Algemene Rekenkamer

Netherlands Court of Audits (NCA)

Lessons learned from government ICT-projects Read full text in English

2007 report autoID-NL:20130127233916

This audit has been performed on request of the Dutch parliament. Some newspapers mentioned government losses of four to five billion euro's on a yearly bases. These news items caused the parliament to request this audit. The audit has been performed in only 5 months time and consisted of the re-use of earlier performed audits. We have 'recycled' earlier findings about ICT-projects.

In the report: part paragraph 3.4 and 3.5 (page 20-21)

- project methodology

- too complex IT projects

- more expensive than budgeted

- need more time than planned

- unstisfactory results

In the report: part Summary/causes; 1.3 Debate in the House of Representatives (page 2, 8)

- 'Natural' tendency - on Government side - to opt for big answers to big problems

- ICT providers need such projects, the bigger the better, to survive

- There is nobody who would keep each other in check

- all actors entrap each other

- ICT projects are too complex

In the report: part 3.1 Political complexity; 3.2 Organisational complexity; 3.3 Technical complexity (page 14, 16, 18)

- organisational complexity

- technical complexity

- complexity of interests

- difficult cooperation

- incompatibility of existing systems

- lots of changes during planning and implementation

The risk cases visible on this page are collected and described by the e-Government Subgroup of the EUROSAI IT Working Group in contact with author Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI). In the same way, analytical assumptions and headings are chosen by the Subgroup. We encourage you to read the original texts by SAIs - to be found in the linked files.