Information Technology Cost Estimation Agencies Need to Address Significant Weakness in Policies and Practices
To estimate reliable cost for the sucess of an IT program by providing the basis for the informed decision making and realistic budget information. To assess the extent to which selected departments ... and agencies have appropriately implement costestimating policies an procedures(four caracteristics of a reliable cost estimation: comprehensive, well-documented, accurate, credible). ... IT cost estimation ... Check out what may go wrong with the information technology cost estimation. Results of the US GAO audit can help to identify high risk areas: comprehensiveness of estimations, their documentation ... , lack of adequacy and inadequate implementation.
Full description

Quality of public services in information society in 2010
The National Audit Office found that irrespective of a few positive changes, the quality of provision of public services in information society has not improved significantly in comparison to 2007 ... . Information about the services is still difficult to find on websites and people who use public services must still submit unjustified documents, proof of facts or go to administrative agencies in person ... . A positive example is registration of a person’s place of residence, which has become considerably easier and user-friendlier than in 2007 as a result of the development of the state portal. <br/> 2007 Audit ... ... The quality of public services has been improved but still isn’t good enough ... Irrespective of a few positive changes, the quality of provision of public services in information society has not improved significantly in comparison to 2007. Information about the services ... is still difficult to find on websites and people who use public services must still submit unjustified documents, proof of facts or go to administrative agencies in person.
Full description

Managing the risk of legacy ICT to public service delivery
within a business function but superseded by newer and more effective technologies or changed business needs"). ... The cross-government report describes the case studies from four public services (state pension, Value Added Tax collection, prescription payment and consumer credit licensing services) selected ... to illustrate the range of approaches that small and large government bodies are taking to address the issues arising from legacy ICT (defined as "systems and applications that have been operationally embedded ... Possible approaches to the problem of 'legacy ICT' ... UK’s government experience in managing the risks connected to legacy ICT provides valuable insight for others facing the same problem and are considering transforming their services.
Full description

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.
Full description

Management of Information Resources of the Ministry of the Interior
information systems. Whereas the Ministry has failed to implement some of the public audit recommendations of 2007 and 2010,6 we analysed, whether there have been any positive changes in the field of IT ... Many activities of the Ministry of the Interior require the use of information resources that are of great significance to the entire State, such as the state and departmental registers, and public ... management. Their impact is important not only because the Ministry manages 16 information resources, which ensure data availability to the population, efficient activity of the services, and operation ... ... Process maturity examination can help in IT audit ... also flaws in change management and security processes. But the finding, which gave them the key to the root cause of problems, was connected with maturity assessment of the auditee's IT processes. ... Main risk areas in case of this audit were strategic and organisational - Ministry’s weak ownership of IT resources, insufficient audit and internal control function. SAI Lithuania auditors found
Full description

The National Offender Management Information System (NOMIS)
This report examines the reasons for the delays and cost increases to the original integrated information system and, since the moratorium imposed by the Minister of State in order to seek options ... for project’s cost reduction, the aims of the revised National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and the progress made, the impact of the delays and rescoping on the costs and benefits achieved, and NOMS ... ’ fitness to deliver. The aim of one integrated information system (C-NOMIS i.e. National Offender Management Information System) was to improve information sharing about offenders; address the lack ... Rescoping necessary, but not fully successful ... An initiative to build a single offender management IT system for the prison and probation services has not delivered value for money. The NAO investigation found the project had been hampered ... by poor management leading to a three-year delay, a doubling in project costs and reductions in scope and benefits.
Full description

Management of Information Resources of the Ministry of Agriculture
The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania has managed 32 information systems and registers. Of these, 24 ones are managed, developed and upgraded by a state enterprise subordinate ... to the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Information and Rural Business Centre. The annual amount allocated by the Ministry for the maintenance of the Centre totals LTL 17.5 million on average ... . The objective of the audit was to assess the general and development controls of the information resources of the Ministry of Agriculture. The audit was conducted at the Ministry of Agriculture and the state ... ... Without appropiate IT management  it is hard to achieve reliable, consistent and secure systems for agriculture ... Since 1996 the Ministry has been using information systems of varying complexity for collecting and processing data, including personal data. The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania ... has managed 32 information systems and registers. SAI of Lithuania revealed that systems were not well mantained what affected use of funds devoted to the systemsand also their legality and security.
Full description

Lessons learned from government ICT-projects
This audit has been performed on request of the Dutch parliament. Some newspapers mentioned government losses of four to five billion euro's on a yearly bases. These news items caused the parliament ... to request this audit. The audit has been performed in only 5 months time and consisted of the re-use of earlier performed audits. We have 'recycled' earlier findings about ICT-projects. ... 'Expensive' does not always mean 'High Quality', so... do not feed the spiral ... Excellent analysis of systemic errors commited when designing Government IT projects. The report aims at the essence of problems which are encountered far from information technologies - in: politics ... , business, psychology... Do not be mislead by date of report, it is evergreen for all who really want to know why IT projects fail.
Full description

Opportunities Exist for SEC to Improve Its Controls over Financial Systems and Data
The SEC is responsible for enforcing securities laws, issuing rules and regulations that provide protection for investors, and helping to ensure that the securities markets are fair and honest ... . In carrying out its mission, the SEC relies on computerized information systems to collect, process, and store sensitive information, including financial data. Having effective information security controls ... in place is essential to protecting these systems and the information they contain. <br/> This report details weaknesses GAO identified in the information security program at SEC during its audit ... IT security basics under scrutiny ... Financial audit by US GAO was accompanied by an IT examination focused on information security measures in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). GAO found that SEC’s systems could ... be compromised, because of risks jeopardizing the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive financial information.
Full description

IT Police Systems
Implementation by the Polish Police of two IT projects (E-police station and Command Support System - CSS) was audited. Both systems were to relieve the Police officers and increase the quality ... and effectiveness of their work. Audit explained the reason of failure in the case of E-police station project and success in the case of CSS. Although some irregularities occurred in both cases, careful planning ... and organization of the project turned out to make the difference. Accordance with the public procurement law was not part of the audit as a separate investigation in that matter was carried by respective Polish ... ... A textbook example of how not to implement the IT projects ... Polish NIK compared the implementation of two flagship IT projects of the Police HQ: successful 'Command Support System' and problematic 'E-police station'. List of interesting problems appeared...
Full description