Yet the repeated errors in computer procurement suggest that its reports do not always secure change.
After he filed fraud charges in 1998 against several of Mr. Espinoza's subordinates in connection with graft in a computer procurement deal, I.B.M. de Mexico agreed to return $37.5 million the city had paid for the computers.
Add to these the exorbitant cost of hospital privatisation, computer procurement waste and the lack of protection for armed forces in the field and we have a picture not of random accidents but of sheer bad government.
For example, the National Air Traffic Service, which has presided over one of the worst computer-procurement failures at its much-delayed Swanwick control centre, is outside parliamentary audit.
Tony Collins, executive editor of Computer Weekly, a trade magazine which has specialised in charting government computer-procurement failures, says that Whitehall's inbred culture has proved resistant to learning the lessons of past mistakes.That raises questions about the effectiveness of the NAO.
Under the agreement, reached last month between Doe and M. Peter McPherson, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. managers will be placed at the highest levels of departments controlling exports, imports, computer operations, procurement, tax collection, customs, budget and foreign exchange.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), an accounting giant, handles BP's finance and accounting, procurement and computer maintenance.
We need talented and engaged civil servants to oversee the financial markets, monitor our food supplies, safeguard our computer networks, make smart procurement decisions, ensure our national security, protect the environment and manage effectively the billions of dollars in new infrastructure investments.
These massive IT-based systems were a great success and showed that TfL, unlike many parts of Whitehall, was able to manage major procurement exercises and computer systems.
The government can also trigger conservation efforts by setting efficiency procurement policies for computers and appliances, such as the Energy Star program that led to the design and marketing of computer monitors that go to sleep and draw less energy.
Based on research in firms from a variety of sectors, including telecommunications, information systems, computers, financial services and engineering, procurement and construction, the paper reveals that the very project control systems around which the firms operate serve to stifle innovation.
