How Whitehall pays £3,500 for a £250 computer in ‘obscene’ waste of public money

 

By Kirsty Walker

Whitehall is wasting an ‘obscene’ amount of public money on IT systems, a report by MPs admits.

The report cites some Whitehall departments who blow an average of £3,500 on a desktop computer, while they can be bought for as little as £250 on the High Street, 14 times cheaper.

Ministers have created a ‘recipe for rip-offs’ by buying from a cartel of suppliers at massively inflated prices, it says.

Government buildings on Whitehall. Officials paid £73 for a box of copier paper that can be bought in bulk for just £8

The Public Administration Select Committee described the Government’s overall record in developing and implementing IT systems as ‘appalling’.

According to the most recent figures, those for 2009, an estimated £16billion of public money was spent on IT in a single year.

But over the past 20 years, a number of high-profile government computer projects have run late, over budget, underperformed or failed.

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