His Air Traffic Control report cites a Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation study, which asserted that privatization would transfer and spread risk, while introducing more efficiencies into the system.

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But it is notoriously ill-suited to high-tech industries that have to tailor each item to a customer's specific needs (as in a data-switching centre or air-traffic-control system) or in which it is crucial that thousands of interrelated components all work correctly together (as in a rocket vehicle).

ECONOMIST: The land of disappointments

For example, the National Air Traffic Service, which has presided over one of the worst computer-procurement failures at its much-delayed Swanwick control centre, is outside parliamentary audit.

ECONOMIST: Government