The following appears on timesofisrael.com
HP Israel, the local outlet of the worldwide conglomerate, is in hot water with the Knesset – and in the absence of local public relations representation, an investigation by the State Comptroller’s Office into problems with a major information technology project HP took on for the Israel Prisons Service (IPS) could turn into a PR nightmare for the company
On Wednesday, the Knesset State Control Committee, chaired by MK Amnon Levi (Shas), discussed what a report by the State Comptroller said was a botched IT project by HP. According to the report, the IPS issued a tender for the development of an information system to manage prison population and personnel information.
Most of the report’s ire is reserved for the IPS, which instead of spending a planned NIS 50 million on the project, ended up spending NIS 144 million. That overrun, the report said, was due directly to the fact that HP missed many milestones, delivering key components years after they were promised. In addition, several key components of the project are missing. The report also slammed the IPS for failing to collect fines from HP that were due the government because of the lateness.
Commenting on the report, Cohen sharply criticized HP, which, he said, “completely failed in the construction of the system. They took a long time to finish it and took a lot of money from the government for this project. They are always applying for tenders like these, but they really don’t know how to do the work,” Cohen said.
The IPS system was to computerize things such as prisoner menus, exercise schedules, guard shifts, information about inmates’ crimes, cases, and time served – transferring much of the information that was still in paper form into digital format, where it could be searched, crunched, analyzed, and otherwise used to make the system run more efficiently, and allowing the addition of reams of new information quickly. The new “Kidma” system, as the tender termed it, would replace older, less sophisticated IT systems.
HP won the tender, selected from one of several companies to make a proposal. But almost immediately, the report said, things began going wrong. The IPS requested NIS 43.2 million in funding for the project, with an additional NIS 6.5 million in a “rainy day fund,” in case of problems. But they apparently forgot to take into account maintenance costs, cost overruns, and other fees, and a revised reading of the needs of the IPS indicated that NIS 62.5 million was needed for the job.
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