The NAO Report – Performance Audit – School Information System was laid on the Table of the House of Representatives by the Honourable Speaker in terms of the Auditor General and National Audit Office Act on Tuesday 3 December 2002.

Government policy to introduce IT in school management was launched in the mid 1990s. MSU (now MITTS) issued a tender for the provision of two systems, one consisting of modules allowing data pertaining to students, staff and schools to be stored, processed and analysed at school level (SIS) and a second system enabling centralisation of the data at the Education Division (CENTRIS).

During the period 1996-2000 MITTS paid the foreign supplier close on Stg 800,000 for software and services required. On its part, the Ministry of Education entered into separate contracts with MITTS Ltd amounting to over Lm 1.3 million and covering back to back provision of the same software, hardware and related services.

The audit, carried out during 2001 by the Value For Money Section at the NAO, focused on the planning and implementation stages of the project, the objective being to determine whether the policy in question was successfully realised and whether funds invested in the project were spent wisely.

The project was characterised by weak planning, leading to weak and partial implementation of the IT policy. While MITTS Ltd shouldered the responsibility for planning, the Education Division, the user of the system, failed to assume full ownership. On its part, the contractor failed to deliver the centralised system, a failure that seriously impaired the effectiveness of the entire project. The contractor also failed to supply half the modules making up SIS.

Regardless of the prevailing situation, MITTS continued effecting payments until 1998. MITTS then revised the original agreement with the foreign contractor, setting payments against deliverables.

In 2001, following further delays, technical problems and lack of co-ordination,

the Education Division informed MITTS that it was no longer interested in the project. Implementation of further modules stopped and the MITTS-supplier contract was abandoned. The outcome of ensuing discussions was an agreement whereby MITTS waived all claims in its favour, notably overpayments, estimated by NAO to be circa Stg 170,000, in exchange for source codes of 8 of the 10 modules making up the school system.

The Education Division is reluctant to allow MITTS to develop the software further and is in the process of assessing its position with an aim of relaunching on its own the policy on IT in school management.

NAO opines that the major causes for the failure of the project to reach most of its objectives were lack of adequate planning, poor project management, inadequate technical properties of the software, lack of clear ownership and resistance by the end users.