Category Archives: Campaign4Change

DWP tells Universal Credit trainees: just keep rebooting

Posted on 10/03/2015 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

IDS says Universal Credit IT is working – but C4 Dispatches asks: is it?

In a documentary broadcast yesterday [9 March 2015] undercover reporter Karl Eriksson got a job working for the Department for Work and Pensions, training as a Universal Credit call centre adviser.

While filming secretly for several weeks he heard several loudspeaker announcements about parts of the main IT systems going down – on one occasion for a whole day. An example:

“The only thing we can suggest at the moment is keep rebooting and try again. There is nothing official out there at all.”

The Dispatches documentary contrasted the statements by Iain Duncan Smith that the IT is working with the reality in a DWP office.

The programme raises the question of whether a national broadcaster should have to film undercover to establish whether UC systems are working well.

When Channel 4 put it to the DWP that its IT is struggling to cope with 35,000 claimants let alone the 2 million the systems are supposed to be handling by now, the spokesman said:

“None of the examples of IT issues [in the Dispatches broadcast] related specifically to Universal Credit and on the rare occasion a problem occurs it is fixed as a matter of urgency.”

Does it matter, though, which systems are failing if the DWP’s IT infrastructure cannot cope with even a low level of Universal Credit claims?

Everyone expects teething problems with a new system, especially as Universal Credit has the enormous challenge of rolling six benefits into one.

But Dispatches raises the question of whether UC will ever be able to handle 7 million claimants which ultimately it will need to do – for such numbers cannot be managed with the amount of manual intervention that is currently needed, according to a National Audit Office report.

More importantly the Dispatches programmme raises a question of how open government can survive when a major government department says, with impunity, one thing  – that its IT is working well – while staff and claimants are apparently experiencing the opposite.

These are some of the announcements and staff comments the uncover reporter recorded while working at the DWP:

– Loudspeaker: “This is an IT announcement. We are currently aware of issues with all FMO icons that go through your published desktop via the cloud. There seem to be issues all down the country about it. The only thing we can suggest at the moment is keep rebooting and try again. There is nothing official out there at all. So if you can just try that and if it doesn’t work we’ll take it further. Thank you.”

– Staff comment: “Sometimes the Universal Credit portal just blocks, stops running… it is clogging up for some reason. So somebody centrally now has to try and unclog it all…It can happen when you’re on the phone. You have to tell the customer to phone you back if that happens.” [It can cost up to 40p a minute to dial the UC 0345 helpline and one claimant told C4 he’d spent £25 that month alone on ringing the helpline.]

– Loudspeaker: “This is an IT announcement. Just to let you that there is a major incident out at the moment with Universal Jobmatch and with access issues and it is affecting the Benefits Directorate and the Local Services Directorate. The current update at the moment is that it is affecting the telephony agents and other staff who use UJ at the moment.”

– Staff comment: “I will have to load my screen again. It has crashed again.”

– Loudspeaker: “Attention please. Attention please. Camlite is being taken offline so the system can be rebooted. This will take approximately 50 minutes. Please can all users log out of Camlite and stay out until further notice.” Trainee: “How do you take a call then?” Answer: “You can’t. You have to say phone back in 50 minutes on that one.”

[CAMLite is an enquiry and work management system for Universal Credit which pulls information from other DWP computer systems.]

– Staff comment to a claimant who has received a DWP letter wrongly stopping a Universal Credit claim: “It’s a letter that has been sent out because it has been closed down wrongly and the system has done it. Sometimes they do shut themselves down and we have to rebuild it. In the meantime it is done manually.”

The undercover reporter witnessed 9 separate system failures. Dispatches quoted a PCS union survey which said that 9 out of 10 members questioned had said the IT was not up to the job. The DWP’s reply was that only 13% of the 2,700 people working on UC responded to the union survey.

The DWP spokesman said:

“At the beginning of February 2015 we deployed a planned upgrade which impacted the service for 3 days and has since had no issues. This upgrade resulted in an improved performance, up to 37 times faster.

“None of the examples of IT issues related specifically to UC and on the rare occasion a problem occurs it is fixed as a matter of urgency. We have robust checks in place to ensure payments are made correctly and on time.”

Channel 4 Dispatches

Universal Credit staff say IT systems inadequate

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Universal Credit

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Universal Credit pays couple 1p for month of February

Posted on 27/02/2015 | 8 comments

By Tony Collins

What will the DWP’s IT suppliers be paid for processing 1p payment?

A couple received a penny in Universal Credit benefits for the month of February, according to the Bolton News.

It indicates that Universal Credit, even while it is handling small numbers of claimants, and it cannot make some payments without manual calculations, still has some way to go before anomalies are ironed out.

The payment of 1p might have been correct once the system calculated the money due to the couple against repayments due to the DWP. But it’s unclear why the system failed to flag up a possible anomaly before initiating a bank processing transaction of 1p for a month’s benefits.

It may be that the DWP’s IT suppliers will receive considerably more than 1p for processing and managing the transaction.

Food bank

Emma Young and her partner Christian Boyce say they have had to go to a food bank for the first time and face eviction from their home.

Young works part-time in Asda. She told the Bolton News that the problem began in January, when she received a bumper wage packet for working extra hours over Christmas.

Her February pay check came four weeks later — within a month of when calculations for universal credit are made. This meant that she was logged as having received two months wages in a month.

Applying Universal Credit rules, the DWP cut the amount of benefit she received in February.

Young, aged 31, said she supports the household as her partner cannot work because of mental health issues, and the couple have debt from existing rent arrears and payday loans repayments.

She told the Bolton News: “I was due to be paid on February 13, looked at my bank account expecting to see some money and there was just one penny been put in.

