The Department of Work and Pensions has taken the unusual step of sacking IT services supplier Siemens from a £59 million project to develop a payments system.

The deal, signed in 2006, was originally due to continue until 2010. Despite the UK government’s poor track record for delivering IT projects on time and within budget, it is very rare for suppliers to lose contracts.

Neither party has revealed why the contract was terminated, but a source told The Times newspaper that “there was a lot of toing and froing and in the end the department had just had enough.”

Further reading:

Clear sourcing An absence of benchmarking makes outsourcing contracts difficult to judge, says Metri Measurement Consulting.

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