Public administration page-turners

Two more books for the bedside table:

• Conundrum: Why every government gets things wrong and what we can do about it
  by Richard Bacon MP and Christopher Hope
• The Blunders of Our Governments
  by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe

Published in 1952 and still essential reading:

• The Passing of Parliament
  by GW Keeton

Why would anyone want to read these books?

Here's one reason.

The UK National Health Service (NHS) used to boast the biggest computer project in the world. That was their National Programme for IT (NPfIT), a project started in 2002.

In September 2011 the coalition government decided to cancel (or "dismantle") NPfIT, see for example Labour fury as £12bn NHS IT project ditched. By that stage NPfIT had cost £6.4 billion and the expectation of any commensurate benefits had evaporated.

Two years later what do the National Audit Office (NAO) tell us about this cancelled/dismantled failure?

The full cost of the National Programme is still not certain. The Department's most recent statement reported a total forecast cost of £9.8 billion. However, this figure did not include ...