This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
Civil servants' union PCS demanded yesterday that the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) renationalise its computer development work after tech firms squandered £140 million on a useless IT system.
A Commons public accounts committee report blasted the Tories' flagship universal credit scheme, which was to utilise the IT system, as a "shocking" failure.
In a strongly worded report, MPs voiced doubts about whether the £425m shake-up of the benefits system can still be finished by 2017.
They said a trial run had been "inadequate."
The committee found personal assistants had been signing off unauthorised transactions totalling £20m.
Chairwoman Margaret Hodge MP said: "It is likely that much of this, including at least £140m worth of IT assets, will now have to be written off."
PCS said it had warned the government from the off that "such a massive change to the social security system was practically impossible to implement."
And the project was "the latest in a long line of IT failures by the private-sector IT companies working on DWP contracts.
"Yet again these companies have promised a state-of-the-art IT system and completely failed to deliver."
The DWP used to develop IT systems in-house until it was privatised in the early 1990s.
Since then there have been a number of high-profile failures.
A system for the Child Support Agency brought online in 2003 lost files, forcing admin staff to fill in cases by hand.
A bug-ridden benefit claims project in 2005 had similar problems.
The failures aren't just confined to the DWP, with government-funded computer catastrophes occurring all over the shop because of IT firms failing to deliver on promises.
These include a disastrous £12 billion NHS IT scheme and a scrapped £500m computer system for the fire service.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "This is an absolutely scandalous waste of public money.
"DWP must stop awarding contracts to these IT failures and bring this IT work back in-house."