A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

We already had such declarations about the judicial system where a major overhaul megaproject had to be stopped because it was going nowhere and had more problems than solutions. We had the same declarations about the state of IT in the police departments and now there is the ultimate showdown about the IT in the Administration responsable for one of the most essential tasks for the finance of the government and state, the tax administration.

In leaked information it seems that of the 700 million Euro that has been spent since 2003 31% of all projects have been abandoned without any result, 52% of the projects were still in development but already were running at double of the estimated cost. A study of the finished projects showed that only 42% had realised its objectives or to say 58% of all finished projects did not realise its objectives. Maybe we should say it differently. If from 100 projects 31 are stopped, than there are 69 still in development but at double cost. Of those 69 projects that will be finished around 40 will even not deliver the objectives which leaves that from 100 projects only one third will be delivered and accomplish the objectives but at double the cost. (How this is possible without breaking any law is a mystery for me at the other side it shows that firms make their projects for the administration to cheap in the beginning knowing that they will get the remaining during the development and afterwards).

The problem seems to be that most of the existing software programs in the tax administration are still written in Cobol from the 70's.

The newsmagazine Knack also published an article that said that the OESO countries refused to exchange any tax information with our tax administration because our tax administration isn't capable of setting up any electronic exchange of data and isn't capable of treating the electronic data it receives from outside sources. So it prints that information out and sends it to the local tax control administrations. The problem is that they don't have enough people there to treat all those printed documents.

source Destandaard.be

Hey, but they have got VOIP and that is the future ain't it ?

And on paper it looks very impressive, it has all the looks of a very expensive thought-through advanced service oriented etc... blablablablablablablabla

Permament audits and controls that is what we need.