Oh no ...
... They've got SCMODS.
The rollout of the Ministry of Justice's troubled £250m National Offender Management IT system was restarted again earlier this year - The Register can reveal. The Cabinet Office's body for monitoring costly programmes - the Major Projects Authority - has already flagged the project as red, meaning successful delivery of the …
The department refused to release the revised cost of the project following its major delays, the completion date, or the report by Deloitte citing "commercial confidentiality.
Or maybe the cost to the taxpayer has gone through the roof and you want to release that information quietly later on hoping no one will notice.
In September, justice minister Shailesh Vara insisted the rollout of the new NOMS IT system is scheduled to be completed in 2016. "The final cost of the rollout of the new system is estimated to be within the original budget," he said.
Is that the original revised budget?
Why do government IT rollouts always end up being giant cluster-fracks? I don't get why they decide to overhaul everything all at once - the complexity becomes mind-boggling! If I had to replace every system here all at once, it'd absolutely go horribly wrong - it'd be impossible to ensure all use cases were covered.
So why do central government departments continue to think its possible?
I imagine it's more because the major outsourcers have courted them into believing it's possible. Then wrap up the contracts in plenty of red tape so every possible scenario is an "additional requirement", then add plenty of clueless individuals who wouldn't know the left mouse button from the right one and you have the perfect recipe for creating total chaos.
And don't forget the many high-level government types throwing in contradictory requirements after the fact, or disagreeing with the specs and the realisation simply because they just noticed that it will give them some work in some area.
Don't throw the entire book at the companies, there's plenty of blame to be handed to government incompetence as well.
Re: MOJ's move under the £1.2bn FITS deal to disaggregate its IT outsourcing contract is also going badly
That means GDS can point to this and force them to split up into even small chucks and really fuck it up. And CCS can 'help' with the complex transactions team too! Result!
YAY! GO GDS! YAY! GO CCS! YAY! GO MOJ!