Government IT Needs to Move On From Antiquated Thinking

Tuesday 08 November 2005

There are ways to avoid the massive failures such as PPARs - but government IT must take heed warns Exoftware.

The PPARs system’s story maybe alarming, but it is by no means out of the ordinary. Those within the IT industry have known for a long time that projects regularly fail to deliver real value on time, on budget and with the requisite quality to fulfill its initial promises. In PPARs’ case the system was overpaying, miscalculating figures, and lacking critical information resulting in financial losses that totalled several million. From its inception in 1995 through to 2005, the total cost of the system has radically increased from the original estimate of €9M to a giant €150M. And now the PPARs system, as well as the FISP system, has been suspended.

While the Government will face rigorous scrutiny in the coming weeks, the question remains: could this have been prevented?

Government IT departments need to embrace new methods of working and use more up to date frameworks, in order to prevent such catastrophic project failures. If the PPARs team had done this, the failures would surely have been prevented.

Any project – whether public or private must adhere to the following to be coined successful:

• Accept and expect change o Minister Harney has noted that the PPARs system was not designed with the new HSE structure in mind. An iterative approach to the project would have allowed the team to expect and accept change into the project. The FISP project was supposedly “adequately evaluated for future needs” – an ironic statement given the failings of the PPARs system.

• Deliver value early and often o The FISP system will have spent €30M by end of 2005 – with no part of the system rolled out yet. Again an iterative approach, encompassing feedback, would have allowed the system to be rolled out much earlier.

• Ensure communication between customers and IT professionals / staff o In his letter to the HSE in 2004, John O’Brien, chief executive of St. James’ Hospital, noted the lack of communication between the PPARs team and the Hospital’s internal team managing the pilot rollout. He noted that changes were made without consulting the Hospital and that they were put into the system in an uncontrolled way. This lead to additional system errors and left staff with mounting distrust and anger. New and revolutionary approaches, bringing customers and IT teams together to create more effective communication channels, are available to help avoid these problems that St. James’ Hospital faced.

• Enforce unparalleled quality o The problems with incorrect data coming out of the PPARs system are inexcusable. This is l most likely due to a “squeezed testing cycle”, as the PPARs team tried to rollout on schedule, despite numerous problems. If testing had been brought into the development of the system, it is likely that these quality control issues would not have arisen because problems would have been revealed early on and addressed.

The government needs to move into the next generation of IT ideas and embrace the new approaches private organisations have been using for increased project success. If it does not, and instead chooses to continue down the antiquated path of least resistance – we are destined to see more and more IT failures, similar to those exposed by St. James Hospital, across organisations and departments.

_Ends

Contact: Exoftware Priya Patel +353 1 4100 527 ppatel@exoftware.com

Contact: Telecommunications Software and Services Group Margaret Grene +353 51 302936 mgrene@tssg.org

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