€577,000 wasted on inadequate prison IT system

PRISON service bosses “took their eyes off the ball” as more than half a million euro was wasted on a computer system that could not do its job, TDs heard yesterday.

In the latest example of a Government IT upgrade that turned into a financial disaster, jails had to abandon a new civil service-wide operation because it could not process overtime and sick leave data.

The Dáil Public Accounts Committee heard how €577,000 was spent on the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) in prisons before it was abandoned after 14 months.

Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell said he believed the system could have been made to work properly. But he commended prison service chiefs for being honest and indicating the battle to cut overtime rolls had distracted them from the IT situation.

“I think it was possible to implement this in the prisons. Mistakes were made, some understandable. They have held their hands up, saying the eye was taken off the ball in terms of the bigger issue,” he said.

Earlier, the committee heard Department of Justice Secretary General Sean Aylward say that at the time of the implementation of the computer network in October 2003, the prison service was caught-up in a “life or death” struggle with unions over reducing the sprawling overtime bill.

He insisted that abandoning the HRMS when it was found to be unable to process overtime data properly was the right thing to do.

“We found ourselves as an organisation in a hole and decided very early on to stop digging. We didn’t keep pouring money into it. I believe this is an example of good governance, not bad governance,” he said.

Mr Aylward admitted that at the time, the “tetchy bit of our operation was not my preoccupation” as he was battling to reduce the culture of sick and overtime pay costing €60m a year.

Mr Aylward said the prison service had been “put under pressure” to adopt the HRMS civil service-wide computer system and it was believed that it could be modified to meet its particular needs.

“There was an over-optimistic view taken as to the ease with which the system could be tweaked,” Mr Aylward said as he admitted the system was not tested robustly enough before it went live.

However, he insisted the amount of money involved was “minute” in comparison to the service budget.

Prison Service director-general Brian Purcell told TDs, at the time of the computer system’s introduction, overtime costs were running at €60m a year.

“We managed to reduce overtime by a quarter, knocking €15m off the bill,” he said.

Details of the failure of the prison service system emerged as the Department of Health was still reeling from the revelation its payroll computer initiative has so far cost €116m and only covers 37,000 of its 140,000 staff.