Access Card: an IT Project Failure?

In a recent presentation, IT and privacy consultant Roger Clarke declared the Access Card project as a failure listing the following reasons:

• Vast Scale ("largest IT project in the world")
• Arbitrary and Ridiculously Tight Deadlines
• Tenders Prior to Parliamentary Approval
• Untested Technologies
• Unclear Requirements
• Rapidly Changing Requirements
• 'Going for Glory' (Hockey's "pilots are for aircraft")
• Huge Media Scepticism
• Huge Risk of Public Rejection
• Total Failure to Engage with the Public Interest
• Seriously Annoyed Tenderers, left in limbo
• Low Staff Morale, Staff Turnover, Loss of Corporate Memory

"Ellison's staff have realised it's an unmitigated disaster (and I'm limiting my comments here to project risk and not going into the impact it would have on privacy)....

The big Booz Allen Hamilton contract will be paid out.  But the tenderers for the big contracts can pack up and go home now, and the public servants can go hunting for their next jobs.  That will save us, as taxpayers, a cool billion dollars that would have been sadly wasted if the project had proceeded."

via Open and Shut