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UK 'wasted millions' on army recruitment IT system

14 January 2014, 21:22

The UK's Ministry of Defence had to write off £6.7m on a failed online recruitment system, UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has told MPs. It is costing taxpayers £1m a month to pay for staff to fill in while a replacement was developed, he added. Labour said it was the latest in a line of 'catastrophic' IT failures to hit the Ministry of Defence.

Some £6.7 million already spent on the recruitment scheme will have to be written off, the Defence Secretary admitted.

Around 1,000 Army personnel have been put back into recruiting roles as a result of the botched system and Mr Hammond acknowledged that the problems had meant some would-be soldiers 'falling through the cracks'.

Temporary 'workaround' solutions to the problems in the recruitment partnership programme were costing £1 million a month, he told MPs.

It was also claimed that the Army's recruitment division had failed to challenge MoD policy in 2011 that had apparently favoured the less suitable of the two competing bidders chasing the contract.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond is said to be mulling over a £50m payout for new tech to fix the computer system, which is now not expected to be live until 2015, the General Election year.

The cost of running an interim system, with additional staff and improvements such as a simplified application form, was about £1m a week, added Mr Hammond.

He also stressed that the IT problems would not affect the Army's current recruitment drive.

Meanwhile, another briefing note seen by The Times informed that the MoD would face additional costs of 1million pounds per month until the IT problem was resolved.

According to Shadow Defence Secretary Vernon Coaker, the leaked report attested to the 'latest series of catastrophic failures at the Ministry of Defence on David Cameron's watch.'

'Labour warned that the government was taking risks with Britain's security by not fixing the reserve recruitment crisis before reducing numbers in the regular army. We specifically raised the worrying IT problems and Capita's performance as causes for concern. But the government recklessly pressed ahead,' the Guardian quoted him as saying.

Meanwhile, an MoD spokeswoman told The Times that it had acknowledged 'a number of problems' with the Army and Capita recruitment partnership.

'Ministers have gripped these problems and put in place a number of fixes to correct the issues that had emerged,' she said.

Voice of Russia, RT, BBC

Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_14/ UK-wasted-millions-on-army- recruitment-IT-system-1399/