For lessons on how not to implement electronic government services, one only has to look at what CIO Magazine has aptly labelled as "Her Majesty's Flying IT Circus".

The problems have continued to plague the Blair government since CIO's article was published in August 2000, indicating that nothing has been learned from information technology (IT) failures.

The military invented a great word for such strings of failures - snafu, which stands for Situation Normal All Fouled Up. At least that's the nice version of a very good word.

Most of the IT problems have been documented by the UK's National Audit Office (www.nao.gov.uk), which scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament.

About 30 projects have failed or had problems due to improper IT implementation. The reports are worth reading, if only for the hilarity factor.

Imagine putting a computer system in place then not completing the most basics of tests before launch. Well this is what happened for some of the UK government's IT projects, which of course ended up failing or with serious problems. The latest IT bungle, revealed by the National Audit Office in July, is the cost overruns racked up by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the group responsible for ensuring that government runs secure systems.

GCHQ first planned to shift its computers across from Cheltenham to a new building at an estimated cost of $64 million. The National Audit Office now says the true cost is about $485 million. "When a government department is considering major investment in new accommodation, the full scope of the requirement really must be properly defined from the outset. In this case GCHQ failed to consider all the implications of the fact that it was relocating its entire business capability to a new building and that transition of its computer systems to the new premises was a major factor," the report into the move concluded.

The auditors said the original estimate "had been made with little knowledge of the real costs" and cited "high level planning and management weaknesses".

Prior to that, in May this year, government admitted that the tax department 's computer systems had failed over the past five years to remind people that they were failing to pay enough national insurance to qualify for a full state pension.

One of the major foul-ups happened in 1999, when the Passport Agency introduced a $180 million computer system to reduce the time to process a passport application.

Instead the system lengthened the time to eight weeks instead of usual ten days. The failure of the system led to a million telephone calls to the agency in May.

When many calls went unanswered queues began forming outside the agency 's six regional offices in a bid to get their passwords.

The backlog of applications reached 538,000 during the height of the travel season. The system had been put in place by Siemens Business Services, a computer contractor.

It turned out that the same company had also botched a US$115 million computerisation of the Home Office's Immigration and Nationality Directorate.

The system was designed to handle applications for asylum, extended stays and citizenship. The immigration office was used to processing 3,000 applications a month.

When the computer system was implemented the number of applications processed per month had dropped to 995 by January 1999. Again mail piled up, telephone calls went unanswered and queues began forming outside offices.

What went wrong? The National Audit Office and Parliament's Public Accounts Committee have noted that a common thread runs through the failures.

One is the government's inability to set clear objectives for projects, a lack of senior management support and the taking on projects that were "technically overambitious".

Another proposal, since implemented, called for a change in the procurement process. Many suppliers were found to have overstated the speed and effectiveness of IT projects for which they were bidding.

Government also has unique problems of its own. One is the length of time it takes to decide on IT projects. The machinery of government is generally slow (this is public money after all) and by the time projects are implemented technology may have already leapt ahead.

Siemens, which ended up paying a couple million dollars in fines for the problems in the projects it was involved in, also blamed departments for constantly changing the rules during the design phase, and for leaving out essential information necessary to complete the project.

Of course the problems could happen to any business, and the advice forms the common cant given by consultancy companies to businesses about IT projects.

The Standish Group International, Inc. (www.standishgroup.com), in its annual Chaos report published in March this year, has noted that of 13,522 IT projects in business and government only 34% could be considered successful.

This is a 100% plus improvement over the 16% rate in 1994, the US consultancy said. Project failures have declined to 15% of all projects, which is more than half the 31% in 1994. "Challenged projects" account for the remaining 51%.

However time overruns on IT projects have significantly increased to 82% from a low of 63% in the year 2000. In addition, this year's research shows only 52% of required features and functions make it to the released product.

This compares with 67% in the year 2000. Some lessons are been learned by the UK after all these problems. The Department of Health is in the process of vetting bids for a ?2.3 billion NHS National Programme for IT.

Under the conditions set out by the bidding document, the chosen supplier will have to demonstrate that the systems work before being paid and post bonds of hundreds of millions of dollars to be forfeited in the event of failure.

What a simple and obvious solution! As the UK government moves ahead with a plan to deliver all public services online by 2005, all eyes will be on whether another expensive IT project goes off the rails.

The Bermuda government would do well to study the UK's failures - and successes - as it moves forward (finally!) on its own projects to provide more electronic services to the corporate sector and the public.

Government must either lay down strict conditions for service providers and ensure that testing of the systems occurs at every stage of the IT project - or it will end up with examples of another IT snafu.