The system cost £121m, and generated £40m in savings. Surely this is a wild success when compared to other large government IT projects, most of which cost hundreds of millions and never go live, generally being cancelled and brushed under the carpet. Well done IBM, at least you only blew £121m of our money.

What we need here is an enquiry costing more millions into why the new system was merely a disaster and not a catastrophe. Once we have had that nailed down we can apply the knowledge to other government IT catastrophes, hopefully improving them to the point where they are "completely useless".

Perhaps its time to have another crack at the intelligence sharing system:
http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2237998/whitehall-intelligence-sharing

It's a commentary on the innocence of the public that people are surprised when this happens. Think about it for a few moments. What does a bureaucrat really, really want? Obviously, more money and power, and less accountability. Now, the more he undertakes to deliver, the greater his accountability; so that's generally ruled out. But the more staff he has, and the bigger his budget grows, the better. So he ideally is looking for constant (or shrinking) output with steadily growing resources.

Now, what's the standard definition of "efficiency" again? Oh yes, it's exactly the opposite of what our bureaucrat wants. So how can we pretend to be surprised when they take vast amounts of our (taxpayers') money, and repeatedly accomplish nothing (or less than nothing) with it? It's not their aim to accomplish anything - it's their aim to hold down a cushy, well-paid, prestigious job for as long as possible and then retire with a massive, rock-solid pension paid for by our taxes.

Alles klar?