2.17 If EDS is to deliver effective technical solutions, it needs a clear and unambiguous definition of the business requirement to reduce the risk of errors in the selection of the technical solution or of confusion and wasted work during development and implementation. This is not, however, always possible where a business requirement arises from a legislative or policy initiative, if the elapsed time to deliver the project requires the Department to commence development before the business requirement has been defined fully. To be effective, the process of requirement definition should be iterative and involve all key stakeholders, including users and EDS specialists.
2.18 Our investigations highlighted two projects where difficulties during project development could be attributed to an inadequate business requirement specification.
■ The work required to develop an integrated repayments system for the Financial Intermediaries and Claims Office was 93 per cent more than had been estimated at the outset. The post implementation review noted that the Department's business requirement specification had not identified the need for the information technology software to be able to calculate the amount of the tax repayment due, which was fundamental to the achievement of staff savings included in the business case. Had the proposed specification been discussed with users, the omission might have been identified.
■ The size and complexity of the integrated debt management system, which was under development at the time of our review, had increased by about a third. The increase was attributed by the Department to the fact that the implications of its business requirement were not considered fully. The specification had assumed that forms generated from the system would be largely automated, but it later became apparent that a greater amount of manual input to generate forms would be required. The change required the use of a new software product which increased the technical complexity of the system. The original specification had been developed within the Business and Management Services Division without consultation with users in the Inland Revenue office network.