether, the government’s problems with computerisation contrast quite vividly with experience in the private sector. All over the West, private companies have had some success in buying and applying IT.

So why is government IT so often part of the problem rather than the solution? Buying for government IT projects tends to be more badly managed and results are often poor. The National Audit Office (NAO) says that senior managers in government don’t have enough IT and contract management skills. It adds that swathes of government don’t evaluate IT projects, don’t have contingency plans if things go wrong, and don’t ask users even the basics about their needs.

Outside the NAO, and the scare stories about air traffic control breakdowns, all this is rarely debated. Instead we get interminable debate about public-private partnerships, or about the Private Finance Initiative. To the NAO’s credit, assistant auditor-general Jeremy Colman has attacked the massive accounting efforts carried out by the state to prove the merits of PFI in every instance. He criticised the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo where the financial modelling takes over from thinking.

Colman says we should discuss PFI benefits, not just costs. More broadly, instead of considering forms of ownership and funding for projects, we should be discussing what difference sensible investment in IT can and should make to everyone’s dealing with government. That might sound obvious. But health secretary Alan Milburn’s decentralising plans to give 35 or more Foundation Hospitals local autonomy do not dwell on IT.

There’s as little merit in re-counting public/private beans as there is in putting up government brochureware on the Web. And meeting government Internet services at every high street outlet, as the NAO recommends, isn’t the answer either. I’ll take up government IT when I know that applying online for, say, a UK passport is easy.

In IT as elsewhere, New Labour seems anxious to ensure universal access, but without attention to content. It uses IT not to let us get on with our lives, but to make itself feel good about being modern and in touch with people.

This, I suspect, is the real reason so many government IT projects fail.