Cabinet Office NPfIT report edited to take out CSC slamming?

The details of the Cabinet Office's critical review of the "cancelled" National Programme for IT were released late Friday - but in some ways it's what we aren't allowed to read that is more interesting than what's been published.

Specifically, large sections of the report have been censored - or to use the Whitehall jargon, "redacted" - especially sections to do with commercial relationships and mostly with one of the two suppliers in question.

Redacted elements occur no fewer than 22 times in the public version, in such key sections as

• LSP contracts (sections 8 and 10)
• A section starting "Lorenzo development" (section 11)
• A section starting "Whether to proceed with CSC for the development and deployment of Lorenzo" has three redactions, including one on "Recommended Action"
• A section on "Details of partner delivery organisations"
• A passage after these words: "The delays in implementation mean that there is not time to deliver the originally conceived benefits in line with intent"
• The beginning of the discussion on "Supplier Status," as well as a section discussing CSC
• Two parts of a description of options for "CSC Options Appraisal"
• One part of "Next Steps"
• Three sections in an appendix entitled "Technical description of Lorenzo development"

It seems that anything to do with CSC, whose contract with DoH has been a subject of ongoing controversy, has been heavily edited.

The implication has to be that contract renegotiations remain highly sensitive and that the body that carried out the report, the Major Projects Authority, was told not to threaten any outcomes of ongoing DoH-CSC talks.

The redactions also underline the suspicion that the report was rushed out for political purposes and before any real NPfIT programme change actions were actually in place.