The Dutch government is wasting between €1bn and €5bn a year on failing IT projects, says a parliamentary commission set up to look at a number of headline cases.

This ‘cautious estimate’ is an ‘unacceptably high amount’, the commission said in its report which was published on Wednesday.

‘The government often fails to keep control of its IT projects in terms of cost, timing and the end result,’ the commission said.

Unknown spending

Coming up with an exact figure of how much the government wastes on IT is impossible because ‘no one knows how much it spends’. But based on expert opinion the figure can be put at between €1bn and €5bn a year.

Parliament is also failing to properly monitor IT projects because of a lack of interest and expertise and projects are being undertaken with unrealistic expectations.

Among the 34 recommendations for improvement, the commission says a special committee should be set up to supervise projects with a budget of over €5m. The green light for such projects should only be given once the technical, management and organisation risks have been assessed.

The commission was set up to look at six government IT projects which ran into serious trouble, and held its first interviews at the end of April. The NRC sums them up as follows: