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DWP cuts £50m off major tech projects

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Kable

Published: 24 Nov 2008 14:56 GMT

The Department for Work and Pensions has cut 3.1 percent from the cost of nine of its largest IT programmes since March.

The nine projects now have a total estimated cost of £1.56bn, £50m less than the £1.61bn estimated cost given when the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) last reported the projects' budgets in May. However, that still leaves them 17.9 percent above their original planned total cost of £1.33bn.

The information comes from a comparison of data provided in parliamentary written answers to Conservative shadow treasury minister Mark Hoban on Thursday, and Liberal Democrats shadow chancellor Vincent Cable on 5 March. The nine projects were included in both responses, which listed the department's major IT projects, including current estimated cost and finish date.

The savings have been produced mainly by a £40m cut in the budget of the DWP Change Programme, to £246m. The programme includes a number of initiatives to improve the department's efficiency and access to information, and the Pension Reform Delivery Programme, which has had its budget reduced by £36m to £118m.

Some of these savings have been swallowed by a £24m increase in the cost of the Central Payment System, to £177m. The project has also been delayed by a further year: in March, the deadline was December 2010; now it is December 2011.

This means the system is five years late and will cost nearly double its original budget. When the project began in April 2004, it was scheduled to finish in October 2006 and cost £90m.

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The Document Repository Service is among other projects whose end dates have changed since March. The end date has changed from November 2008 to March 2009, although a written answer from DWP minister Jonathan Shaw said the new date was simply due to November being the go-live date — which has been met — and March being the "end project review" date.

Shaw said the same reason accounted for an apparent change in the completion date of the Pensions Reform Delivery Programme, from April 2010 to December 2010.

The £88m Customer Information System also moved from a February 2008 completion to a phased implementation from March to December this year. Shaw said this approach was adopted to minimise risks. The rollout ended in June, the final technical release took place in October, and the end project review is timed for December.

The system's cost fell by £1m to £88m, although it was originally meant to cost £40m and finish in September 2007.