“It’s left us crazy for this month. I can’t pay my rent, and now the car is gone – it’s horrendous.  There’s nothing I can do, I’ve just got to suck it. I’ve had to go to a food bank, which is awful.

She contacted the JobCentre but said staff there kept “fobbing us off.”

A DWP spokesman described the 1p payment as “very little’ and said it was because Ms Young received two wages in one monthly period.

She had also received an advance, and a repayment of that Universal Credit payment meant the benefits she was given was reduced, the spokeman said, adding that benefit advances are available for those who need them.

“Claimants should inform their landlord if they face difficulties paying their rent, while landlords can inform us directly if there is a problem.”

Halliwell couple get just one penny in benefits for February – Bolton News

Comment:

It is probably just as well Universal Credit is handling fewer than 1% (about 35,000) of the 7-8 million claimants it is ultimately due to handle.

The 1p payment to Emma Young and Christian Boyce vindicates IDS’s slow and cautious approach to rolling out UC – but the slow roll-out could also mask the inadequacies of IT that may never be able to handle millions of claimants.

Will the IT ever work properly? The DWP is keeping  its reports on the IT secret.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, outsourcing, Universal Credit

MPs criticise DWP’s refusal to publish Universal Credit reports

Posted on 25/02/2015 | 9 comments

By Tony Collins

As the Department for Work and Pensions continues its long and costly legal battle to stop four Universal Credit reports being published, the all-party Public Accounts Committee says a lack of openness “remains within the Department”.

The PAC says in a report published today “Universal Credit: progress update”

“… a lack of openness remains within the Department, as does an unwillingness to face up to past failings.

“The Department refused to accept the extent of previous failings, despite the overwhelming evidence we heard last year that the programme’s management had been extraordinarily poor prior to the reset, and the small numbers claiming Universal Credit.

“Furthermore, since early 2012, the Department has been fighting a protracted legal case to prevent the publication of documents relating to the management of Universal Credit…”

The DWP is refusing to release  four Universal Credit reports requested under FOI.

Three of the reports from 2012 – the risks register, issues register and milestone schedule – were requested by programme and project management professional John Slater. I requested a project assessment review of the Universal Credit programme, as carried out by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

When questioned by Margaret Hodge, chair of the PAC, Robert Devereux, the DWP’s Permanent Secretary, suggested that his officials did not publish the reports because similar reports in other departments were also unpublished.

Meanwhile the DWP is pouring public money into various legal appeals related to its refusal to publish the reports. The DWP’s lawyers argue that publishing the four reports would have a “chilling effect”. They say officials need continued confidentiality to be candid about risks and problems.

A counter argument – though not yet one made in any of the legal hearings so far – is that civil servants and consultants writing the reports are writing them for other civil servants and consultants and are more deferential in their findings than they would be if the reports were open to public and Parliamentary scrutiny.

The PAC’s latest report on Universal Credit highlights the many uncertainties that surround the programme’s delivery.

After a total spend of about £700m on the Universal Credit programme so far the Committee questions what has really been gained. It says:

“The Department must set out clearly what it has really gained from its spending so far, including from the piloting of the programme, and from the investment in live service IT systems.”

Fewer than one per cent of the potential claimants are currently claiming Universal Credit although the programme has been in live operation since April 2013.

The DWP says it is going slowly and cautiously but the PAC’s report raises questions about whether the programme, as it is being delivered by the DWP’s major suppliers, will ever be affordable or technically feasible given the amount of manual intervention required.

A separate, far cheaper “digital” solution, which is being built on agile principles,  is being trialled in Sutton, South London. It may offer more hope of successful, affordable delivery than the existing “live service” currently being rolled out. The live service from the DWP’s major suppliers mixes new coding, legacy systems and manual calculations. It has cost £344m so far. The digital solution has cost less than £5m so far.

Comment

Who has the final say on whether the four Universal Credit reports are published – the Department for Work and Pensions or the all-party Public Accounts Committee? Clearly it’s the DWP’s civil servants.

MPs are powerless to force publication of the reports.

What does this say about the ability of MPs to make the most senior civil servants more open than they want to be?

Universal Credit: progress update report

Very little progress on Universal Credit say MPs

DWP wastes money on another Universal Credit FOI appeal

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HP, IBM, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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Number of successful Universal Credit claims remains low – will IT be properly tested?

Posted on 19/02/2015 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

Figures published yesterday on gov.uk show that the number of successful Universal Credit claims remains low.

It means the IT that is being designed to handle millions of claims has had only a relatively small number of actual claims to test it. The small number is because eligibility to claim is being kept narrow. Most successful claimants are single people with no children, are not on other benefits, and have straightforward claims.

Yesterday’s figures show that 35,620 of the people who have made a claim have, up to 8th January 2015, attended an initial interview and gone on to start Universal Credit.

This compares with 30,850 the previous month.

The figures were collected at a time Universal Credit was available within 96 Jobcentre Plus offices – about one in eight.

Universal Credit was rolled out to the whole of the North West of England on 15th December 2014. It is being rolled out to all Jobcentre Plus offices and local authorities across the country from 16th February 2015.

Robust?

The signs are that the IT being used to roll out Universal Credit is not as robust as claimed by the DWP.

One claimant who featured in a Government film about Universal Credit said later it is riddled with computer problems. In the DWP film, Daniel Pacey said Universal Credit helped him find work and was far better than jobseeker’s allowance.

Now Pacey, aged 24,  says his jobcentre struggled with failing computer systems, according to BBC Inside Out North West. A DWP spokesman told the BBC:

“The IT system adapts smoothly to claims as they become more complex, which we have already seen across the North West.

“Computer problems in offices are separate issues and are resolved quickly but these do not impact the operating system, or have an impact on claims.”

Comment

The DWP is right to be going slowly and cautiously with the Universal Credit roll out, especially as the IT seems to be less than robust.

