States IT project – £200m down the pan?

The £200 million Agilisys contract ¹ has exposed severe governance failures in Guernsey’s public sector. For an island with just 15,000 taxpayers, this amounts to over £13,000 per person—a financial misstep Guernsey cannot afford.

The Scrutiny Management Report, after an astonishing two years in preparation, has finally been published.².

The Guernsey Press describes it thus: ‘Scrutiny lays bare failings of States’ IT partnership – Incompetence and complacency from the States has been blamed as the major cause of serious failures in the £200m. IT partnership with Agilisys…’¹ The damning conclusions should serve as a wake-up call to all in public service and to us; we should demand better from those who work for us.

The Failings

1. System Outages: Repeated IT failures in 2022/23 revealed neglected infrastructure and unclear roles between Agilisys and the States.
2. Delays: Key projects, including the Revenue Service Programme and MyGov, were delayed due to poor planning and insufficient expertise.
3. Support Issues: IT support fell short of demand, leading to slow responses and frustration across the public sector.
4. Governance Breakdown: Weak oversight and a lack of internal technical expertise allowed inefficiencies and waste to spiral.

As Deputy Mark Helyar observed in a Facebook post that now seems to have been deleted:
“What happened is that the States, not even knowing what systems it was running, signed a poorly drafted and inadequate contract, and then its senior management simply walked away from IT altogether (assuming it would become someone else’s problem).” ³

Recommendations from the Review

1. Appoint a Chief Information Officer: A skilled CIO is needed to oversee IT strategy and challenge contractors effectively.
2. Develop a Proper IT Strategy: A clear, unified plan must drive decisions and prevent further costly errors.
3. Renegotiate Contracts: Align funding and responsibilities with realistic deliverables.
4. Form an IT Advisory Board: Independent experts should provide guidance and hold decision-makers to account.
5. Strengthen Oversight: Improve contract management to prevent future waste and delays.

Governance Reforms to Prevent Future Failures

Deputy Helyar’s statement points to deeper issues:
“Our management caused, through its ineptitude, several million pounds’ worth of computer equipment to be destroyed and came within a hair’s breadth of losing all States data… Someone senior has to be held responsible for that.”

The issues with Agilisys and States’ staff seconded to the project highlight systemic governance problems, many of which could have been avoided by adopting the reforms detailed on my website: State of Guernsey. These cultural issues within the Civil Service have persisted for years, entrenched by a lack of accountability. Instead of addressing them, the Civil Service shields its shortcomings through evasive internal reviews and a defensive stance that defaults to discrediting the complainant or whistleblower.

Suggestions I, and many others, have made to counter this include:

• Independent Public Service Ombudsman: An impartial body to investigate public sector complaints.
• Freedom of Information Law: A proper law – not a toothless code – ensuring transparency and accountability.
• Transparency as Standard: Regular public reporting and open decision-making processes.
• Owning up to mistakes: To allow resolution before disaster.

Conclusion

While it is reassuring to some that P&R seek to convince us that the Agilisys partnership ‘matured since contract’s inception’  ⁴, Guernsey’s taxpayers cannot bear the cost of such failures any more. 

Poor oversight, weak governance, and opaque processes have allowed £134 million to be squandered. This is especially sickening for me, as I was asked (my background is IT) in mid-2019 to look at the proposed deal by a group of Deputies – and I did. I read it twice. I thought it was an agreement to agree and bound to fail and told them so, but few listened.

Deputy Helyar aptly summarises the systemic issue: “This could almost be a 101 of how not to enter into and run an outsourced management agreement. In the real world, heads would be rolling.”

By adopting robust oversight structures and instilling a culture of transparency, Guernsey can help prevent further public sector mismanagement. The lights must be turned on – fully, firmly and with no ‘off switch’.

By doing so we can, at least, draw something worthwhile from this debacle.

Deputy Helyar: “It’s taken an unbelievable 2 years for the scrutiny report on the States’ IT outsourcing arrangements to be released (at a rate of 0.06 pages per day). I am reliably informed this is becasue of legal wrangling over the appportionment of blame in what is now a heavily edited and redacted version of the truth.

Let’s be clear, it is not the responsibility of a contractor to ensure they are providing value for money or making sure public systems aren’t falling through the cracks in the pavement.

What happened is that the states, not even knowing what systems it was running, signed a poorly drafted and inadequate contract, and then its senior management simply walked away from IT altogether (assuming it would become someone else’s problem).

As States Deputies we are not allowed to name specific civil servants and we are not allowed to interfere in “operational” matters such as this, we have to take it on trust that people are competent and being properly managed, even when it is clear they are not. The reason for that is to prevent pressure being unfairly put on those who have to make difficult decisions in a public arena.

But I’m afraid that rule has a sinister aspect – it insulates individuals hiding in the service from often legitimate criticism and prevents public servants being called out and held accountable for what in this case has been a world class failure of management.

This could almost be a 101 of how not to enter into and run an outsourced management agreement. In the real world heads would be rolling. I don’t believe adding a new IT manager is sufficient. Our management caused, through its ineptitude, several million pounds worth of computer equipment to be destroyed and came within a hairs breadth of losing all of the States data – health, tax, police, everything. Someone senior has to be held responsible for that, if not then its sets a precedent that there is almost no failure large enough to ensure change or accountability in our public services.”⁵

(Article updated to include Helyar FB post)

1. https://guernseypress.com/news/2025/01/27/scrutiny-lays-bare-failings-of-states-it-partnership/ [↩] [↩]
2. https://gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=185969&p=0 [↩]
3. https://www.facebook.com/100063881237872/posts/1134519595354071/?rdid=tec8zpcHEkWdRSaf&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2F15e2RuETS2%2F [↩]
4. https://guernseypress.com/news/2025/01/27/agilisys-partnership-has-matured-since-contracts-inception–pr/ [↩]
5. Deputy Helyar, https://www.facebook.com/100063881237872/posts/1134519595354071/?rdid=FMElCR554T9rkfnB&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2F15e2RuETS2%2F [↩]