MSPs are to be asked to look at how the country's top police officers can be held to account after a £7.7 million computer system was abandoned without ever functioning.
The project was overseen by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos) but The Herald revealed the national spending watchdog was powerless to look at what had gone wrong with a system that was meant to save eight forces more than £30m but after five years came to nothing.
The issue has again highlighted the fact that because Acpos is established as a limited company it does not come under the scrutiny of Audit Scotland.
Now Iain Gray, convener of the Public Audit Committee, plans to raise the issue with the committee. Speaking in a personal capacity about the need for action, he said: "The audit committee has been very concerned about public money being lost in IT contracts which end up written off. We encouraged the Auditor General to investigate, and evidence from her on her report into the fiascos at three public bodies will be the first item of substantive business at the committee's first meeting of the new parliamentary session.
"There does appear to be a systematic failure by public sector bodies to procure workable IT contracts, across Holyrood and Whitehall, and under administrations of all political stripes."
Acpos general secretary Assistant Chief Constable Cliff Anderson said last night: "Acpos will co-operate as appropriate with the chair and members of the Public Audit Committee should they require further information."
The issue of the status of Acpos has been raised in the past by Audit Scotland and by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, but the whole issue of accountability is about to change with the shift to a single Scottish force.
But Mr Gray said: "The case of Acpos writing off £7.7m on a computer system which does not work is yet more of the same. My personal view is that Audit Scotland must investigate."
A spokesman for Audit Scotland said: "There is an important question about where the money that was spent on this IT system came from, and we are in the process of confirming that."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article