What’s less understandable is that the DWP and IDS have trumpeted this week the start of a national roll out of Universal Credit – including more complex cases – as if this will prove that the system works.

How can anyone know whether the system works when so few people are being allowed to claim?

The DWP is refusing to publish its internal reports on the progress or otherwise of the Universal Credit IT programme.

Can IDS really expect his announcements on Universal Credit’s success to be credible when his department is keeping one side of the story hidden from public view?

Universal Credit’s latest statistics – gov.uk

Beyond the Universal Credit headlines: what IDS isn’t saying

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, HP, IBM, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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Raytheon/Home Office IT dispute rolls on

Posted on 18/02/2015 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Another big, old government IT contract goes wrong. It’s part of civil service tradition that officials blame the supplier for missing milestones and not delivering what the end-users needed or wanted; and the supplier blames the customer for causing or contributing to the alleged defaults.

The Raytheon Systems/Home Office eBorders legal dispute is going along these lines – as did the Department of Health’s dispute with CSC over parts of the failed National Programme for IT [NPfIT].

It’s tradition for the civil service not to take big IT suppliers to court: a hearing could mean that civil servants have to talk about government business in an open courtroom.

Senior Whitehall officials do not want the public knowing how departments are really managed, or not managed.

In 2002 a 44-day court case between National Air Traffic Services and EDS [now HP] ended suddenly – minutes before a senior civil servant was due to give evidence.

Arbitration is different. It’s in secret so a long dispute can be tolerated.

And so a Home Office mega-contract awarded to US company Raytheon in 2007 has ended up in arbitration and is set for a sequence of hearings and appeals that could last years.

It took 10 years for an IT dispute between HP and BSkyB to be settled, and it could take this long for Raytheon and the Home Office to settle their dispute.

Chronology 

In 2003 Tony Blair launches the eBorders programme. He wants a database of foreign travellers entering and leaving Britain to help fight the war on terror.

A year later the Home Office launches Project Semaphore with IBM to pilot an electronic borders system.

In 2007 Jacqui Smith, Labour’s home secretary, signs an eBorders contract with Raytheon Systems as lead supplier and Serco, Detica, QinetiQ and Accenture as subcontractors. It’s worth £750m. Within two years Home Office officials are expressing concern that milestones are being missed.

In 2010 a new coalition government that’s determined not to put up with big, underperforming IT deals, terminates the Raytheon contract after a recommendation by the Major Projects Authority and a coalition review group.

In 2011 it emerges that Raytheon is threatening to sue the Home Office for £500m for repudiating the contract. Raytheon blames project delays on UK Border Agency mismanagement. It’s far from clear that officials knew what they wanted from the systems.  Arbitration proceedings begin.

In 2013 it emerges that IBM, Fujitsu and Serco are carrying out some of the original eBorders work.

Home Office loses arbitration

Last year an arbitration tribunal ruled that the Home Office must pay £224m to Raytheon. It found that the decision to terminate Raytheon’s contract was unlawful on a number of grounds. The Home Office had not fully considered the extent to which the Home Office and the UK Border Agency had caused or contributed to the alleged defaults.

Home Office wins appeal

Now the Home Office has won an appeal against the arbitration tribunal’s ruling. A good account of the appeal judgment is on the Pinsent Masons website. Pinsent Masons was acting for the Home Office.  The appeal judge found that the arbitration award had been tainted by legal irregularities that could have caused a substantial injustice. The judge took the unprecedented step of setting aside the arbitration award and ordered that the dispute be resolved by a new tribunal.

Raytheon appeal

Raytheon has announced that it is appealing. It points out that the arbitration had 42 days of oral hearings with testimony from multiple witnesses, and had issued a 276 page award decision. Raytheon says it is determined to recover the sums it is due because of the “wrongful” termination of the contract.

Comment:

It’s five years since Raytheon’s contract was cancelled. It could easily be another five years before all the rulings and appeals are finally over.

It’s easy in hindsight to say, but would it have been better if the Home Office and coalition ministers had spent longer negotiating with Raytheon rather than doing the macho thing of cancelling the contract?

Pinsent Masons – latest ruling

Raytheon contests Home Office’s High Court verdict over e-Borders
 

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Department of Health, excessive secrecy, Fujitsu, Government IT, Home Office, IBM, IT-related failures, legal disputes, Major Projects Authority, Qinetic, Raytheon, Serco

Beyond the Universal Credit headlines: what IDS doesn’t say

Posted on 16/02/2015 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

The “good news” headlines over the weekend suggest that Universal Credit is finally rolling out nationally, the implementation problems having been ironed out.

But do senior officials at the Department for Work and Pensions know themselves whether the IT will ever work at scale, handling millions of UC claims?

The national roll out begins today (16 February 2015) says a brochure on the success of the programme “Universal Credit at Work – Spring 2015“.  It’s issued by the Department for Work and Pensions and has a foreword signed by Iain Duncan Smith and his welfare minister Lord Freud.

“Throughout the report, robust evidence shows that Universal Credit is working,” says the brochure, which adds:

“Over the last four months, the roll-out of Universal Credit has continued and from 16 February, it will be available to:
• single claimants in 112 jobcentres
• couples without children in 96 jobcentres
• families in 32 jobcentres
• all claimant types in a limited postcode area in London (Sutton) to test the enhanced Digital Service.”

Ahead of national roll out, DWP officials have been briefing the media on the success of the UC programme. Hence the headlines yesterday.

BBC Online’s headline: Universal Credit roll-out £600m under budget”

Even the Guardian was positive. The reinvention of Iain Duncan Smith – is he the man to save the Tories?

The Sunday Times declared that Universal Credit “will be operating in every jobcentre across the country by this time next year if the Conservatives remain in power, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has vowed”.

