Today’s edition of Computing reports the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ambitious plans for yet another Child Maintenance Payment system. Apparently the last attempt cost the taxpayer about £450 million and resulted in the Child Support Agency (CSA) failing to collect approximately £.3.5 billion in outstanding maintenance payments. That’s almost £4 billion of wasted money by my reckoning.
The proposed new wundersystem will only cost the taxpayer £50 million or so. A bargain if it works and the cost does not escalate when it eventually arrives in the summer of 2011.
Why is it so cheap? Well, one of the reasons given is that the system will be operated by the newly formed Child Maintenance Enforcement Commision, rather than by the system provider. Having spent time analysing the previous CSA fiasco, I don’t seriously believe that such economies will be available to the CMEC.
Obviously I haven’t seen the business case but I can just about guarantee that the business case will not accurately reflect the true cost of ownership of such a system.
We all know that the lifetime costs of any system generally follow the 20:80 rule (20% cost for development, 80% lifetime cost to support and extend). Despite this we continue to see business cases that reverse this experience and blissfully purport that the development costs will be 80% of the lifetime cost of ownership.
This dubious practice is a disgrace that needs to change NOW. Until it does, we will continue to see unexpected cost and disappointment as the most likely outcomes.
