Here we go again...

We've talked more than once in these pages about government's lamentable track record when it comes to IT projects, but the latest fiasco - the so-called eBorders system - takes the biscuit.  This was to be a "count-'em-out and count-'em-in" system which would have kept comprehensive records of everybody entering and leaving these islands, but as is so often the case the actual details of what was required kept being changed with the result that what was eventually produced satisfied nobody.  So one of the first acts of the current Government, when it came to power in 2010 was to cancel it.  That would have been bad enough, but this was done on the advice of civil servants that the company involved had failed to meet the specifications asked for, and therefore were to blame for the failure. But the company took the matter to court and have been awarded some £185m damages after the court found they had done precisely what was asked of them, and that the problem was that the project, as designed by government, was never going to work the way it was supposed to. Of course all those involved have moved on (and in the case of civil servants, almost certainly moved up) by now, so the probability is that no-one will be held to account.  Ain't that wonderful?