The Telegraph’s headline was supportive of IDS: Coalition’s welfare shake-up is working

When Andrew Marr asked IDS about Universal Credit’s IT, IDS suggested that the computer systems to handle complicated claims are already in place.

Marr: “This roll-out across the country is only for single claimants, not for families, so it’s nothing like universal at this point.  Do you think you have a computer system able to cope with much more complicated claims?

IDS:  “Yes we have. In fact we rolled it out first in the North West where we rolled it out to singles, to couples and to families so it is now complete pretty much across the North West …

“What we are doing now is exactly what we did in the North West – roll it out stage-by-stage, so singles first, to every jobcentre by early Spring next year,  and then you’ll do couples and then you’ll do families.

“And then you’ll do the final development which is digital which will allow much more things like apps on your phone.”

The reality

Is the UC programme really on track for a national roll-out? Are the concerns of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee about the slow and troubled UC programme unfounded?

The reality can be gleaned from the DWP’s plans for the roll-out, as inspected by the National Audit Office, and by documents on the gov.uk website on who is entitled – or rather who is not entitled – to claim UC during the roll-out.

It’s true that UC is being gradually extended from single claimants to couples and families, but the DWP has issued such a long list of exemptions on eligibility that numbers of claimants will continue to be tiny at least until the middle of this year (election time).

The small number of claimants will allow the DWP to continue handling more complicated claims using, in part, manual processes. This means that a fully-automated UC system to calculate benefits need not be in place for the time being.

The small number of claimants also means that the risk of implementation problems coming to public attention in the next few months is minimal.

In two days time – Wednesday 18 February 2015 – gov.uk is due to reveal the latest figures on UC take-up. As of today, the latest figures available show the total number of successful UC claimants at 30, 850 on 11 December 2014 – whereas the system needs to be able to cope with around 7-8 million claimants.

Comment

It’s good news that UC is rolling out nationally and that it’s being gradually extended to couples and families as well as single people. But the IT has not been tested properly because the numbers of eligible claimants is so small. The DWP has narrowed the band of eligibility for UC by a long list of exemptions.

You cannot claim, as a single person or a couple, if, say, you receive Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payment. You cannot claim if you own, or partly own, your home, or are homeless, or in supported or temporary accommodation.  Many other exclusions apply.

The result is that nobody knows yet whether the main UC IT systems, and its dependent business processes and systems, will work at scale. Shouldn’t the DWP come clean on the technical and business change challenges it still faces?

UC will not be an economic proposition on the basis of the partly automated processes that exist at present. It’s possible, though, that the cheap-to-build digital systems – which are on trial in Sutton, South London – will work and will eventually take over from the mixture of legacy, new and manual systems and processes that are now in place.   Nobody knows whether they will work at scale.

The reality is that the UC programme, despite years of IT coding and a spend of hundreds of millions of pounds, is still at an early stage of development. It could be at an early stage of development for several more years, even though the positive headlines at the weekend give a different impression.

It may also be worth mentioning that the UC programme has yet to gain Treasury approval for the full business case – or indeed the outline business case. There is therefore no Treasury approval for the scheme long-term funding. There are still questions to be answered over its economic feasibility.

None of this has been said by the DWP or IDS. We’ll have to wait for another National Audit Office update to know the facts.

Thank you to Dave Orr for his emails to me on Universal Credit

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, Government IT, HP, IBM, Universal Credit

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A great speech in praise of the Public Accounts Committee

Posted on 13/02/2015 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Margaret Hodge spoke incisively this week about her five years as chairman of the 160 year-old Public Accounts Committee.

It’s assumed that civil servants answer to ministers who are then accountable to Parliament when things go wrong. Hodge mentioned failed IT projects several times.

But she painted a picture of senior officialdom as a force independent and sometimes opposed to Parliament. She said some senior officials had a “fundamental lack of respect for Parliament”. She had come up against an opposition that was “akin to a freemasonry”.

She said:

“With accountability comes responsibility. I can’t think how often we ask whether those responsible for dreadfully poor implementation are held to account for their failures.

“It rarely happens. People rarely lose their job. Those responsible for monumental failures all too often show up again in another lucrative job paid for by the taxpayer…”

Some excerpts from Hodge’s “Speaker’s Lecture” are worth quoting at length …

“… I have been truly shocked by the extent of the waste we have encountered. This is not a party political point. It’s not that this Conservative- Lib-Dem Coalition is worse or better than the previous Labour Government.

“It’s not that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector.

“It’s not about questioning the dedication of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers wanting to do their best… for me personally, sitting on the left of the political spectrum, I passionately believe in the power of public spending and public services to transform and equalise life chances.

“Yet if I am to ask other people to give up their money so that we can use it to secure greater equality, then I must earn their trust that I will use that money well.

“From £700m which I believe is likely to be written off with the botched attempt to introduce a politically uncontroversial benefit change with Universal Credit, to £1.6bn extra cost incurred by the previous Government in signing the contract for the Aircraft Carriers without any money in the Defence budget and then delaying its implementation; from the failure of successive Governments to tackle the many billions lost through fraud and error or IT investment, to the inability of successive Governments to deport foreign nationals who have committed crimes and ended up in our prisons, the failures are too many, they occur too often and they occur with persistent and unbroken regularity.”

Media shuns “good news” stories

“Of course we do things well. I think of recent positive reports on the Troubled Families programme, the Prison buildings programme or the implementation of the Crossrail contract. And trying to get proper recognition of these successes is well-nigh impossible. …

“I remember being rung up by a researcher on the Today programme who wanted me to go on to speak about education for 16-18 year olds. She asked what I would be minded to say and I told her that it was a good report and I would be complimentary. ‘I thought you would be critical’ she responded. No it’s a positive report I replied. Well, she said, I’d better go away and read it, She  rang me half an hour later to tell me they had dropped the item from the programme.

