Service@Swansea still Costing Us

Back in May I went through the Council's proposed budget and gave warnings about how the IT costs were going to increase over the next few years.

Part of these costs are to pay off CapGemini for the IT System that the council decided to bin. These are detailed again in the Cabinet meeting agenda pack for today. One thing it also shows is that in addition to the £9.4m it has to pay CapGemini, it also has to pay £2.3m for an upgrade to the IT System they selected when they kicked out CapGemini.

A total of £11.7m has to be paid from 2013 to 2016 towards IT costs, the majority for a system they never used and the rest for a system that requires a major upgrade due to its short lifespan. The mismanagement and handling of the IT contracts is now coming back to haunt the council. With the council forecasting budget shortfalls of £16.4m for 2011/12 rising to a staggering £41.2m in 2015/16, it is not the time to be paying out for the council's screw up of Service@Swansea.