As forecast in our post of 11^th August, “The Conduct of Long-term Projects in Britain”, that more IT contract disasters were on the way, right on cue comes another revelation.  As with the Fujitsu contract for the NHS, the US company Raytheon, sacked by Mrs Teresa May in 2010 from the so-called e-borders project, has successfully gone to binding arbitration for the balance of their contract – £224 million which will be dumped on the hapless taxpayer.  This is on top of the £259 million already spent on the contract, signed in 2007, which wasn’t delivering.

Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the House of Commons Home Affairs committee, is to question Lin Homer, who was head of the UK Border Agency when the contract was granted to Raytheon seven years ago.  It is no comfort to the rest of us to realise that this is the same Lin Homer who is now in charge of the UK’s tax collector (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs) which is grappling with an even bigger failing IT project – this time for £7.9 billion with Cap Gemini.

As we commented on August 11^th, these three terrible failures and others are due to repeated Civil Service senior staff incompetence, and naivety among politicians for entrusting major projects, particularly IT projects, to them.

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