Data Quality and UK plc

Yet another UK Government IT project has been delayed due to data quality problems: Computing: Data quality problems halt latest police pilots of firearms database.

Will they ever learn?  Then again, they're not the only people to have had problems with data quality; survey after survey shows that up to 85% of IT projects suffer from delay or are cancelled due to data quality issues, but they don't all make the headlines.

Lord Marlesford summed up a common frustration , especially considering the government's aspirations for future IT projects:

‘If the Home Office really is incapable, over a period of eight years, of computerising something as straightforward as a few hundred thousand firearms records, then it does suggest that they do not have a hope of making a success of the introduction of the national identity card scheme.’

Let me know what you think - are all government projects doomed to failure?

Comments

[Daragh]

Steve,

I think governments are just as capable of delivering IM projects as any other large organisation with an over politicised culture based on silo'd power-bases.

That said, I am reminded of the Yes Minister episode "Right to Know"... (thank god for Bravo reruns) where Sir Humphrey points out the key words to get a Minister to agree to something "cheap, straightforward, popular, easy" and the words required to kill a proposal included "complex, expensive, challenging" and if you said 'courageous' it was dead & buried.

All IQ/IM projects start with a degree of complexity. They are all challenging. But to get ministerial sign off on a short-term (next election) focus, they will never be presented that way.

All organisations are affected by this type of culture to a greater or lesser extent. But the key is to see beyond the complexity towards the benefits of properly managed Information with appropriate levels of quality.

Indeed Minister....