‘A third of large government ICT projects fail so that the system is scrapped’

More than a third of the government’s large-scale ICT projects fail on a scale that means that the resulting system is not used at all, a professor told the committee that investigates government ICT projects.

In total, this concerns 36 percent of the large ICT projects, involving projects with a budget of 7.5 million euros or more. 57 percent of these projects have other issues that, while not causing systems to be scrapped, will result in implementations being too expensive, delivered late, or not working as intended.

According to de Volkskrant, Hans Mulder announced this on Friday to the ICT committee of the House of Representatives, which is investigating the progress of government ICT projects. Mulder is European Research Director of the Standish Group, director of the VIA group and professor of policy informatics at the University of Antwerp.

A quarter of the large and smaller ICT projects together fail to such an extent that they do not lead to working systems, while 46 percent fail less seriously. This leads to an annual loss for the government of 4 to 5 billion euros, Mulder says.

On Friday, the temporary ICT committee will hold hearings about failing government projects. In total, the ICT projects relating to the Municipal Personal Records Database, Werk.nl, the Electronic Patient File, the C2000 system and the public transport chip card will be examined.