30 May 2008
An efficiency drive in the Department for Transport and its agencies could end up costing £81m rather than saving £57m, the National Audit Office has warned.
The DfT's attempt to develop shared services across the department for areas such as human resources, payroll and finance has been dogged by changes to cost estimates, inadequate contract management and poor initial implementation, according to the NAO.
This means the plan, which contracted IBM to provide an IT system, is now forecast to cost £120m, against gross savings of £40m over its lifetime to March 2015, rather than £55m, with £112m savings.
The May 23 report, Shared services in the Department for Transport and its agencies, says the DfT has made considerable efforts to improve management of the programme and resolve problems since 2007.
But inadequate testing of the system at an early stage of the project led to the introduction of an unstable IT system.
Edward Leigh, chair of the Common's Public Accounts Committee, said: 'The underlying computer system was not thoroughly tested and was unstable when it went live, implementation of the programme was badly managed, and DfT staff simply do not trust
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