New IT debacle: Flanders pulls the plug on costly education project after audit
Following a damning audit, Flemish Education minister Zuhal Demir is pulling the plug on an IT project for education that has already cost 16 million euros, De Tijd reported on Monday. The federal government has also recently terminated a multi-million euro contract for a costly IT project for the police, and it emerged that a computer system to digitise the justice system was causing many problems.
In 2020, the Flemish government decided to develop a new IT system for personnel administration and payroll processing at AGODI, the agency for educational services. Persona was to be a modern platform to facilitate data exchange between schools and the government and simplify payroll processing.
However, according to an audit carried out at the request of Demir, the project is going nowhere.
“There is no predefined objective, the project is not being managed properly, there is no supervision of the hired experts, and there is no accurate financial estimate, control or reporting on the use of the allocated resources,” she said.
“As a result, only 8 to 10 per cent of the functionalities have been realised within the Persona IT project, while the total budget of 16 million euros has been completely used up.”
An additional 10 million euros has been requested for the project, but Demir does not want to grant it for the time being. “I don't want to invest any more money into a project that is going wrong,” she told De Tijd. “We will only restart the project when governance, planning and budget control are back on track.” The Flemish government has since decided to appoint two crisis managers.
Earlier this month, it also emerged that there were serious problems with a new digital case management system, JustCase, intended to modernise the Belgian justice system. Interior minister Bernard Quintin previously decided to terminate the multi-million euro contract for the i-Police digitisation project after years of delays and no fully delivered results.
#FlandersNewsService | Flemish Education minister Zuhal Demir © BELGA PHOTO DIRK WAEM
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