By Tash Shifrin
25 September 2009
The Office for National Statistics has been forced to scale back long-delayed plans to modernise the systems used to produce the National Accounts following warnings from the Bank of England.
Last year, the ONS ditched its flagship £75m Odyssey modernisation programme, admitting that planned changes to the National Accounts and household surveys would take years longer than expected.
The move followed the 2007 suspension of part of the National Accounts Blue Book because of problems introducing a new computer system under the Odyssey programme.
But delays have continued, and the agency has been forced to admit that its ‘ambitious’ project must be scaled back.
In a commentary for the ONS’s 2008/09 annual report, the Bank of England noted: ‘As discussed in last year’s assessment, there have been delays in the project to re-engineer the National Accounts. That has meant that many of the expected benefits are yet to be delivered.’
ONS staff had worked hard to produce accounts of ‘broadly acceptable quality in terms of the main aggregates in Blue Book 2008’, the Bank said. ‘Nevertheless, past problems have meant that current gross domestic product estimates are less soundly based than would usually be the case.’
An update on the plans published this month as part of the Economic and Labour Market Review said computer systems for producing components of the accounts were ‘still largely independent’ and the process of balancing three different estimates of GDP still required ‘significant manual intervention’.
Aileen Simkins, director of operations for the ONS economic directorate, told Public Finance that the modernisation plan – now dubbed Enable – had been reduced in scope.
‘It was the whole attempt to do everything simultaneously that we decided wasn’t working. We worried we were trying to do too much with an unclear timescale.’
Now the overhaul of systems would be broken into ‘manageable chunks’ with clear timescales, she said.
The Enable programme is scheduled to run to 2011, to establish a fully integrated system for the production of balanced estimates of GDP, the National Accounts and the Balance of Payments.
The ONS scheme had been hit by problems that have beset other major public sector IT projects, such as attempting too much at once and ‘unclear ownership’ of the scheme, Simkins said.
25 September 2009
The Office for National Statistics has been forced to scale back long-delayed plans to modernise the systems used to produce the National Accounts following warnings from the Bank of England.
Last year, the ONS ditched its flagship £75m Odyssey modernisation programme, admitting that planned changes to the National Accounts and household surveys would take years longer than expected.
The move followed the 2007 suspension of part of the National Accounts Blue Book because of problems introducing a new computer system under the Odyssey programme.
But delays have continued, and the agency has been forced to admit that its ‘ambitious’ project must be scaled back.
In a commentary for the ONS’s 2008/09 annual report, the Bank of England noted: ‘As discussed in last year’s assessment, there have been delays in the project to re-engineer the National Accounts. That has meant that many of the expected benefits are yet to be delivered.’
ONS staff had worked hard to produce accounts of ‘broadly acceptable quality in terms of the main aggregates in Blue Book 2008’, the Bank said. ‘Nevertheless, past problems have meant that current gross domestic product estimates are less soundly based than would usually be the case.’
An update on the plans published this month as part of the Economic and Labour Market Review said computer systems for producing components of the accounts were ‘still largely independent’ and the process of balancing three different estimates of GDP still required ‘significant manual intervention’.
Aileen Simkins, director of operations for the ONS economic directorate, told Public Finance that the modernisation plan – now dubbed Enable – had been reduced in scope.
‘It was the whole attempt to do everything simultaneously that we decided wasn’t working. We worried we were trying to do too much with an unclear timescale.’
Now the overhaul of systems would be broken into ‘manageable chunks’ with clear timescales, she said.
The Enable programme is scheduled to run to 2011, to establish a fully integrated system for the production of balanced estimates of GDP, the National Accounts and the Balance of Payments.
The ONS scheme had been hit by problems that have beset other major public sector IT projects, such as attempting too much at once and ‘unclear ownership’ of the scheme, Simkins said.
