South Wales Evening Post - 24 March 2007
A group of Swansea councillors have begun an investigation into why a controversial new IT system is not delivering.
Swansea Council was promised savings of around £26 million when it signed a deal with Swansea based IT firm Capgemini in January 2006.
However just a few months into the deal it became clear that savings targets were not being met.
Members of Swansea Council's Performance Scrutiny Board will spend the next five months hearing from senior council staff involved in the project to see why. Capgemini staff will also give evidence.
The contract with Capgemini is worth £83 million to the IT firm. It is supplying a new computer system and software package and as part of the deal it outlined huge savings for Swansea Council.
A year after the deal was signed just over £6 million of the savings have been found, and the council's deputy chief executive Michelle Morris admitted that meeting some targets would be "extremely challenging".
However she added that work was still going on to identify areas to make savings.
She said: "We realise the problems we have got. We are working through the project and there are things we can do to try to meet this amount, or certainly improve the situation."A
system to increase Swansea's buying power, known as Strategic Sourcing, was expected to save more than £17 million for taxpayers over the 10-year deal. However Mrs Morris revealed that less than £1.5 million would be saved.
Strategic Sourcing was not part of Swansea Council's original plans for its eGovernment scheme and chairman of the scrutiny board Councillor Rene Kinzett said he was worried by the performance.
He said: "It is like a black hole. Were we oversold?
"We have to ask if we looked at Strategic Sourcing in the same robust way that we looked at the other elements."
Vice chairman of the committee Councillor Mark Child also expressed his concerns.
He said: "Clearly if we envisaged savings of this scale it must have helped sway Swansea Council to chose Capgemini.
"Without these £17 million savings nothing else adds up.
"Even if they do extremely well to identify savings they are miles behind.
"How on earth they think they will get those targets I have no idea.
"I can see that everyone is doing their best to meet them, but the question has to be why were such ridiculous targets set in the first place?"