“But despite acknowledging the good things that are done, I remain frustrated and angry at so much wasted expenditure and poor value for money.”

Grandstanding

“… If we do want to ensure public attention is drawn to something, it may involve the occasional bit of grandstanding. I don’t apologise for that, for I have very few tools available which I can use to get purchase and have an impact.

“If a bit of grandstanding is the only way to stop something happening again and again, we will use it – with big corporations, top civil servants and any establishment figure whom we believe has a case to answer…”

PAC versus a civil service freemasonry?

“I received a letter from the departing Cabinet Secretary which was widely circulated around Whitehall and to officials of the House accusing the Committee of treating officials unfairly and reminding me that civil servants are bound by duties of honesty and integrity and therefore should only be asked to give evidence on oath as ‘an extremely unusual step’.

“Then a researcher from the Institute of Government came to see me, armed with a report of interviews she had undertaken with senior civil servants. She was just the messenger, but her message from senior civil servants was blunt. I quote:

‘The NAO/PAC are modeled on the red guards – not a convincing grown up model of Government… the chair is an abysmal failure… the worst chair I have ever seen….. MH is informed by friends in the media… PAC profile is seen to be bashing senior officials and determined to get media soundbites.’ ‘It is under appreciated how important dull committees are.’

And then the final shot…  ‘Should the PAC be broken up?’

“Basically, the explicit threat relayed to me was that if we did not change how we held civil servants to account, we would be closed down. Shut up or we’ll shut you down.

“The story sounds like something from Yes Minister, but more seriously demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for Parliament that I find deeply worrying.

‘How dare you MPs touch us’ was what they were saying. It felt like we were up against something akin to a freemasonry.

“Now that was January 2012 and things have moved on… but have they?

Civil servants unaccountable?

“The sad truth is that in that struggle between civil servants and politicians, the civil servants are most likely to win, because whereas we are here today and gone tomorrow, they are there for the long term.

“There remains a deep reluctance among too many senior civil servants to be accountable to Parliament and through us, to the public. The senior civil servants hide behind the traditional convention that civil servants are accountable to ministers who in turn are accountable to Parliament.

“That principle worked when it was first invented by Haldane after the First World War and the Home Secretary worked with just 28 civil servants in the Home Office. Today there are over 26,000.

“It worked when the public did not demand transparency. Today they do.

“It worked when public spending was primarily funneled through large departments running large contracts. In today’s world with a plethora of autonomous health trusts and academy schools, in a world where  private providers are providing public services in a range of fragmented contracts, delivering everything from welfare to work, healthcare and now probation services, in today’s world the old accountability framework with the minister being responsible for everything is plainly a nonsense.

“And whilst we, of course, want to maintain an impartial civil service, that is not inconsistent with the need to modernize accountability to Parliament and the public.

“There is a fundamental problem at the heart of the traditional accountability system. How can civil servants be accountable to ministers if the ministers do not have the power to hire and fire them?

“It is the accountability framework that is broke and in need of reform – not the Public Accounts Committee…

Need for reform

“The promise to reform the Civil Service has produced a few welcome changes, like a Major Projects Academy to train people to manage big projects, but the change has been too little, too piecemeal and too marginal, not fundamental.

“We just need to build different skills and do it, not talk about it.

“We may need to pay more so that working in and staying in the public sector becomes a more attractive proposition for more talented people. Trumpeting success in keeping public sector salaries down is not sensible if you end up wasting money or hiring in expensive consultants to clear up the mess or do the work for you.

“We need to transform the way people get promoted. At the moment, you’re a success if you leave your post after two years in the job and move on.

“When I was Children’s Minister, after two years I had a better institutional memory than any of the civil servants with whom I was working.

“And when the PAC reviewed the Fire Control Programme, which aimed at reducing costs by rationalising how 999 calls were dealt with, but ended up costing nearly £1/2 bn when it was written off as a failure; we found that there had been 10 different responsible officers in charge of the project over a five year period.

“I know some projects take longer than the Second World War, but continuity of responsibility is critical to securing better value.

Centre of government “not fit for purpose”

“It is also clear to me that the way the centre of Government works is not fit for purpose. We have three departments Treasury, Cabinet Office and Number 10 all competing for power, rather than working together.

“And all of them seem to be completely unable to use their power to drive better value.  Treasury carves up the money and then does little to ensure it is spent wisely.

“They only worry whether the departments keep within their totals. This is not a proper modern finance function at the heart of Government that you would see in any other complex organisation.

“So, for instance we all know that early action saves money, be it in health, education, welfare spending or the criminal justice system. Treasury knows this too, but they are doing nothing to force a change in the way money is spent.”

Lessons unlearnt

“There is little learning across Government. The mistakes in the early PFI contracts are being repeated in the energy contracts negotiated by DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change]…

“Nobody at the centre seems to think through the impact of decisions in one area on another. So of course cuts in local authority spending, where nearly 40% of their money goes on community care services, will impact on hospitals and bed blocking.”

“Too much thinking is short-term.  PFI, to which the current Government is as wedded as past governments, is building up a huge bill for future generations; assets worth £30bn today will cost £151bn over time. And using PFI locks us into ways of delivering services which quickly become outdated – like large district hospitals when we now want to care for people outside hospitals in the community.”

Price of fish 

“None of this is rocket science. So why doesn’t change happen? Why is there such resistance? Radically transforming the culture must be at the heart of securing better value.

“If the machinery of Government is so resistant, we need to take that challenge outside party politics. Only by working together across parties and over time will we be able to secure the culture, capability and organisation that we all need to deliver on our different political priorities.

