LONDON, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Problems with a multi-million dollar IT-based recruiting project has led to the British Army being thousands of troops short of its required strength, an investigation by the government's National Audit Office (NAO) reported Friday.

The government set the army of a target size of 82,000 regular soldiers and 30,000 reserves by 2020, but by July of this year it was 5,600 or 7 percent below its required strength, and will fail to meet the 2020 target, said the NAO.

The NAO report found it can take as long as 321 days for recruits to go from starting an application to beginning basic military training, and that many potential soldiers drop out of the process while waiting.

The investigation found that significant problems with a recruiting project between the army and a private company, Capita Business Services, meant the army has not recruited the number of soldiers it needs to replace retiring soldiers or troops who leave the military.

The NAO said both the army and Capita had underestimated the complexity of the project which has been beset with problems, such as the delayed introduction of an online recruitment system.

The report said over the last year significant changes to the approach to recruitment have been introduced, but these have not yet resulted in the army's requirements for new soldiers being met.

The 1.71 billion U.S. dollars 10-year project was meant to reduce the costs of recruiting, while at the same time recruiting more soldiers and officers to the military.

Capita, which won a 624 million-dollar contract for its expertise in recruitment and marketing, missed the army's targets for recruiting new soldiers and officers every year since 2013, with the total shortfall ranging from 21 percent to 45 percent of the army's requirement each year, the report found.

The report said a core part of the project was online recruitment, but the Ministry of Defense (MOD) failed to provide Capita with the necessary IT infrastructure to enable this. It resulted in the online recruiting system launching over four years later than originally planned, at a cost of 143 million dollars, triple its original budget.

The army estimated the problems resulted in 13,000 fewer applications between November 2017 and March 2018, compared to the same period in the previous year, which in turn could lead to up to 1,300 fewer people enlisting as soldiers.

As part of what had been intended a money-saving exercise, the number of army recruitment centers around the country was reduced from 131 to 68, with a preference for a more centralised and online recruitment process.

The NAO report said: "The army and Capita believe changes to the recruitment approach will lead to an increased number of recruits. It said applications have increased in the last two years, but given the time it takes to complete the recruitment process, these have not yet been converted into new recruits."

Capita recruited only 2,400 regular soldiers compared to the army's target of 5,300 in the first six months of 2018-19, added the report.