£13.6 million spent on a project and the design wasn't even right?

The key to any successful attempt at IT project management is not always getting the project finished, but includes knowing when the project is going bad and when to pull the plug on it. This is, at least, how it works in the private sector where your revenue is dictated by the success of a business, and is, in effect un-guaranteed.

Not so in Government it seem though, where you have a constant and guarantee revenue stream from taxation, and, if you need more money, you can just fiddle with the tax system and take some more (usually by stealth in the case of the current administration).

Take the Catalyst Project that DEFRA attempted to implement. The goal was to develop a "central repository of electronic information for the whole of DEFRA". Basically a big file sharing system across a WAN. DEFRA spent £13.6 million on the large pilot and initial roll out, and then it was, and I quote from the DEFRA minister Barry Gardiner,

"decided not to proceed to full roll out because the business benefits no longer demonstrated good value for money and Catalyst alone could not sufficiently meet DEFRA’s long term information and knowledge management requirements."

Got that? They spent the cost of building a small school on an IT project which, by the time the pilot finished, was not value for money, and crucially (and some might say incredulously) wasn't even fit for purpose!