Supplementary memorandum by Computer Weekly
(SC13A)
At a hearing of the subcommittee on 23 February
2004, Miss Begg (Q233) asked: "At what stage should we be
deciding this has gone on too long and is not working? Let's abandon
it and go for something else. Should we be thinking along those
lines with regard to the CSA?"
I suggested that an independent audit of the
management and technical aspects of the project would give the
committee a good understanding the issues. Such an independent
audit was carried out, for Parliamentary purposes, on a delayed
£337 million project to build new air traffic control systems
at the Swanwick New En Route Centre in Hampshire. The audit had
been requested by the Transport committee in 1998. The auditor,
Arthur D Little was appointed as a result of a competitive tender,
and its report provided a thorough analysis of the weaknesses
in culture, management and accountability which contributed to
the late running and high additional spending costs on the project.
It is rare for such a report to come into the public domain. I
said that in my view the audits on the air traffic control project
had led to the system successfully being retrieved and going live.
Miss Begg then said: "That was two years
before it went live. This is now a year after it (CSA's new system)
was meant to go live."
I made no specific comment on Miss Begg's point,
which perhaps suggested that the report by Arthur D Little was
commissioned in very different circumstances to those that prevail
now over the new child support system (C52). In fact there is
a parallel.
When the report by Arthur D Little was published,
in 1999, the air traffic control system at Swanwick was about
three years late. Originally it was due to go live in
1996.
The report led to many changes in the way the
project was run and led also to a strengthening in the processes
of accountability. Perhaps these improvements contributed to the
system going live in January 2002.
Tony Collins
March 2004
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