The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

HMRC estimates its IT project costs

Anonymous Coward

£197m ? dream on 

Happy

From experience, that meant when its all done, if its a fucked up finish, then it should be around £494m, if its a really back fucked up job, then x3 and you will get the true cost, not to mention times the estimated time of completion by the same factors.

RotaCyclic

worrying... 

Our own Government's finance department can't even state how much its IT projects will cost, is it any wonder that our country is in a mess financially?

If those projects were still in the concept stage then I could understand it. If those projects have gone through the definition phase and into execution, then they damn well should know what the cost will be.

John Colman

Former employee 

Coat

A lot of these projects are needed. The tax office (PAYE) is still running on a CLI system that was built in the early 80s. There is so much data there that the system can't keep up at all and has to be taken down for maintenence as often as once a month. There has been a project to upgrade this system since the turn of the millenium, but HMRC are nowhere near completion, so instead they paid for 2 more IT projects to fill the gap...

Don't you feel a little bit better now you know where all your hard earned money is going? (And thanks for paying my salary for 2 years)

The Other Steve

Hah! 

"HM Revenue and Customs is running 25 major IT projects worth at least £197m, but is unwilling to provide accurate estimates."

AFAIK due to the way they (and other gov depts) put together (or have put together for them) contracts with EDS and all the other shysters feeding at the pork barrel, they are, in fact, _unable_ to provide accurate estimates. So in all probability, the other departments were simply lying and HMRC represents much more realistically the general state of play vis a vis IT project costs in government.

That's what I heard, anyway.

gigitrix

We can't be just giving away information you know 

Heart

Genius!