Serious concerns over Government spending on IT projects

2nd November 2021

Yesterday, Monday 1 November, the Public Accounts Committee held a public hearing with the Chief Operating Officer, John Quinn, and Government officials from Team Jersey, to determine whether IT and culture programmes demonstrate effective use of taxpayers' money. Their findings were:

Information Technology: 

• Departments currently rely on a number of vintage and legacy systems with a lack of succession planning for specific applications.
• Over 900 applications have been identified as in use within Government and an assessment of these applications and the potential required investment in them is ongoing
• The budget for the Integrated Technology Solutions (ITS) programme remains at £63m, as published in March 2021
• The initial Cyber Security programme strategy established in 2019 was built on assumptions and there was a reliance on internal knowledge, with a lack of detail
  
  Team Jersey: 

• The programme budget is £3.5m to deliver a cultural change programme
• It was stated that cultural change will take approximately five years and performance can be formally measured
• The 'Be Heard' survey is a key performance indicator for Team Jersey 
• The attendance rate for Team Jersey workshops ranges from 20% - 80%. The Public Accounts Committee were pleased to hear that the average attendance has recently risen to approximately 70%
  
  Performance Management: 
• The People and Corporate Services Directorate confirmed that there is no operational control on key functions within People Hub because the People Hub is based within Customer and Local Services
• The People and Corporate Services Directorate have no operational control over key functions within the People Hub

Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Deputy Inna Gardiner, commented: "We have serious concerns about the integrated IT and digital strategy that encompasses all States services and applications. There appears to be a lack of strategy, the need for which has been amplified by the number of applications being rolled out. To avoid a repeat of previous IT failures, the Public Accounts Committee would like to see a clear strategy to understand how all elements fit together."

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