I was in at the beginning of the changes to the Child Support Agency in 1998. One million new cases were at the flick of a switch going to be added to one million current cases: all individual, all complex blah blah. So I turned to the mandarin holding the baby as it were and asked him whether the software had been designed. It hadn't. The CSA changes were held up for two further years causing massive heartache to two million families.
Fast forward to the PAC's report on the Works & Pensions Universal Credit scheme which has wasted £140m already.
Nothing has changed within the culture of the mandarins who run the department and they should be fired.