The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has reportedly thrown away millions of pounds, "equivalent to the annual salary of 1,000 troops", on a crippled computer system impeding Britain’s ability to recruit soldiers, leaked documents have revealed.
The Recruitment Partnering Project (RPP), a 1.3 billion pound
($2.1 billion) scheme designed to enable the army to recruit
online, is currently nearly two years behind schedule and will
not be fully operational until April 2015, The Times reported,
citing leaked MoD documents.
While according to the newspaper some 15.5 million pounds ($25
million) has already been spent on the computer system for the
pricey project, things went wrong to the point where ministers
are considering spending nearly 50 million pounds ($81 million)
on a solution, it turned out.
Another confidential report seen by The Times and delivered by an
IT research company hired by the Army, Gartner, concluded that
the Army's recruitment wing chose the wrong partner to build the
IT system after failing in 2011 to challenge an MoD policy that
favored the less suitable of two competing offers. According to
the report, the company's project management team was
"inexperienced and under-resourced," and when delays
started, the Army allegedly failed to implement a viable
contingency plan, so the costs multiplied.
The delay reportedly led to recruitment targets for regular
soldiers and reservists to be missed and applications to be lost
in the system. As a result, the Defence Secretary's ‘challenging’
plan to recruit more than 10,000 troops by 2018 has been under
threat, The Times reported.
Under government plans, the Army is being cut from 102,000 to
82,000 by 2020, while the newly-renamed Army Reserve, formerly
known as the Territorial Army, is being expanded from 19,000 to
30,000. According to a leaked MoD memo seen by the Telegraph in
October, only 376 recruits joined the Reserve between April and
June, missing a target of 1432.
Philip Hammond was allegedly urged to pay the MoD's partner in
the project the UK's leading provider of business process
management and integrated professional support service solutions,
Capita, over 47 million pounds ($77 million) to build a new IT
platform.
According to The Times, a briefing note sent by the MoD's
Director General of Finance to the Defence Secretary strongly
recommended getting rid of the defected IT system and paying
Capita to build a new model.
"If the ICT hosting solution is not put in place then the MoD
risks not gaining the appropriate number of recruits needed.
Given recent criticism of army recruitment … and the use of
reserves, this would lead to further negative media reporting and
reputational damage for MoD," David Williams warned in
December.
Meanwhile, another briefing note seen by The Times informed that
the MoD would face additional costs of 1million pounds per month
until the IT problem was resolved.
According to Shadow Defence Secretary Vernon Coaker, the leaked
report attested to the "latest series of catastrophic
failures at the Ministry of Defence on David Cameron's
watch."
"[Opposition] Labour warned that the government was taking
risks with Britain's security by not fixing the reserve
recruitment crisis before reducing numbers in the regular army.
We specifically raised the worrying IT problems and Capita's
performance as causes for concern. But the government recklessly
pressed ahead," the Guardian quoted him as saying.
"Now we learn that the problems were worse than anyone
thought and still haven't been fixed. The blame for this latest
fiasco – which is wasting 1 million pounds of taxpayers’ money
every month – lies squarely with government. Philip Hammond needs
to get a grip and sort this shambles out," Coaker stated.
Meanwhile, an MoD spokeswoman told The Times that it had
acknowledged "a number of problems" with the Army and
Capita recruitment partnership.
"Ministers have gripped these problems and put in place a
number of fixes to correct the issues that had emerged," she
said.
"As we have previously said, in the medium-term we are
building a new IT platform that will be ready early next year and
in the short term we are introducing work-arounds [sic] and
mitigation measures to the old IT platform to simplify the
application process."