£60m hi-tech farce

HERE we go again. A computer system with a budget of £60million turns out be a complete flop and is scrapped.

But the public needn’t worry because ‘lessons have been learned’.

The trouble with the learning curve the public sector seems to permanently be on is that it costs the taxpayer an absolute fortune. With remarkable sangfroid, Andrew Flanagan, head of the Scottish Police Authority, says the demise of a new allsinging, all-dancing IT system for Police Scotland was ‘almost inevitable’ and that he does not think its failure ‘will be a significant issue for us’.

Which raises two pertinent questions: If the new system was so obviously bound to be a failure, why throw money at it at all?

And if its passing is ultimately not that much of an inconvenience, why was it ever commissioned in the first place?