5 The tendency to be overly optimistic leads public bodies to underestimate the delivery challenges of what are often complex projects. They may have financial and timing constraints, have multiple stakeholders, be interlinked or relate to other major projects, and be dependent on organisational or citizen behavioural changes.
6 Our back catalogue shows that, in planning projects, government does not always take time to understand the complexity and, as a result, over-estimates its ability to deal with the challenges. Too often, government commits to a 'solution' without fully understanding the context and exploring alternative options to determine which solution matches the real need.
When the Department of Health introduced the National Programme for IT in the NHS, the scope, vision and complexity were wider and more extensive than any ongoing or planned healthcare IT programme in the world.2 The deployment of systems was complicated by the diverse nature of the NHS organisations and their IT systems and a shortage of skills in project management and IT. In 2011, shortly before the programme was cancelled, we reported that the NHS was getting far fewer systems than planned3 and the Comptroller and Auditor General commented that the Department had fundamentally underestimated the scale and complexity of the programme.4 In 2011, we examined the Department of Energy & Climate Change's preparations for the roll-out of smart meters.5 We highlighted there was very little time contingency before the start of mass roll-out to address the risk that design approvals, procurement and testing take longer than planned, and the need to identify review points before taking decisions that may be irreversible. In May 2013, following consultation with industry and in advance of final procurement decision for data and communications services, the Department put the proposed start date for mass roll-out back from 2014 to autumn 2015 to allow more time to design, build and test the system. The Department also announced that it had decided to move the completion date for the mass roll-out from end of 2019 to end of 2020. Our work on the successful Olympic and Paralympic Games highlighted the value of the work done by the Government Olympic Executive to map the programme interdependencies and coordinate the various elements. Up to 2009, the programme had been characterised by individual organisations focusing on specific elements for which they were responsible such as construction and transport.6 |
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2 Comptroller and Auditor General, Department of Health: The National Programme for IT in the NHS, Session 2005-06, HC 1173, National Audit Office, June 2006.
3 Comptroller and Auditor General, Department of Health: The National Programme for IT in the NHS: an update on the delivery of detailed care records systems, Session 2010-2012, HC 888, National Audit Office, May 2011.
4 Comment by Amyas Morse, Comptroller and Auditor General of the National Audit Office.
5 Comptroller and Auditor General, Department of Energy & Climate Change: Preparations for the roll-out of Smart Meters, Session 2010-2012, HC 1091, National Audit Office, June 2011.
6 Comptroller and Auditor General, The London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games: post-Games review, Session 2012-13, HC 794, National Audit Office, December 2012.