MY HOUSE is a mess, full of dead hyacinths because I am too cold to shiver out to the compost heap. My desk is heaped with unanswered letters, unpaid bills and unread reports. My computer, on the other hand, is lovely. Tasks are neatly listed on its shining screen, clicked into folders, filed with a fingertip. This orderly universe makes messy reality forgettable; until, of course, it crashes and disintegrates into pixel soup.

I am a living metaphor for the nation. We are over-reliant on databases, over-optimistic about the electronic age. We do not learn from disappointment: we kid ourselves that every task can be not only eased but replaced by new technology. We turn tools into tyrants. We fear to inform the IT emperor that some of his clothes are missing.

So heaven reward the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas. In a report to the Education and Skills Select Committee, he blows the whistle on the National Child Database, a central plank of the Government’s response to Lord Laming’s report on Victoria Climbié. He points out that this enterprise may breach European privacy law; worse, it may not work. The decision to record the name, health and education details of every child in England and Wales on one database is “difficult to justify as a proportionate response”. Its size would make it vastly expensive to keep up to date, and as for child protection, “it increases the size of the haystack when hunting for a needle”.

Oh, bless the man! His memory of the Laming report is obviously clear. Lord Laming did recommend the database, but he made perfectly clear that the ignoring of Victoria Climbié’s torture was not caused primarily by the lack of a shimmering electric list. It was caused by ignorance, underfunded and overburdened systems, low morale and stupidity in certain social workers, and appalling management. The child was beaten, starved, and trussed in a bin bag while she was on the records of four social services departments, two housing authorities, two police child protection teams, two hospitals and the NSPCC. Senior managers right up to the top were promoted during this period and smugly denied all responsibility, saying their responsibility was merely “strategic”. Care workers missed 12 chances to save Victoria; her social worker never once spoke to her without her abusers present, and on one occasion both she and a policewoman cancelled a visit in case they might “catch” the poor child’s fictional scabies.

This lethal incompetence was timeless, part of the fallen human nature we all fight daily. Its cures are vigilance, honesty, grassroots management and pitiless accountability. But it is easy to convince yourself that IT cures everything. Domestically, you eventually notice the smelly sink and turn reluctantly from the screen to sort it out. Nationally, it is different. Ministers — gliding around in chauffeured cars, seeing everything through a filter of paperwork — get distanced from the muddy facts of life. They are seduced by salesmen’s PowerPoint, and trustfully plunge into computerised projects without even the basic prudence to set tough penalties if the magic doesn’t work.

Matthew Parris pointed out on Saturday what happened to the “e-university”, invented by Mr Blunkett in one of these frenzies of techno-lust: £50 million down the drain. A few years ago the “individual learning accounts” — run by the Government’s favourite in this field, Capita (“leading provider of integrated professional support service solutions”) — collapsed £70 million over budget. Old-fashioned frauds got through because the lightning fingers of data-inputters failed to connect with a brain: a scheme to fund useful training paid out tens of thousands to courses on “crystal healing” and non-existent colleges.

Or take the Criminal Records Bureau, another Capita launch which ran £150 million over budget and caused widespread distress. In the summer of 2002 numerous children’s projects failed to open, wasting staff and funding, and some schools could not open in September. It happened because IT wizards at Capita assumed that most employers would apply by phone or online, and panicked when they got paper. On the London congestion charge the same firm failed to meet its targets and was fined. Oh, and last week the (Capita) system to reform school allocations in London resulted in hundreds of children getting no offer, and others getting bewildering multiple ones, including schools they never applied to. The Admissions Executive board blames Capita. Capita cites “problems with the quality of data and disparate software systems attempting to communicate with the hub and each other”. What a surprise.

The problem is not new, and not always (though quite often) with Capita and new Labour. The Public Accounts Committee reported in 2000 on a decade of government computer disasters. There was the Passport Agency fiasco, with half a million unprocessed applications wrecking holidays and business trips. That cost £12 million in compensation, not to mention £16,000 on umbrellas for people queueing in the rain (see how computer problems bring us back to the real world). There was the national insurance chaos which left 17 million pensioners underpaid by up to £100 a week. The Home Office has endless problems with immigration IT records; the unhappiness and poverty aggravated by the Child Support Agency computer provides the Watchdog programme with endless material. And that is before we even start on the projects which never open at all, such as the Ministry of Defence Trawlerman system for classified documents which was abandoned after costing £41 million. Still looking forward to identity cards, are you?

I am no Luddite. Many of these facts were checked via the internet. But if it had gone wrong, I could have made phone calls; and I was glumly aware that this could happen. It is not computer technology itself which is to blame. What does the damage is ministerial ignorance and the nervous desire to be “modern”, which leads to blind faith in IT and superstitious reverence for its providers. What is dangerous is the erroneous conviction (common to many of us) that once you ’ve made an electronic list you’ve done the job. You haven’t.

Times Recommends

• Brown is in denial. Cuts are expected
• Fight our genetic urges? Slim chance
• Beware: dogs in mangers. Barking