5 years ago... MoD accused of wasting £34m on high-tech white elephant

26.11.98 The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) poured £34.6m into an IT system which was never used, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO), the organisation which monitors central government spending.

The MoD commissioned the Data Sciences-built system for its intelligence staff but it ran into so many delays that it was delivered two years late. The result failed to meet users' needs and was abandoned in 1996, according to Sir John Bourne, head of the NAO. Subsequently, the department has installed an off-the-shelf replacement, costing only £6m.

Data Sciences has since been acquired by IBM but has been required to pay the government £1.8m compensation.

The MoD is taking a philosophical view of the whole affair. A spokesman said: "The system was found to be obsolete, so we took the right decision to abandon it. Lessons have been learned: in future we will set more achievable targets."

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26.11.03 What lessons were learned? Well some, doubtless. However, only at the start of this month we revealed the MoD had written off another system, this time wasting around £118m.

Eyes will now turn to larger projects - such as the £2.5bn Skynet system (no Terminator jokes now) and whether mistakes translate to problems in combat - though causal relationships are notoriously hard to establish.