The MoD has spent up to £15.5m on building the IT system and defence secretary Philip Hammond is now considering spending a further £50m on a new programme, the Times said.
A confidential report by IT research company Gartner seen by the newspaper, raises concerns over the Army’s recruitment wing which chose the “wrong bidder to build the IT system” as well as its project management team which was “inexperienced and under-resourced”.
The Gartner report also claims that when delays started, the Army failed to act, thus allowing costs to get out of hand. The Army has now entered into a recruiting partnership with outsourcing giant Capita, which will be paid for the number of recruits it brings in once the IT system is fully functional.
Hammond has been advised to scrap the flawed system entirely and pay Capita to build its own model at the cost of £47.7m, according to a briefing note seen by the Times. The note was written in December, by MoD's director general of finance, David Williams.
An MoD spokeswoman said the ministry in December last year “acknowledged a number of problems with the Army and Capita recruitment partnership”, adding that ministers “have gripped these problems and put in place a number of fixes to correct the issues that had emerged”.
She said: “As we have previously said, in the medium-term, we are building a new IT platform that will be ready early next year and in the short-term we are introducing work-arounds and mitigation measures to the old IT platform to simplify the application process.
“With an improved Army recruitment website, streamlined medicals and an increase in the number of recruiting staff, recruits should see a much improved experience at the end of this month.”