Government IT projects

From Blindside

1 What is it
2 Impact & Maturity assessment
3 Information Assurance issues
4 Timescale
5 Examples
6 Comments (attributed)
7 Organisations
8 Documents & research papers
9 Experts (academic, practitioner)

[edit] What is it

In the year 2001, the Office of Government Commerce (National Audit Office) introduced a program called the Gateway Processto increase the success rate in implementation of major government IT projects. The Gateway Process involved the following six ‘gateways’ or milestones during the project lifecycle where the project would be reviewed:

Gateway 0 - Strategic Assessment (for programmes)
Gateway 1 - Review for justification of business case
Gateway 2 - Approval of procurement method
Gateway 3 - Approval of award of contract
Gateway 4 - Testing to assess if project is ready to go live
Gateway 5 - Review for identifiction if project has delivered planned benefits

The Gateway review system awards a red, amber or green traffic signal status to projects. A red light warning recommends that remedial action be taken immediately if the project is to have any chance of being delivered successfully. A green light signifies the project is on target to succeed and an amber light signifies that the project should go forward with actions on recommendations to be carried out before the next OGC Gateway Review

The Gateway process had identified potential savings from value for money improvements made in pilot projects which could amount to up to £150 million. This figure was expected to rise to £500 million annually once the full roll out of new projects takes effect in 3-4 years time (2004-2005).

However, of the 409 IT projects that was reviewed by the Office of Government Commerce's Gateway review between June 2002 and March 2004, 34 per cent received a red light warning, and increase of four per cent on the number of projects getting red lights between June 2002 and March 2004. The number of IT projects that received a green light reduced to 10 percent as compared to the same period between 2002 and 2004 where 20 percent of all IT projects had received the green light.

[edit] Impact & Maturity assessment

[See definition of levels]

We assign this an Impact Level of 2, as although many projects will affect large numbers of people, most government IT projects are to replace existing functionality, hence traditional delivery services can be used in case of project failure. We estimate the Maturity Level at 3, given the large number and wide variety of government IT projects performed.

[edit] Information Assurance issues

Major Government IT initiatives may require large scale expenditure on equipment, infrastructure, public servant time, external vendors and consultants, etc. Unsuccessful or delayed realisation of projects may result in the expenditure to go unrewarded. There is also the potential loss of opportunity, considering that the expenditure may have been successful in other projects or unrelated areas of governance. The potential benefits of a successfully managed and implemented IT project are lost to society and government for a medium to long term.

While it may often be difficult to evaluate and identify direct causes of failure of Government IT Project, popular or high profile failures that cause public disappointment in governments may cause risk aversion in government servants resulting in governments slowing down the pace of change and desist from or procrastinate planning or implementation of potentially ‘complex’ IT projects. This again may result in the potential benefits of the IT initiative being lost to society and government for a medium to long term.