This time it was the turn of the Department of Internal Affairs and its grand plan to put all births, deaths and marriages data online in the cloud.
As RNZ reported, this was part of the department’s five-year Te Ara Manaaki programme.
Its aim is to make it easier and safer for people to connect with the government and access services.
Some time next year a new civil registration system is supposed to replace the existing system supporting births, deaths, marriages, marriage celebrants, proof of identity, paternity orders, adoption, change of name, change of registered sex, civil unions, human assisted reproductive technologies and surrogacy.
But, while reassuring noises were being made about progress in late March, RNZ reported a halt has now been called to the $150 million project because it has gone so badly off track.
The DIA will not say whether data security in the new system was a factor in the decision to press the pause/stop button.
Its website talks up the programme’s ability to give people more control over their own information and providing more security.
Given the amount of personal data involved, security must be paramount and we would expect nothing but the best.
Reporting from RNZ suggests attempts to customise an off-the-shelf product ran into unexpected difficulties.
The DIA website says the existing civil registration system was no longer fit for purpose, expensive to maintain and unreliable, so we will expect there to be a cost if it has to limp along longer than expected.
These big government IT projects, here and overseas, seem to go awry so often our attitude to them may be a little ho-hum.
Novopay, which caused mayhem with teachers’ pay more than a decade ago, was a multi-million-dollar disaster which the then National-led government’s fix-it man Steven Joyce had to sort out.
He colourfully described the task as "trying to change the tyre on the car when you’re driving along the motorway at 100kmh" and the system as "a dog, with a few fleas".
Those still scarred after being bitten by that dog might be nervous to hear options to update or replace part of the core payroll system for education are to be assessed ready for when the current agreement for payroll services ends in June 2027.
Other failed IT projects include the police’s Integrated National Crime Investigation System which never got off the ground despite the millions spent on it, health computer systems in the Waikato and Wellington, and more recently Archives New Zealand’s IT overhaul which affected access to millions of public records.
It might be a good time for all government IT planners to revisit Dangerous Enthusiasms, a book co-authored by professors Robin Gauld and Shaun Goldsmith, and first published in 2006, which examined the high failure rate of public sector IT projects.
It identified eight habits for highly successful IT fiascoes which include instead of terminating projects which have problems, relying on reorganised management processes, tighter monitoring regimes and promised IT expert fixes, and continuing to throw money at the project.
The book also refers to dangerous enthusiasms common to public sector IT fiascoes — public servants idolising IT and seeing it leading to great benefits, believing more and better technology prevents/fixes problems, and that a new management fad will save the day, and the feigned or genuine belief of IT suppliers and staff in their company’s products.
While the fate of the new civil registration system remains unknown, questions must be asked about the public sector’s ability to learn from the analysis of previous expensive disasters.
