The Northern Ireland Assembly Public Accounts Committee has warned that persistent weaknesses in major technology programmes are putting public services and more than £5.2 billion of expected lifetime expenditure at avoidable risk.

Departments and arm’s length bodies managed 29 major IT projects between April 2022 and March 2025, according to the committee’s inquiry. Twenty-four are intended to replace legacy systems, yet the review found repeated problems in strategic planning, leadership, accountability, delivery capability, contract extensions, data quality, and the measurement of benefits.

The portfolio includes Encompass, the health and social care programme designed to establish a single digital care record across Northern Ireland. Its estimated lifetime cost has reached £1.99 billion, and the committee wants more robust performance information after questioning whether current reporting provides a dependable account of the benefits achieved.

Encompass is the most visible programme, but the committee’s central criticism concerns the portfolio as a whole. Responsibility remains dispersed across departments, common oversight is limited, and senior leaders have not collaborated consistently on technology whose suppliers, data, skills, and dependencies cross organisational boundaries.

The committee’s report on major IT projects says similar weaknesses have appeared in previous inquiries. Repetition on that scale suggests the problem will not be resolved by another reporting template unless authority, technical capability, and responsibility for intervention are also addressed.

Large public sector programmes are difficult because they combine policy, procurement, technology, and changes to frontline work. Replacing a system can alter how staff record information, how residents access services, how organisations share data, and how performance is judged.

Legacy systems make delay expensive

Most projects in the portfolio concern ageing technology, which means postponement carries an active operational cost. Legacy systems can depend on unsupported components, manual reconciliation, scarce technical skills, and contracts extended because replacement work remains incomplete.

Existing platforms may continue functioning for years, although each extension can weaken the customer’s negotiating position and make the eventual migration more complicated. Suppliers gain leverage when a department has no credible alternative and the service cannot tolerate an interruption.

Public bodies often preserve older technology because a failed transition would disrupt health services, payments, records, licensing, or other essential functions. Running old and new systems together can protect continuity, but duplicate estates consume budgets intended for transformation and leave staff managing inconsistent information across both.

Reliable benefit data becomes essential when costs continue rising. A programme may meet technical milestones without reducing waiting times, improving decisions, shortening case handling, or allowing an older system to close. Reporting installations, training sessions, or sites connected can make progress appear stronger while financial and service gains remain deferred.

Encompass illustrates both the opportunity and the difficulty. A shared care record can improve access to information, reduce repeated data entry, and support safer treatment. Standardising records across health organisations also changes clinical workflows, permissions, reporting, and local practices, so benefits depend on use and data quality after deployment rather than the number of installations completed.

The committee has questioned whether departments possess sufficient commercial and technical capability to manage large suppliers. Public bodies need experienced staff who can challenge delivery claims, understand architecture, negotiate changes, and preserve realistic exit routes.

Outsourcing implementation does not transfer accountability. A customer unable to evaluate the work can become dependent on the supplier it is supposed to oversee, while contracts accumulate variations whose cost and technical effect are difficult to compare with the original plan.

Stronger central governance could provide scarce expertise and impose common standards, although centralisation can also produce another layer of reporting detached from the service being changed. Effective oversight requires common commercial and technical controls alongside accountable leaders who understand frontline consequences.

The portfolio now needs clear decisions about which programmes can deliver measurable outcomes, which older systems can be retired, and who has authority to intervene before another extension becomes the least disruptive choice. Without that ownership, Northern Ireland risks spending billions on modernisation while preserving many of the dependencies the programmes were meant to remove.