Almost one in ten records within the Inland Revenue's frameworks database contain errors the government has admitted.
The frameworks database feeds information into various other databases held not just by HMRC but other departments too.
The problems came to light after enquiries by Tory MP for Putney Justine Greening concerning a constituent who found errors on their records. Mistakes were found in 3.5m records from a total of 47m.
Jesus wept. That's a pretty high rate of error for something so important. But it gets better (of course!)
The frameworks database only contains quite simple information - first, second and surname, title, sex, data of birth, address and NI number. Which begs the question of how many errors more complicated government records contain.
So: first name, middle name and surname, title, gender, date of birth, address and NI number.
It costs £7.5m a year to maintain it.
At a stab, I'd say lookup tables on title, post code, validation of gender, date of birth, address and NI number.
Because it's a piffling amount of data, we're talking about a Linux box with 2GB RAM and a 100GB disk drive. Because it's mission critical, we're talking about pairs of blade servers and RAID disks. £100,000 is insanely generous for the hardware, even allowing for generous failover sites distributed around the country. Let's make an insanely generous £100,000 for the software as well (because you'll probably need messaging interfaces and stuff.) Then we'll chuck £100,000 at development of the application and integration with the government's other systems and £200,000 at a team of 6 overpaid data-entry folks. I see a cost of £500,000 for the setup and first year's running and then a very generous £250,000 per annum thereafter.
So where the fuck does £7.5 MILLION per annum come from?
16 comments:
At a guerss? Vastt overpayment to the IT company of your choice.
I think the Infernal Revenue are (or were) Fujitsu...?
Having seen how HMG is screwed on its IT, I'd say 8 x the number of boxes needed running windows, plus the same again for DR, plus a massive markup for 24/7 availability.
System development would be at least a couple of mill, hosting and support from 3rd parties is a killer (couple of mill minimum based on volumes of people hitting the system, associated overall network impact etc), plus software licences - usually per processor, with say 4 processors per box - equals about a mill in licences (once the supplier has it's markup).
It's a cash cow to be milked, and govt usually barely gives a moo while the IT companies screw them rotten
Why don't you ask them. It's FoI what with it being tax payer funded and also Gordon's blathering on about saving money..
3rd party involvement though so will be "commercially confidential"
Bastards
Forgive me brothers, for I work as a consultant to the Public Sector. I'm sorry.
I hasten to add that it is in construction and not IT, but my guess is one of the big reasons for madness in costs will be the same.
They probably specified a system with half the information missing to be delivered for 2 hours a day on Fridays and Sundays in months with average temperatures in excess of 30 degrees only...then realised it's needed 24/7 so had to change things halfway through development...then changed other things again, and again, and again. Thats what they do to me, all the time, but I'm a good guy and don't overcharge the public purse...but I could.
That's not a database, it's a table!
@Gecko: I've done a little bit of time in the public sector, I know how it goes. But if you're spending your own money, you pay attention. When you're spending someone else's ...
@AC1: I guess there might be more to it. But really, £7.5million per annum is ludicrous.
Ah, the cost. bit like a military hammer costing US$300 coz they siphon the difference off for black projects. So the difference here is probably siphoned off for the ID card database to hide the real cost of how much that will be when it is totally fucked up by this crew of idiots. If they get nearly 10% of this simple stuff wrong the ID card database and online medical records will be a complete shambles and probably useless. Mind you, if they actually created a specification for a system and stuck to it and didn't keep demanding add ons it just might possibly work.
If 12% of the contents of this table changed per year (unlikely!) it would cost 1 quid per update!
Did you forget to factor in the many Development meetings down the Cock & Balls tavern, the spreadsheet synchronisations at some deluxe 5 Star hotel and the many Project Reviews in Barbados?
I'm surprised they managed to do all this for a piffling 7.5? Seems cheap to me.
For truly big-boys IT you need to move to running the Nuclear sub fleet on Windows... now you're talking serious money. Although you do get a nice selection of free screen savers thrown in.
SSSHHHHHhhhhh!
The LAST thing this country needs is somebody competent getting involved in state computer systems.
I think we're better off being robbed by incompetents, rather than screwed by a competent system directed by the NuLaba control freaks.
It's only their incompetence in getting results that is saving personal freedom.
Hook up some lip-reading software to CCTV cameras, shove the results in a security database - we'd all be wearing veils or beards.
Of course, if you've nothing to hide...
So where the fuck does £7.5 MILLION per annum come from?
It comes from you!
"Ah, the cost. bit like a military hammer costing US$300 coz they siphon the difference off for black projects."
I don't think HMRC are building stealth planes or funding covert wetwork teams. At least, I hope...!
"If they get nearly 10% of this simple stuff wrong the ID card database and online medical records will be a complete shambles and probably useless."
Just like every other BigGov IT fiasco, then... ;)
"It's only their incompetence in getting results that is saving personal freedom."
There's a lot to be said for this after all!
JuliaM............sadly they aren't building stealth planes which might be of some use, just piss useless databases with corrupt/wrong info on them. They are too incompetent to take our freedoms totally, but they are having a damn good try.
As has been suggested, this is the government that wants to save money on the voluntary ID card by not starting with a new database but instead merging three existing ones that can't even get ny name right.
As the Fujitsu Project Manager said ( and got sacked for saying so ) " It won't work because they are trying to use something designed for small things to do a big thing "
Bring it on says I.
It's Cap Gemini (used to be EDS). One rule of thumb says databases of personal details cost £3/head/year to maintain and are typically 40-50% inaccurate. This one is probably only as cheap as it is, and relatively speaking as accurate, because it is so trivially simple. The h/w is a negligible part of the cost.
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