The UK’s state-backed savings bank has set out options for finishing its disastrous transformation program, including busting the current timeline.
In its response to a Parliamentary watchdog report that branded National Savings & Investments’ (NS&I) long-running digital overhaul a £3 billion “full-spectrum disaster,” the government said it would decide the future of the project in the second quarter of this year through a Full Business Case. The overhaul is already £1.3 billion over budget and four years late.
It will set out what it can achieve within the limits set out by HM Treasury in the 2025 Spending Review and also discuss options for extending the timelines beyond the March 2028 finish line and getting more funding.
Last month, NS&I boss Dax Harkins resigned after around 37,500 people faced delays in processing bonds belonging to deceased relatives, worth an estimated £476 million. He is being replaced by Sir Jim Harra, former chief executive of His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs.
NS&I began the business transformation program dubbed Project Rainbow in 2020, aiming to reduce the bank’s running costs, make NS&I a self-service digital business, and replace its 20-year outsourcing deal with Atos by splitting the work into five separate contracts.
In 2014, the bank awarded Atos a new contract to run until 2021, then extended it until 2024 and again until 2028 without competition, handing the French outsourcer another £474.4 million. The total cost of the program is expected to hit £3 billion by 2030-31, including its contract with Atos and other running costs. The total cost increase is set for £1.3 billion compared to the 2020 business case, the National Audit Office said in November.
In a transparency statement in January last year, Harkins said the direct award to Atos was made because “un-picking and re-integrating 25 years of complex IT infrastructure has been more challenging than originally envisaged.”
- MPs brand NS&I’s £3B IT overhaul a ‘full-spectrum disaster’
- Troubled French outsourcer Atos finds pot of gold at the end of UK state bank Rainbow
- Bank’s struggle to replace Atos threw system back to dark ages
- IBM wins National Savings & Investment bank tech and ops deal
In a report in February [PDF], the Public Accounts Com