“When I first took this job I read the IPPR study which said that whilst officials dreaded their appearance before the Public Accounts Committee, they were confident that it would never ‘change the price of fish’.

“I am determined to change the price of fish.

That is why we have instituted new ways. We now have regular recall sessions, calling back people to tell us why they haven’t accepted our recommendations, or why they haven’t implemented them. We bring back people after they have moved jobs to hold them to account for what they did in post.

“That caused a minor revolution when we first did it. I wanted Helen Gosch, who had moved from DEFRA to the Home Office to come back and account for the mess she had made administering the rural payments agency, paying farmers late, paying them the wrong amounts and having to send money back to Brussels because of the errors. She refused our invitation and only caved in when I ordered her to appear.”

More protection for whistleblowers please

“We try to use our analysis of past expenditure to improve spending in the future; understanding problems with past rail investment can help improve the delivery of future projects. We take regular evidence on the big change programmes, like Universal Credit or the Probation service.

“And I take seriously the material I get from whistleblowers. My time on the PAC has strengthened my respect for whistleblowers. Without them, we would have been less effective on tax avoidance and on the performance of private companies receiving taxpayer’s money to deliver public services.

“A major regret for me is that I was unable to prevent the treatment meted out to Osita Mba by HMRC. He was the official who sent us the documents on the Goldman Sachs affair. The department used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, designed to get terrorists, to get into not just his emails and phone calls, but into his wife’s phone records. In the end he couldn’t stand it any more and quit HMRC. We clearly need to do more to protect whistleblowers.”

Investigative journalism

“I am also probably one of very few MPs who has a good word to say about journalists. From  eye Eye to the Times and from the Guardian to Reuters, their fantastic investigative work (when they do it properly) has helped us uncover abuse, malpractice and waste in a way we just couldn’t have done without them.

“For despite the excellent work produced by the National Audit Office, they are constitutionally separate from and different to the Parliamentary Committee. So we need our independent sources of help.”

My goal

“Unlike our American counterparts, who have 120 staff working to their committee, 80 working for the majority party and 40 for the minority party, we have a small committee staff who focus purely on process.

“If select committees are to increase their effectiveness they need to be better resourced. It’s partly about people, although I would hate to mirror our American colleagues because their system is very much more partisan.

“But it is also absurd that when we wanted to hold an international conference on tax avoidance we were told we had no money. It is just plain wrong that when we wanted to test whether a parliamentary committee should have access to company tax files to hold HMRC properly to account, we were unable to fund legal advice to support our case that HMRC should be accountable to us.

“Both the NAO and HMRC paid for expensive legal advice to oppose us. We had no money to secure our own advice.

“Select committees should have clear statutory powers to call for all papers and people to help them hold the Executive to account. We still don’t know whether Vodafone should have paid £6bn or £2bn with an interest free staging of the payments when they settled their tax bill with the Revenue. We should know and you should too…

“Reflecting on what I have said may leave you thinking everything is wrong. I know that there are many brilliant public sector workers and many stunning public services.

“Inevitably our work focuses on the problems and the challenges. But I come at it with a determination to seek and secure improvements. Because I care about public service and because I passionately believe in the power of public services to transform people’s life chances and to create greater equality in our society. That is my goal.”

Comment

One of the striking things about the PAC is the way it leaves crude tribal party politics at the door. That’s one of the reasons it’s quietly disliked by some senior officials: they cannot condemn the committee’s partisanship. It produces 60 unanimous reports a year. But do they make any difference?

One irony is that senior officials cite the PAC as a key Parliamentary device holding them to account. They lasso and rope in the PAC for their own purpose.

The work of the PAC in holding the civil service to account is cited by lawyers for the Department for Work and Pensions in repeatedly refusing to release four old Universal Credit documents.

In reality the PAC does not make much difference to the way Whitehall departments are run. But waste would probably be much greater if it didn’t exist.

What’s not in doubt is that Hodge is a great chairman of the PAC. If anyone can change the price of fish she will.

Governup

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, cost reduction, DWP, excessive secrecy, Firecontrol, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HMRC, Institute for Government, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, openness and transparency, oversight, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Some lesser-known costs of outsourced IT?

Posted on 10/02/2015 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

An outsourcing contract may work well in general, but what when things go wrong and the customer needs  non-routine or extra-contractual information and answers from the supplier ?

 

The Post Office has received a reliable, nationwide IT service from Fujitsu for more than 14 years. A centrally-imposed contract ties in post offices across the country to using Fujitsu’s Horizon accounting system

The Post Office is delighted with the system and the service, and always has been. For some years its officials considered Horizon infallible, according to evidence given to the Business, Innovation  and Skills Committee last week.

Fujitsu has continued to enhance the system and service – sometimes at its own cost.  Most post office staff have had no complaints with the system – but more than 150 subpostmasters say they have had problems that, in some cases, have ruined their lives.

During a hearing that lasted nearly three hours, the Committee’s MPs heard that the Post Office’s contract with Fujitsu meant that investigating some complaints or queries with the system was not always contractually straightforward.

Kay Linnell, a forensic accountant and fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants,  told MPs:

“My understanding is that the Post Office had to pay for metadata from their contractors Fujitsu. This meant that when a shortage or overage arose and subpostmasters tried to investigate it and asked the Post Office about it, there was an extreme reluctance to investigate each and every shortage or overage.”

And Ian Henderson, a chartered accountant and forensic computer specialist with 2nd Sight, told the Committee:

“… The software … works well most of the time. Like any large system, it occasionally generates errors.

“Our concern is the response by Post Office to supporting sub-postmasters when they face those problems. Yes, there is a helpline facility, and, yes, training is provided, but there is no formal investigative support.

“Under the contract, sub-postmasters are not entitled to investigative support when they say, ‘Look, we’ve got this discrepancy. I don’t understand how it happened.’

