Gavin St Pier, who was Policy & Resources president at the time, said that his committee followed officials’ advice and a lengthy tender process before recommending the move in June 2019. His fellow politicians backed it.
He admitted that events since then had revealed obvious problems inside the States which meant the 10-year, £200m. contract with Agilisys was set up for failure, but he insisted they had become apparent to politicians only years later when he was no longer a member of the senior committee.
‘P&R’s recommendation was on the back of a very long procurement exercise and clear advice from officials as the best solution at the time when faced with very outdated and inadequate IT,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘With hindsight, it’s clear that one of the key reasons for failure was that the States did not have the capacity and capability to properly manage the outsourcing contract. The “intelligent client” function proved not to be very intelligent.’
The States’ contract with Agilisys was terminated by Policy & Resources last year, just weeks after Deputy St Pier returned to the senior committee as its vice-president, though the decision to axe the firm had been made in May by the previous committee.
Deputy St Pier also revealed that Agilisys was only narrowly selected as the States’ IT partner in 2019.
‘My recollection is that it was a finely-balanced decision versus the runner-up, Fujitsu,’ he said.
Fujitsu, the company at the centre of the Horizon IT scandal at the Post Office in the UK, was awarded reserve bidder status by P&R and could have been appointed as its IT partner without another competitive procurement exercise if the contract with Agilisys had fallen through.
P&R advised the Assembly at the time that both Agilisys and Fujitsu ‘were able to consistently demonstrate that they had the technical capability, capacity and the industry relationships necessary to meet the States’ IT needs’.
A Scrutiny Management Committee review of the IT contract, published in January 2025, concluded that throughout their partnership both the States and Agilisys ‘made some decisions which are difficult to subsequently justify and defend’.
Deputy St Pier claimed that problems with the partnership exploded after the 2020 general election.
‘I was a backbencher and not on P&R from 2020 to 2025 when most of the money, time and goodwill were squandered,’ he said.
Former deputy Michelle Le Clerc, speaking recently on her The Long and The Short of it podcast, said that before she left politics in June 2020 she raised concerns with P&R about rising costs and lack of progress on IT projects such as the integration of income tax and social security systems, and an attempt to centralise customer services known as MyGov.
States chief executive Boley Smillie’s recent report into MyGov blamed the £21m. IT failure, which was part of the deal with Agilisys, on a combination of poor leadership, weak governance, inadequate financial controls and an over-reliance on external contractors, and found that numerous opportunities were missed for senior leaders to intervene as they should have.
‘The report is refreshingly brief, clear and blunt. I have no reason to disagree with any of the findings or actions,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘It would appear from the report that our political predecessors were kept out of the loop, denying them the opportunity to intervene.’
The States now has shorter IT contracts with a number of partners, including C5 Alliance, which provides day-to-day support for public sector staff, and JT, which is responsible for networks, hosting and infrastructure.
Mr Smillie has guaranteed that nothing like the debacle with Agilisys will ever happen again and he and P&R have already made various reforms to how large projects are handled with more change expected.
Deputy St Pier said that Forward Guernsey, the island’s only registered political party which he leads, had identified some of the changes which were needed ahead of last year’s general election.
‘Forward Guernsey’s election manifesto included two commitments to improve States capacity and capability by recruiting local expertise into managing the capital portfolio and also accepting Scrutiny’s recommendation to appoint an IT advisory panel,’ he said.
‘I’m pleased that the current P&R has adopted and is implementing both policies. As I said in the States last week, we also now need to ensure that other outsourced contracts are effectively managed.’