Foreign Office overspend sees IT projects trimmed
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has overspent on two IT projects, forcing it to rethink some of its development plans.
The cost of implementing the revamped FCO Telecommunications Network (FTN) has ballooned from £180m to £240m, while the Future Firecrest project to upgrade the FCO's desktop systems worldwide is expected to cost £26m more than the £332m originally predicted.
These overspends have been compounded by the need to spend £6.5m simplifying the Prism project, an Oracle-based ERP platform to rationalise 30 different IT systems. The money to be spent on Prism is intended to simplify the system and reduce support costs.
Other IT projects have been trimmed, with "financial constraints" forcing funding for the iRecords electronic-document-management system to be cut from £26.5m to £5.1m and predicted spend on an FCO web platform reduced from £13.5m to £9.7m.
A spokeswoman for the FCO explained the overspend: "FTN is the FCO's telecommunications network. £180m was the estimate in 2000; in the intervening eight years the FCO has deployed many new applications, creating a significant additional demand for network capacity."
"The £60m represents the cost of this additional usage. It is a cost that has enabled a flexible and cost-effective response to increasing international pressures and commitments," said the spokeswoman.
"We are now undertaking some additional work to simplify and update the structure of Prism, made possible by the evolution of our business requirements," added the spokeswoman.
She said the Future Firecrest programme had not overspent "at a programme level", as funding had been moved from associated projects such as iRecords. The spokeswoman said that the quality of the final systems would not be affected.
The Future Firecrest programme has seen 3,000 computers installed at FCO offices in London and Milton Keynes, with new machines and infrastructure planned at FCO sites in Athens, Tbilisi in Georgia, and The Hague from late summer 2008.
The funding figures were revealed in a written answer to Parliament by Foreign Office minister Meg Munn.