WIREDGOV

The Public and Commercial Services union has criticised the Ministry of Defence's decision to privatise its IT systems, in light of a National Audit Office report published recently.

The report highlights serious problems that have blighted the MoD’s Defence Information Infrastructure programme (DII), the costs of which have rocketed from £5bn to £7.1bn.

The NAO confirmed DII, designed to replace hundreds of IT systems with a single system to serve the whole of the MoD from desktops to battlefields, has run into difficulties with key elements running significantly late. Also less than half of the expected new desktop computers have been delivered.

In 2005, a 10-year contract with three phases was given to the ATLAS consortium led by EDS, with more than 1,000 civil servants transferring to the private sector. But the first phase is now 18 months late – including new software which doesn’t work – and due to the extra costs, the MoD has had to postpone the third phase because of concerns about affordability.

It has also recently been announced that ATLAS plans to make hundreds of staff, who were transferred to work on DII, redundant.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “This is an all too familiar tale of public sector IT privatisation going wrong, and could have a serious negative impact for the MoD’s operations both here and overseas. It is also appalling that the MoD transferred their staff into a redundancy situation and we will be demanding that the department applies the recently agreed Cabinet Office guidance on considering in house bids and staff protection.

“How can the MoD claim DII represents value for money with such a massive potential overspend. The MoD should prepare an in-house bid for any future DII work to make sure the taxpayer is really getting value for money, and that MoD staff and our armed forces have an IT system that works.”