13 March 2009
By David Williams
A government scheme to introduce a single database for prison and probation services has been damned by the National Audit Office.
The National Offender Management Information System, now three years late and likely to cost more than double its original £234m budget, has been badly managed and has not provided value for money, the NAO said.
An NAO report, published on March 12, said the core aim of the project — to bring in a single IT management system — will be missed. The revised scheme will instead use three databases.
The report criticised the National Offender Management Service for significantly underestimating the technical complexity of the project. The management team, which has since been replaced, also failed to monitor budgets, while a contractual design flaw prevented it from being able to put pressure on suppliers to stay on time and within budget.
The three-database scheme was adopted in 2007, three years after the start of the project, to save an estimated £177m. However the NAO said the new model, while cheaper, did not have the best cost-to-benefit ratio of the available options.
Nomis was also described as a ‘spectacular failure’ by Public Accounts Committee chair Edward Leigh. ‘What they have delivered was a masterclass in sloppy project management,’ he said.
‘The committee hears of troubled government projects all too frequently. But the litany of failings in this case are in a class of their own. All of this mess could have been avoided if good practice in project management had been followed.’
Nomis is due to roll out to the prison service in April, with full implementation now expected in 2011. Prisons minister David Hanson said the report was ‘helpful’.
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