“They are left largely to their own resources, supported by the helpline and so on, to get to the bottom of those problems.

“As we have seen time and again, they have failed to do that. In some cases, Post Office has refused to provide information to them on the grounds of cost – this comes back to the contract with Fujitsu. They say, ‘It is too expensive. It is outside the terms of our service level agreement. We cannot provide you with the detailed information that Post Office holds…'”

Investigations into some of the more serious complaints by subpostmasters require access to Horizon’s audit trails. These were available for up to 42 days before 2010 and 60 days since.  MPs heard that sometimes the audit trails would be needed for investigations when they were no longer available.

Missing emails?

Henderson  claimed that 2nd Sight had requested copies of emails for 2008 but was given them for 2009. He told MPs he has still not had the emails for 2008,which the Post Office disputes.

Henderson said:  “Unfortunately, the e-mails that were provided were for the wrong year. We were investigating a specific incident in 2008 and the year’s worth of e-mails that we were given related to 2009. Therefore, it was not surprising that we said, “We have asked for 2008, please provide it.” We have still not had that…

“We were told at the time that with the first batch there were some technology issues relating to the provision of the 2008 e-mails. Two years down the line, we still don’t have those.”

But Angela van den Bogerd for the Post Office replied:  “We provided what we were asked for at the time, so, clearly, there must have been some misunderstanding. We would not have pulled a year’s worth of e-mails for a wrong year.”

Costs of storing data 

Like most commercial organisations the Post Office has to pay to store data, so it has a policy of destroying data after several years. The Committee heard that “some of the cases [being investigated] are regrettably very old, so some of the data are simply not there”.

Comment

When big organisations, particularly councils, outsource their IT, do they always take into account the costs associated with investigations of problems – accessing old audit trails, retrieving other old data such as emails, or searching for information that might have been destroyed to save money?

It’s unclear whether the outsourcing of its IT has helped or hindered the Post Office’s investigations into the complaints of subpostmasters.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Fujitsu, Government IT, outsourcing, Post Office IT

Post Office Horizon IT – Commons hearing today

Posted on 03/02/2015 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Paula Vennells, Chief Executive of the Post Office, is due to answer MPs’ questions today on whether the PO’s Horizon system was partly responsible for ruining the lives of dozens of subpostmasters.

A hearing of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee will give MPs a chance to question Vennells directly rather than through a minister, as before.

At issue  is the irreconcilable. On one side are PO officials who say the Horizon system has no systemic problems and has not been proven to have caused shortfalls in accounts that led to subpostmasters being accused of theft, fraud or false accounting.

Years after the discrepancies occurred it may be impossible to prove the existence – or absence – of any faults in the system at the time.

On the other side are more than 150 subpostmasters who are represented by Alan Bates, Chairman, Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. They cannot prove that shortfalls shown on the Horizon system were not their fault.

In the middle are forensic accountants Second Sight who were called in by the Post Office to investigate possible miscarriages of justice. After Second Sight raised questions about Horizon’s possible fallibility, the PO criticised Second Sight’s findings.

A complicating factor is confidentiality. Under pressure from MPs, the PO set up a mediation scheme to adjudicate on individual cases. Several times the PO has invoked the need for confidentiality as a reason for not discussing reasons for the mediation scheme’s slow progress. The scheme was set up in August 2013 and is ongoing.

It’s unclear why there is a need for confidentiality given that subpostmasters have been willing to discuss their cases and prosecutions are in the public domain.

Labour MP Kevan Jones has called the ruin of many subpostmaster lives a national scandal. He told the House of Commons in December 2014:

“That more than 150 individual sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, who have worked tirelessly in their local communities, for decades in some cases, have suddenly all worked out that they can defraud the system is complete and utter nonsense.”

Witnesses at today’s hearing of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee are:

– Andy Furey, Assistant General Secretary, Communication Workers Union

– George Thomson, General Secretary, National Federation of SubPostmasters

– Alan Bates, Chairman, Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance

– Kay Linnell, Chartered Accountant, Kay Linnell & Co

– Paula Vennells, Chief Executive, Post Office Ltd

– Angela van den Bogerd, Head of Partnerships, Post Office Ltd

– Ian Henderson, forensic computing expert, Advances Forensics (Second Sight Ltd)

A Parliamentary campaign  for justice for the postmasters has been led by MP James Arbuthnot. Referring to today’s hearing, Arbuthnot told Computer Weekly that at a select committee hearing people cannot avoid answering questions because the MPs will keep returning to the question until they are satisfied.

Comment

Nobody outside the Post Office believes the subpostmasters were guilty of taking money.  But the subpostmasters are in no position to prove they didn’t.

It’s a seemingly irreconcilable situation, especially as the righting of miscarriages of justice will require “give” –  possibly even compassion and humility – on the part of PO officials.

Update:

Regarding Kevan Jones’s comment, the Post Office has pointed out that a minority of cases in the Mediation Scheme involve criminal convictions, not 150. There were 150 applications to the Scheme and some of these have been resolved.

Private Eye on the Horizon controversy

Jailed and bankrupt because of “unfit” IT systems? What now?

Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, Fujitsu, Post Office IT

HMRC seeks smaller IT contracts – a big risk, but worth taking?

Posted on 27/01/2015 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Public Accounts Committee MPs today criticise HM Revenue and Customs for not preparing well or quickly enough for a planned switch from one main long-term IT contract to a new model of many short-duration contracts with multiple suppliers.

It’s a big and risky change in IT strategy for HMRC that could put the safe collection of the nation’s taxes at risk, say the MPs in a report “Managing and replacing the Aspire contract”.

But the Committee doesn’t much consider the benefits of switching from one large contract to smaller ones, potentially with SMEs.

