Rancid Aluminium2: 26 billion smackers down the gurgler

In a recent report it was stated that the UK Govt under NuLabor had wasted about GBP26bn on failed IT initiatives. That's about $2bn for every year in office with an ROI of zero. Just think about that for a moment?

Maybe some of that money was wasted on building 1,700 websites of which only 431 will remain by the end of 2010 after recommendations that most be culled in a recent audit.

Meanwhile James Cameron spends about GBP180mn making 'Avatar' over 4 years, whilst pioneering new technology and gets an ROI of over GBP1bn in less than three months.

Honestly, the UK would have been wiser investing this money in Cameron's Lightstorm and Peter Jackson's WETA and conservatively could have made a profit of GBP100bn which is half the money that the BofE has printed with its policy of Quantative Easing to bail out the banks.

OK it doesn't work like that and we know that when UK Goverment money finds it's way into the arts (via Lottery funding) we end up with films like 'Rancid Aluminium' and not Cameron's smash hit.

What puzzles me is that the government still tries to run large IT projects anymore because everyone know that it's just a licence for government approved suppliers to print money.

I don't know how much the US has spent on intelligence related IT projects post 911 but what I do know is that they failed to stop a known terrorist suspect from boarding a flight on Christmas Day.

So what's my point?

Over the last decade I've had the pleasure to work with two managers who successfully defined how they would structure and govern large projects in order to avoid the wastage so profligate in government IT spend.

The first even wrote a thesis about how large projects are inherently more difficult and risky to land than smaller ones. The second built an IT governance framework that consisted of a few simple groundrules:

- all projects to be sponsored by the business without exception
- no project to last more than 9 months. Any piece of work identified larger than this would be broken into phases less than 9 months in duration.
- no project to cost more than GBP2m

Sounds simple and yes it works, but what about when you need to do the big projects? Well I guess we probably need Project Managers of the calibre of James Cameron for that otherwise you're better off saving your pennies for a bailing out a bank or two.