Building and Implementing the Phoenix Pay System
Expensive IT project became a failure Phoenix project (development of states pay system) was an incomprehensible failure of project management and oversight. Phoenix executives prioritized certain aspects, such as schedule and budget, over other critical ones, such as functionality and security. Phoenix executives did not understand the importance of warnings that the Miramichi Pay Centre, departments and agencies, and the new system were not ready. They did not provide complete and accurate information to deputy ministers and associate deputy ministers of departments and agencies, including the Deputy Minister of Public Services and Procurement, when briefing them on Phoenix readiness for implementation.
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The management of the State Property and Funds while Information Systems Building for the Ministry of Defence
The aim of the audit was to examine management during process of extension and modernization of the current information systems and at building of new information systems for the needs ... of the Ministry of Defence or the Army of the Czech Republic. Operating of information systems is inseparably linked with the communication infrastructure, thus the technological shift to ICT was reviewed also ... in this connection. The stationary ICT systems are determined to support management of the Ministry of Defence in period of peace. They are also supposed as a tool of crisis management. The auditing operation covered ... ... Information systems not balanced with infrastructure ... Both organizational changes and inflexibility produce unbalanced plans which cause deiscrepancies between IS and infrastructure.
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Use of consultants and temporary staff
New skills needed in a longer term UK NAO: Used well, consultants and temporary staff can be an important source of specialist skills and capabilities that are uneconomic for departments to maintain in their permanent staff. Since 2009-10, the government has used spending controls to reduce its use of consultants and temporary staff, and by 2014-15 spending had fallen by £1.5 billion. However, spending has increased by between £400 million and £600 million since 2011-12, suggesting that this was more of a short-term reduction than a sustainable strategy. In the longer term, departments will need to develop workforce, skills and capacity plans to reduce their dependence on external skills. They will need to improve their strategic workforce planning to determine where they can deploy existing staff, where they need to recruit, and where they need to engage temporary resources. Without this, departments cannot demonstrate that they are achieving value for money from the use of consultants and temporary staff.
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