T.O. STAR CITES GUN REGISTRY AS TECHNO-FAIL

T.O. STAR CITES GUN REGISTRY AS TECHNO-FAIL: Ambitious IT (information technology) projects are ticking time bombs that can bring down corporations if they’re not carefully managed to come in on time and on budget, warns a study in the Harvard Business Review. The Oxford University researchers examined 1,471 information technology projects, in private and public sectors, comparing budgets and estimated performance benefits with actual costs and results. They had expected to find IT projects incur large average cost overruns, but they were surprised to see fully one in six projects — nearly 17 per cent — were so mismanaged that they had average cost overruns of 200 per cent, not factoring inflation, and delays of 70 per cent. Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford’s Said Business School said in an interview he was shocked at how many large, multi-year projects can easily go off the rails... In the public sector, debacles in Canada include implementation of the gun registry and Ontario’s eHealth agency, which was tasked with computerizing patient health records. (By Vanessa Lu, Business Reporter --Toronto Star – August 21, 2011)