What is it with UK government  agencies and information technology that we always end up with rubbish systems at massive cost?

In the last few days, I've been using the HM Revenue and Customs' corporation tax software to file a return and also direct.gov.uk's student finance site.  Both are appalling and well below what we might reasonably expect for the massive amount of money pumped into the private companies that provide these terrible sites.  I honestly believe that they cannot have tested these with any degree of competency.

When as a parent, we 'support' the application of a child to get a student loan for university we are forced to divulge all our income details - you know the ones already given to government on our tax returns - once again to ahem... well, the government.  We have to tell them the names of our dependents and their dates of birth etc.  Logging in is tortuous enough - a process which includes giving the name of your favourite teacher as well as a password, for some reason.  Perhaps, it is intended to remind us of our own education.  I do not need reminding.  The process of entering income details is made as difficult as possible as much of the help is ineffective or does little other than repeat the field name with the prefix "Enter the".  It is extremely poor.  But the really best bit is that when you enter your dependents' dates of birth etc., if you enter them correctly, you'll find that you are presented with a screen asking you to check the details.  For some reason, in between entering the date of birth and it presenting the date to you for confirmation, it deducts one day.  Yes, it presents the day before the date you entered.  If you go back and try to edit the date, the correct date is still in there, only it won't be when you are asked to confirm it again.  This is truly total and utter crap system design and it is totally unforgivable.  I've encountered all sorts of other issues including hangs on the site but they are difficult to reproduce (but not impossible), so I offer this as an example of why this site is so bad.  If t changes dates of birth, how can we know it has not modified any of our other data.  Short answer is that we can have no confidence that it has not.

I've also downloaded the HMRC's pdf form for Corporation Tax Returns.  Nowadays, if you are to avoid penalties etc. this is the only way you can submit information.  The forms are a nightmare and have fundamental problems which are not limited to the fact that they rely on an American software supplier (Adobe, Inc.) to facilitate the submission.  The forms have so many issues it is almost impossible to list them here.  One of the worst I encountered was that the HMRC system had omitted to include the company's details (like name) in the form - it is all supposed to be customised for you before you receive it.  Unfortunately, if the system does not put the details in, there is no way of adding them yourself.  After a few hours of entering the information including the company's tax reference when I tried to submit the form it was rejected because I have now found out the company name was not included.  Now don't forget, they are supposed to fill this in and do not provide any way for me to do so.  It took them more than two weeks to tell me the reason.  When I first telephoned them they told me that although the error message said that a ';' was expected (not very meaningful) what it really meant was that I should not include the pound signs or commas in the free form notes section.  Yes, the HMRC have a form that does not allow basic punctuation in explanations and does not allow you to use the currency symbol.  So I spent another half hour taking commas out and pound signs, too!  Only it did not work.  It was still rejected.  They then escalated the matter and a few weeks later, I get my explanation and am asked to redownload and re-fill in and re-submit.

They have absolutely no clue.