Policy & Resources president Lindsay de Sausmarez yesterday guaranteed the States that her committee’s ongoing investigation would identify the individuals responsible for squandering £18m. on a customer services platform known as MyGov, which delivered no substantial improvements, and £24m. on a new system at the Revenue Service which made things worse for taxpayers and staff.
She promised there would be no hiding place for officials or politicians after Deputy Jayne Ozanne said the public expected to know ‘which individuals were accountable, as opposed to broad amorphous statements’.
But she did not yet know when her committee and chief executive Boley Smillie would complete their investigation which was announced at the end of November.
‘I can assure Deputy Ozanne that what she has raised in her very important question reflects the exact conversations we have all the time at P&R,’ said Deputy de Sausmarez.
‘I can give her an additional assurance that when we talk about accountability we really mean accountability.
‘She will get, as will all members, a very clear idea of where responsibility sits and where things have gone wrong.’
When the investigation was announced, Mr Smillie said malfeasance could not be ruled out as a reason for what he regarded as the worst example of waste he had ever seen in the public sector, and that is understood to remain the position as more details are uncovered.
At the Assembly’s first meeting of the new year, Deputy de Sausmarez told members that Mr Smillie had now redirected the whole of the States’ internal audit team to focus fully on the investigation, as well as seconding additional assistance.
She announced a series of preliminary findings based on the material reviewed so far.
‘While appropriate financial controls had been set within the organisation, they were not always effective because they were frequently not followed,’ she said.
‘External suppliers failed to meet agreed deliverables, and there was no sufficiently robust mechanism to ensure that they did.
‘Concerns raised about the project were not addressed adequately or in a timely manner [and] there was a significant disparity between how the project’s status was reported, including to politicians, and the reality of its progress.’
She said that her vice-president, Deputy Gavin St Pier, would provide more extensive information in another update at the Assembly’s next meeting in the final week of February.
P&R’s IT adviser, Deputy Marc Laine, warned at the end of last year that other botched projects were likely to become apparent in the near future, and it is understood that since then the current investigation has uncovered even more concerns than expected about the way projects have been run elsewhere in the States.
However, Deputy de Sausmarez struck a more optimistic note when addressing long-standing customer service problems at the income tax division of the Revenue Service. Its new operations director started work in mid-November and was said to be ‘making strong progress’ on a plan to address the ongoing delivery issues.
P&R is expecting regular updates which it said it would share with the public.
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