"Shambolic" broadband project failings exposed

A government report leaked to silicon.com highlights flawed business plans, rushed implementation and lack of take-up from the NHS and education sectors as the key failings of the government's £15m broadband aggregation project (BAP).

A draft of the high-level report, prepared for Sue Baxter, director of the BAP at the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), reveals a litany of errors in the setting up and implementation of the failed policy initiative.

"The implementation was rushed and became partly counter-productive at the launch stage, with negative impact on subsequent progress," the document states.

The report also criticises the government's original business plan for the regional aggregation bodies (RABs) – known as Adits - to become self-sufficient through a mark-up on procurement costs saying the Adits were loaded with high cost well in advance of demand and that they forecast significant profit in the first year, which is "unheard of for any start-up without a captive customer".

More importantly, the business case relied too heavily on anticipated revenue from high volume "foundation customers".

"The most significant implementation failing relates to the minimal business generated by the two 'foundation customers' health and education. In the health area the most significant reason for the lack of business to date seems to be programme slippage with N3."

BT won the seven-year £530m N3 contract for a national broadband backbone for the NHS last year and it was expected that some of the broadband connection sub-contracts that BT was expected to put out to tender would be contracted, through the Adits, to other telcos.

In reality, however, this has not happened and the report says any future revenues for the Adits from N3 are likely to come from consulting fees rather than being the contracting party as originally envisaged.

silicon.com understands that the Adits missed out on lucrative N3 contracts because their procurement process was too slow for the faster paced NHS procurement timetable – taking almost twice as long in some cases.

Other failings cited in the report include the "alienation" of key players including the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) who were resentful of being forced to give "their money" to the Adits with minimal consultation.

The BAP, which has to date achieved just £3.5m of savings out of a projected £200m, was described as "shambolic" by one RDA in the report and a source close to the situation told silicon.com the whole thing is "a debacle". "It was misguided. I can't believe the money spent on consulting," the source said.

The DTI has now confirmed that in addition to the closure of the central National Aggregation Board, regional Adits for the South West, South East and North West will be closing with staff being made redundant. The East of England RDA is expected to make a decision on its Adit later this month.

Ian Bruce, former Conservative MP and now a broadband industry public affairs consultant, said: "By the time the government introduced its broadband aggregation quango the public sector had already made it obsolete. The government should accept the findings of its own consultants and scrap this body without delay."