Public money squandered on undeliverable projects

Aug. 22, 2012 - PRLog -- National news has yet again drawn our attention to the government spending huge amounts of public money on IT contracts where the costs spiral out of control. This time the contract in the spotlight is that of ATOS to carry out medical assessments for benefits claims.

There are numerous previous examples of tax-payers’ money being squandered on undeliverable IT projects, whilst SME innovators like ourselves are often overlooked.

Whatever the ins and outs of the ATOS deal, the technology to track claims and give quality, timely information to the client (in this case the DWP) is already available and can be reliably procured (yes, from our good selves), at a tiny fraction of the cost of the £112 Million reported. The fact that an additional £60 Million has been reportedly spent on appeals due to flaws in the existing system, simply beggars belief.

Successive governments have fallen into the same trap of purchasing systems from massive organisations, because in their eyes, “big means safe”. Purchasing in this way might give you some comfort that the organisation might not go bust (an argument which has been severely weakened since successive financial and economic crises), yet the real question for government should be “could we get better, for a lot less money?” The answer is undoubtedly “YES”.

Mark Colonnese, Director, Aquarium Software