MoD wasted £40 million on obsolete spy system

The Ministry of Defence has been reprimanded for wasting £40 million on a computer system for spies that took so long to build it was obsolete before commissioned and never used. The Commons Public Accounts Committee said defence officials failed to recognise the complexity of project Trawlerman, failed to keep on top of its development and failed to scrap it as soon as it went wrong. Contractor Data Sciences was selected for the project in 1988; its system was completed in 1995, scrapped in 1997 and the firm was paid £1.8 million in damages for the troubled delivery.