 This flagship project of putting all government departments online by 2002 and enabling people to conduct a wide variety of routine transactions, from paying taxes to obtaining driving licences, via the internet by 2005 was announced by Microsoft on 27 March 2001 who, in just 15 weeks, had "brought Tony Blair's ambitious e-government vision to reality".The tight timescale was due to Compaq withdrawing from the project after four months for which they received £5.6 million.The project was billed at £15.6 million and involved licensing some of the UK government's intellectual property to Microsoft to be sold on as part of their product to other governments around the world and return significant income streams.