And there’s more (via Tom) - this time it’s the Libra magistrates system that was designed to “replace the magistrates’ courts existing information technology systems with a single, modern, national infrastructure and case and accounts management system”.

The Public Accounts Committee said of the system:

This is one of the worst PFI deals that we have seen. The Department procured a contract to provide services to 42 Magistrates’ Courts Committees over which it did not have real authority or control. It ran a poor competition, attracting only one bidder, and it failed to take decisive action when ICL did not deliver what was required. For its part, ICL did not understand the Department’s requirements, took on excessive risk and underpriced its bid. It performed poorly throughout and could not meet the target dates for delivery of the core application. As a result of these failures the cost of the project has more than doubled in just four years to almost £400 million and magistrates’ courts still do not have the IT systems they need to manage their workload properly.

The contract for the system was taken away from the cack-handed ICL/Fujitsu and given to Accenture who were responsible for the botched Inland Revenue National Insurance system but lost that contract when it was given to Capgemini.

Again, for those of us opposed to ID cards and the National Identity Register, it’s cockle warming to know that all these corporate clowns (except, strangely, former Government favourite, Accenture) are on the supplier list for the ID card system. As are, as Tom points out, several weapons manufacturers including BAE systems, providers of venues for Foreign Secretaries trying to show a girl a good time.

For these companies, it’s like a huge game of Pass The Parcel where, as the parcel is ripped from your grasp by the greedy child on your right, the weeping child on your left is forced to hand you another parcel. Ad infinitum, like MC Escher’s stairs. Unfortunately, when the parcels are opened at the end of the game, the prizes are revealed to be gaudily spray-painted dog turds.

From the Government’s and tax payers’ point of view, the whole process of trying to get a decent computer system out of these pirates is like playing on one of those funfair grabber machines. You shovel in pound after pound trying to snatch a prize and in the rare event you do manage to snag an electric pink teddy bear or a plasticky digital watch, it’s worth about a tenth of the cash you put in.