O'Keeffe criticises shambolic IT programme

By the end of next year, the State will have spent almost €13 million on a tech-based system for managing and planning its forests. The need for this database was identified in 1993, but by the end of last year, it had cost €9.2 million, with no results.

Mr John Purcell, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) found the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources had already spent €2.4 million too much on the project. By then, the Department had abandoned the first system, and was buying a new one for €3.5 million. When the Department first identified the need for the database 10 years ago, officials said it was vital to optimising the economic and other benefits of the State's forests. We still do not have that information.

The issue was raised at the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) recently, where one member said the committee had seen similar examples of waste before.

According to PAC member Mr Batt O'Keeffe (FF) the system was "a shambles". "The bottom line is that there was no proper evaluation, and the approach was not adequate to deal with the exigencies of what they [the Department] had to do," he says.

"Thursday after Thursday, the committee is listening to officials from the various departments telling us that the IT system is not up to scratch."

Among the list of State IT cock-ups Mr O'Keeffe cites is the joint Bord Fáilte-Northern Irish Tourist Board accommodation database, Gulliver. A C&AG audit in 1995 found the State's tourist information and booking service, Gulliver, cost £10.2 million, £641,000 too much and did not work. It did not provide a database of tourist accommodation, and that neither providers nor tourists used the system in the first place.

In 1996, Fexco bought a stake in the company. In the first nine months of this year, it booked 600,000 bed nights, or €18.3 million of bookings. Its chief executive, Dr Stewart Stephens, says private sector involvement in projects like this delivers value for money to the taxpayer. "Up to the time that we became involved, it cost the State or the EU taxpayer £8.6 million," he says. "Since that time it has not cost the taxpayer anything."

He says Gulliver has successfully married the public service element of the business with the private sector profit imperative. Dr Stephens adds that Gulliver's database has 9,000 accommodation providers, large and small. If the system was dedicated only to profit, it would concentrate on the top 25 per cent of these, but because of its public service remit, it provides the service for a larger number. He believes the private sector's flexibility and risk-taking culture benefits projects like this.

Mr O'Keeffe also proposes setting up an agency to oversee State IT projects which would be staffed by professionals in the area. He believes that part of the problem with State and IT is a lack of expertise. That lack of expertise is costing the taxpayer millions every year. It's time the State sorted sort the IT wood from the trees.