Universal Credit spend on technology reaches £638m

Mark Hoban, Minister for Employment, has revealed that the amount spent to date on technology to support the introduction of universal credit now stands at a staggering £638 million.

In response to a parliamentary question Frank Field, Hoban, said that £441m had been spent on the design and development of the new system, with various other sundry expenses contributing to the total costs.

For the PQ and the breakdown of costs, see Universal Credit

To give you some comparison, the dismantling of the NHS National Programme for IT was announced in September 2011, following the conclusions of a Cabinet Office review through the Major Projects Authority (MPA). The programme was created in 2002 under the Labour government and the MPA concluded that it is not fit to provide the modern IT services needed by the NHS.

The MPA found some successful achievements (the Spine, N3 Network, NHSmail, Choose and Book, Secondary Uses Service and Picture Archiving and Communications Service) which accounted for around two thirds of the overall £6.4 billion spend. However, the review reported the National Programme for IT could not deliver to its original intent and should be discontinued.

Someone who is better than me can do the maths, but I make it that the UC tech system would, on that level of spend, take about 10 years to hit the same level as the NHS spend, so maybe the amount being spent isn’t that unusual. However, the ultimate failure of the NHS system to deliver, as well as the spending in a time of austerity, certainly does give me some cause for concern, to say the least.

For the press release, see Dismantling the NHS National Programme for IT