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A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Dorinnia Carville, has criticised senior leadership within DAERA for not intervening earlier to prevent a project to develop the new NI Food Animal Information System (NIFAIS) “from drifting into failure”.
The report does recognise that positive action was finally taken in January 2020, with the NIFAIS project paused for re-evaluation.
That appraisal concluded that the best “value-for-money” option was to continue with development, which got up and running again in 2021.
However, the delivery of NIFAIS, which is to replace the NI animal database APHIS, was already late.
The contract was awarded in 2016 to AMT-Sybex, a software company that had developed APHIS, with NIFAIS due to be operational by December 2018. It will not be ready until 2024, more than five years behind schedule.
According to the NI Audit Office report, the delay has cost DAERA an additional £6m, with the entire NIFAIS project costing approximately £64m to complete. In addition, APHIS continues to operate 16 years after its expiry date at an annual cost to the Department of £0.5m.
Origins
APHIS was originally put in place back in 1998 on a 10-year contract with AMT-Sybex. Since 2008, the Department has been working on short-term contracts, leaving DAERA at risk of legal challenge from other potential suppliers who might want to get into the market.
It was also clear that technology had moved on and there was a need to integrate APHIS with other DAERA systems.
“NIFAIS is going to move us to the next step,” DAERA chief vet, Robert Huey, told MLAs at Stormont back in 2013.
However, an internal government review in 2019 highlighted a number of issues around progress with NIFAIS.
The review panel identified that in 2017, AMT-Sybex had “off-shored” much of its NIFAIS software development to India, with the new team not adequately briefed on the complexities behind the project.
Relations between DAERA and the supplier became “badly damaged”, while the Department did not have “appropriately skilled people” working on the project full-time.
On the back of this review, a new project team was put in place, and both parties agreed to a “rectification plan”.
Achievement
Despite being critical around costs and delay, the Comptroller and Auditor General did note that both DAERA and the supplier “resisted the temptation to persist with a failed delivery model”.
She also recognised that NIFAIS was back on track, and when it is finally delivered it will still be “a significant achievement”.
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