Scrutiny lays bare failings of States’ IT partnership

The demands on the States ‘were not fully understood’ from the outset of the deal, there was ‘totally inadequate’ expertise in the public sector to manage the contract, and mounting problems during the first few years of the relationship ‘were frequently not dealt with effectively’.

The failings of the States were compounded by Agilisys ‘significantly underestimating’ the work involved after ‘lack of due diligence’ at the start of the contract. The company also suffered high staff turnover and reviewers looking into the fiasco obtained ‘no evidence that Agilisys highlighted the difficulties they were experiencing’.

The findings are set out in a damning report released this morning by the Scrutiny Management Committee.

A panel it set up in 2022, led by committee president Deputy Yvonne Burford and including several IT experts, has spent two years looking into what went wrong in the early years of the States’ 10-year contract with Agilisys, after it was signed in 2019. It has also produced recommendations to avoid a repeat and to improve the remaining years of the partnership.

‘It is the view of the panel that, during the period reviewed, both the public sector and Agilisys made some decisions which are difficult to subsequently justify and defend,’ said Scrutiny in its report.

However, its principal finding was that a team of six staff retained by the States’ own IT department, once all other staff had been transferred to Agilisys, lacked sufficient expertise and was far too small – possibly up to four times smaller than it should have been – to cope with the demands it faced and manage the contract with the company.

This led to ‘inefficiencies, delays, sub-optimal outcomes and ultimately money being wasted’, said Scrutiny.

‘These mistakes were made due to a desire to save money on public sector salaries. While this objective is understandable, in this instance it has proved to be a major error and had a dramatic impact on the success of the wider contract implementation, and much of the work undertaken by Agilisys.’

Scrutiny’s report revealed that the States paid Agilisys more than £135m. during the first four full years of their partnership, between 2020 and 2023.

Although the committee found that expenditure had produced many fewer benefits than expected for at least the first three full years, it also said that changes in senior personnel at the States and Agilisys late in 2022 had led to ‘significant recent improvements in contract and programme management’.

• Read more coverage in Monday’s Press