Modernisation or Failure? IT Development Projects in the UK Public Sector

The notable lack of success in UK public sector IT development projects has been recently recognised in policy making circles and considerable efforts are now being made to improve the situation. However, the lessons officially being drawn from the UK public sector's IT development failures, while eminently sensible, do appear simplistic and even superficial. This paper applies permanent failure theory to the stream of IT development failures in an attempt to offer some alternatives to the official lessons.