Yet another UK Government IT project has been delayed due to data quality problems: Computing: Data quality problems halt latest police pilots of firearms database.

Will they ever learn?  Then again, they’re not the only people to have had problems with data quality; survey after survey shows that up to 85% of IT projects suffer from delay or are cancelled due to data quality issues, but they don’t all make the headlines.

Lord Marlesford summed up a common frustration , especially considering the government’s aspirations for future IT projects:

‘If the Home Office really is incapable, over a period of eight years, of computerising something as straightforward as a few hundred thousand firearms records, then it does suggest that they do not have a hope of making a success of the introduction of the national identity card scheme.’

Let me know what you think – are all government projects doomed to failure?