Where to next for HMRC’s IT plans?
July 30, 2008
John Stokdyk’s excellent analysis of HMRC’s IT woes should be required reading for anyone attempting to either work with HMRC’s electronic ‘facilities’ or those wondering how and why large scale IT projects are so prone to failure. I was aprticualrly drawn to one of John’s last conclusions:
But the auditor has made a fundamental mistake in approaching the project as an isolated exercise. Taken at face value, the NAO report makes little allowance for the risks posed to the transformation programme by the stresses and strains already facing the department’s current IT systems and change managers.
That resonates strongly with a conversation I had with an HMRC representative who was working on an SAP implementation. Too often it seems, HMRC applies penny pinching tactics to its staff while giving consultants almost free rein. While there is little doubt that working for government under consulting arrangements is far from easy, the fact staff are encouraged NOT to spend money - even when that includes a 4 hour round trip to make meetings and then expecting people to sit in meetings for 7 hours solid - is applying pressure in the wrong place.
As I read the situation, HMRC IT staff are generally demoralized. They don’t see the work they do as being valued and are constantly under the cost cosh. Change managment has always been an art form that is frequently mis-managed. Constantly shoving petty cash vouchers under staff noses is exactly the wrong thing to do.
The big question must now be how the situation can be salvaged. While HMRC claims the systems will provide larger savings, those claims are viewed with considerable scepticism. Of course software needs to be tested and work but that can always be fixed. Of course there needs to be rationalization. That can be fixed too. But what you can’t fix so easily is a workforce under considerable pressure without applying resources to alleviate the strains to which John refers. At the end of the day we’re talking about people who have to operate these systems. In my experience, people respond well to the right kind of pressure but it’s another matter when they’re under constant strain.
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Your analysis is sound, and John’s article is indeed excellent, but surely the solution is political. HMRC is too big, and its objectives too vague - it is a beast out of control. The solutions include reducing its scope, by scrapping the tax credits nonsense and increasing the personal allowance to a more sensible figure; and by taking much of the old customs stuff back to a separate organisation.
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