Government Asylum Seeker Computer System Scrapped

The government's multi-million pound computer system designed to process asylum seeker applications quickly and efficiently, has been scrapped.

In a report today on the BBC news was released that the £77 million project 'has been dogged by problems since its installation in 1998'.

The Conservative Party also condemned the latest government embarrassment as 'a waste of taxpayers money'.

This - coupled with recent government system short fallings - continues to illustrate that irrespective of the plans for a more 'joined up' government, and for the government to be the envy of the world as an electronic leader; that this government is failing time and time again to make good on its promises and systems to facilitate such.

The asylum seeker issue is one of the current political 'hot potatoes' and could not have been easy for the Home Secretary - Jack Straw - to announce, especially this close to a general election. The news was surreptitiously released by the Home Secretary via a 'cryptic' Commons written answer. Immigration and Asylum Minister Barbara Roche also came under fire when she was asked to confirm that the overall cost to taxpayers of the cancellation would be in the region of £80 million.

The Conservatives - eager to gain favour with the electorate - have been keen to capitalise on this situation and have labelled the whole affair as 'shambolic'.

The system built by German IT giants Siemens Business Services, was released in 1998 but has 'never worked properly'. When queried the Home Secretary admitted that 'at present there is no change to the current contract' with Siemens.

In a time where skilled IT workers and contractors in general are being threatened with damaging legislation such as IR35; it merely goes to show that the government itself is suffering from a lack of qualified professionals to carry out project work. And yet the government still feels that it is justified in its defence of the modifications to the finance bill. This follows a string of government IT mishaps where large consultancy firms have failed to provide even adequate service, and are seldom asked for full recompense - at the taxpayers' expense.

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Chris Curry