"Taking that into account, the ministry will generally dedicate between 15 and 20 percent of a software project's budget to testing. There may, on occasion, be individual projects that fall outside that range due to their specific characteristics," a spokesperson said.

The Ministry of Health says that in 2010-2011 it spent between 7.5 percent and 8.5 percent of IT project budgets on testing.

That is similar to Inland Revenue's testing costs, which in the year to June 30, 2011, were approximately nine percent of total project costs.

A spokesman says the testing costs include employee, contractor and overtime effort.

Total project costs included all capital and operating costs incurred by the project.