Is the risk of breaking up the huge “Aspire” contract with Capgemini, and its subcontractors Fujitsu and Accenture, worth taking?

Suppliers “outmanoeuvre” HMRC

The PAC’s report makes some important points. It says that HMRC has been “outmanoeuvred by suppliers at key moments in the Aspire contract, hindering its ability to get long term value for money”.

The costs of the Aspire deal have soared, in part because of extra work. Before it merged with Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue spent about £200m a year on its IT outsourcing contract with EDS, now HP.  Customs and Excise’s contract with Fujitsu cost about £100m a year.

After the Revenue and Customs merged, and a new deal was signed with Capgemini, the money spent on IT services soared to about £800m a year – arguably out of control.

HM Revenue and Customs spent £7.9bn on the Aspire contract from July 2004 to March 2014, giving a combined profit to Capgemini and Fujitsu of £1.2bn, equal to 16% of the contract value paid to these suppliers.

HMRC considers the contract to have been expensive,  and pressure to find cost savings in the short-term led it to trade away important value for money controls, says the PAC report.

“For example, in a series of disastrous concessions, HMRC  conceded its rights to withdraw activities from Aspire, to benchmark the contract prices against the market to determine whether they were reasonable,” says the report.

“It also gave up  its right to share in any excess profits. In 2007, HMRC negotiated a three-year  extension to the Aspire contract just three years after the contract was let, extending the end of the contract from 2014 to 2017.

“The Department has still not renegotiated the terms of the contract in line with a memorandum of agreement it signed in 2012 designed to separate Capgemini’s role in service provision from its role as service integrator and introduce more competition.”

Big or small IT suppliers?

The Aspire contract between HMRC and Capgemini is the government’s largest
technology contract.  It accounts for for 84% of HMRC’s total spend on ICT.

Today’s report says that Aspire has delivered certainty and continuity over the past decade but HMRC now plans a change in IT strategy in line with the Cabinet Office’s plan to break up monopolistic contracts.

In 2010, the Cabinet Office announced that long-term contracts with one main supplier do not deliver optimal levels of innovation, value for money or pace of change.

In 2014, it announced new rules to limit the value, length and structure of ICT contracts. No contract should exceed £100m and no single supplier should provide both services and systems integration to the same area of government. Existing contracts should not be extended without a compelling case.

The Cabinet Office says that smaller contracts should allow many more companies to bid, including SMEs, and provide an increase in competition.

HMRC agrees. So it doesn’t plan to appoint a single main supplier when Aspire expires in 2017.  But PAC members are worried that the switch to smaller contracts could jeopardize the collection of taxes. Says the PAC report:

“HMRC has made little progress in defining its needs and has still not presented a business case to government. Once funding is agreed, it will have only two years to recruit the skills and procure the services it will need.

“Moreover, HMRC’s record in managing the Aspire contract and other IT contractors gives us little confidence that HMRC can successfully achieve this transition or that it can manage the proposed model effectively to maximise value for money.

“HMRC also demonstrates little appreciation of the scale of the challenge it faces or the substantial risks to tax collection if the transition fails. Failure to collect taxes efficiently would create havoc with the public finances.”

The PAC recommends that HMRC “move quickly to develop a coherent business case, setting out the commercial and operational model it intends to put in place to replace the Aspire contract. This should include a robust transition plan and budget”.

Richard Bacon, a long-standing member of the PAC, said HMRC has yet to produce a detailed business case for the change in IT strategy.

“HMRC faces an enormous challenge in moving to a new contracting model by 2017, with many short-duration contracts with multiple suppliers, and appears complacent given the scale of the transformation required.

“Moreover, HMRC’s record in managing IT contractors gives us little confidence that HMRC can successfully achieve this transition or that it can manage the proposed model effectively to maximise value for money.”

Comment

The PAC has a duty to express its concerns. HMRC needs stable and proven systems to do its main job of collecting taxes. A switch from a single, safe contract with a big supplier to multiple, smaller contracts could be destablizing.

But it needn’t be. The Department for Work and Pensions is making huge IT – and organisational – changes in bringing in Universal Credit. That is a high-risk programme. And at one time it was badly managed, according to the National Audit Office. But the gradual introduction of new systems hasn’t hit the stability of payments to existing DWP claimants.

This is, perhaps,  because the DWP is doing 4 things at once: running existing benefit systems, building something entirely new (the so-called digital service), introducing hybrid legacy/new systems to pay some new claimants Universal Credit, and is asking its staff to do some things manually to calculate UC payments. Expensive – but safe.

The DWP’s mostly vulnerable claimants should continue to be paid whatever happens with the new IT. So the risks of major change within the department are financial. The DWP has written off tens of millions of pounds on the UC programme so far, says the NAO. Many more tens of millions may yet be wasted.

But many regard the risks as worth taking to simplify the benefits system. It could work out a lot cheaper in the end.

At HMRC the potential benefits of a major change in IT strategy are enormous too. Billions more than expected has already been spent on having one main supplier tied into the long-term Aspire contract (13 years).  Isn’t it worth spending a few tens of millions extra running parallel processes and systems during the transition from Aspire to smaller multiple contracts?

It could end up costing much less in the end. And running parallel new and existing systems and processes should ensure the safe collection of taxes.

If government departments are not prepared to take risks they’ll never change – and monolithic contracts and out-of-control costs will continue. Is there anything more risky than for HMRC to stay as it is, locked into Aspire, or a similar long-term commitment?

HMRC not ready to replace £10bn Aspire contract, MPs warn – Computerworld

Taxpayers face havoc from HMRC computer changes – Telegraph

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, consultants, cost reduction, DWP, Fujitsu, Government IT, HMRC, HP, IT projects, Legacy ICT, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, risk, Universal Credit

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