Category Archives: change management

Why was NHS e-Referral service launched with 9 pages of known problems?

Posted on 17/06/2015 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Were GPs guinea pigs for live testing of the new national NHS e-Referral Service?

Between 2004 and 2010 the Department of Health marked as confidential its lists of problems with national NPfIT systems, in particular Choose and Book.

So the Health and Social Care Information Centre deserves praise for publishing a list of problems when it launched the national “e-Referrals” system on Monday. But that list was 9 pages long.

The launch brought unsurprised groans from GPs who are used to new national systems going live with dozens of known problems.

The e-Referral Service, built on agile “techniques” and based on open source technology, went live early on Monday to replace “Choose and Book” for referring GP patients to hospitals and to other parts of the NHS.

Some GPs found they could not log on.

“As expected – cannot refer anything electronically this morning. Surprise surprise,” said one GP in a comment to “Pulse” on its article headlined “Patient referrals being delayed as GPs unable to access e-Referrals system on launch day.”

A GP practice manager said: “Cannot access in south London. HSCIC debacle…GPs pick up the pieces. Changing something that wasn’t broken.”

Another GP said: “I was proud never to have used Choose and Book once. Looks like this is even better!”

Other GPs said they avoided using technology to refer patients.

“Why delay referral? Just send a letter. (Some of us never stopped).”

Another commented: “I still send paper referrals – no messing, you know it has gone, no time wasted.”

Dr Faisal Bhutta, a GP partner in Manchester, said his practice regularly used Choose and Book but on Monday morning he couldn’t log in. “You can’t make a referral,” he said.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has apologised for the disruption. A statement on its website says:

“There are a number of known issues, which are currently being resolved. It is not anticipated that any of these issues will pose a clinical safety risk, cause any detriment to patient care or prevent users from carrying out essential tasks. We have published the list of known issues on our website along with details of how to provide feedback .”

But why did the Centre launch the e-Referral Service with 9 pages of known problems? Was it using GPs as guinea pigs to test the new system?

Comment

The Health and Social Care Information Centre is far more open, less defensive and a better communicator than the Department of Health ever was when its officials were implementing the NPfIT.

But is the HSCIC’s openness a good thing if it’s accompanied by a brazen and arrogant acceptance that IT can be introduced into the NHS without a care whether it works properly or not?

In parts of the NHS, IT works extraordinarily well. Those who design, test, implement and support such systems care deeply about patients. In many hospitals the IT reduces risks and helps to improve the chances of successful outcomes.

But in other parts of the NHS are some technology enthusiasts – at the most senior board level – who seem to believe that all major IT implementations will be flawed and will be improved by user feedback.

The result is that IT that’s inadequately designed, tested and implemented is foisted on doctors and nurses who are expected to get used to “teething” troubles.

This is dangerous thinking and it’s becoming more and more prevalent.

Many poorly-considered implementations of the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system have gone live in hospitals across England with known problems.

In some cases, poor implementations – rather than any faults with the system itself – have affected the care of patients and might have contributed to unnecessary deaths when records needed urgently were not available, or hospitals lost track of urgent appointments.

A CQC report in March 2015 said IT was a possible factor in the death of a patient because NHS staff were unable to access electronically-held information.

In another incident a coroner criticised a patient administration system for being a factor in the death of three year-old Samuel Starr whose appointment for a vital scan got lost in the system.

Within NHS officialdom is a growing cultural acceptance that somehow a poor IT implementation is different to a faulty x-ray machine that delivers too high a dose of radiation.

NHS officials will always brush off IT problems as teething and irrelevant to the care and safety of patients. Just apologise and say no patient has come to any harm.

So little do IT-related problems matter in the NHS that unaccountable officials at the HSCIC have this week felt sufficiently detached from personal accountability to launch a national system knowing there are dozens of problems with the use of it.

Their attitude seems to be: “We can’t know everything wrong with the system until it’s live. So let’s launch the system and fix the problems as GPs give us their feedback.”

This is a little like the NHS having a template letter of regret to send to relatives and families of patients who die unexpectedly in the care of the NHS. Officials simply fill in the appropriate name and address. The NHS can then fix the problems as and when patients die.

It’s surely time that bad practice in NHS IT was eradicated.  Board members need to question more. When necessary directors must challenge the blind positivism of the chief executive.

Some managers can learn much about the culture of care at the hospitals that implement IT successfully.

Patients, nurses and doctors do not exist to tell hospital managers and IT suppliers when electronic records are wrong, incomplete, not available or are somebody else’s record with a similar name.

And GPs do not exist to be guinea pigs for testing and providing feedback on new national systems such as the e-Referral Service.

e-Referral Service “unavailable until further notice”

Hundreds of patients lost in NPfIT systems

Hospital has long-term NPfIT problems

An NPfIT success at Croydon? – Really?

Physicians’ views on electronic patient records

Patient record systems raise some concerns, says report

Electronic health records and safety concerns

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, Choose and Book, Department of Health, e-health, e-Referral Service, Government IT, health, health records, HSCIC, IT successes, IT-related failures, LPfIT, NHS, npfit, open source, open standards, operational issues, procurement, project management

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DWP will fight to stop publication of Universal Credit reports whoever wins in May

Posted on 28/04/2015 | 14 comments

By Tony Collins

dwpOn 7 July 2004 the Work and Pensions Committee called on the DWP to be “significantly more open about its IT projects”.

Today – 11 years later – the DWP is fighting to stop publication of four reports that would throw light on early problems with the IT work on Universal Credit.

And the DWP has continued to keep secret millions of pounds worth of reports on the progress or otherwise of its big projects, including those that have a major IT element,  Universal Credit in particular.

The Department is preparing for a new one-day hearing as part of its legal efforts – which have lasted two years so far – to stop the four reports on Universal Credit being published under the FOI Act.

A first-tier tribunal judge in March 2014 ordered the DWP to publish the reports. The following month the same judge refused the DWP leave to appeal, but the DWP’s external lawyers appealed to an upper tribunal for leave to appeal.

Now a judge has ordered a new one-day hearing in London, at a date yet to be set.

While the appeals continue the DWP does not have to publish the reports. In the light of this, DWP officials plan to continue their legal fight to stop publication of the reports, irrespective of who wins the election next month.

Indeed the case could go on for years. That legal costs for taxpayers are mounting seems no deterrent to the Department’s officials.

The four reports are already dated – they go back to 2012. The reports are the risks register, issues register, milestone schedule and project assessment review. All are about the Universal Credit programme.

John Slater, a programme and project management professional, requested three of the reports under FOI. I requested the project assessment review. 

Lamentable

Little has changed – the DWP has remained defensive and secretive – since 2004 when the Work and Pensions Committee said in its weighty report “Department for Work and Pensions Management of Information Technology Projects: Making IT deliver for DWP Customers”:

“The record on IT by DWP and its predecessor the Department of Social Security, has been lamentable …”

The report referred to the DWP’s habit of setting “unrealistic deadlines” on big projects, a problem that years later hit Universal Credit.

The Committee in 2004 added that the DWP was keeping reports secret to avoid embarrassment:

“We felt that on occasions the secretive approach adopted by the Department and the Government … had little to do with commercial confidentiality and more to do with departments using it as an excuse to withhold information that rightly belonged in the public domain, but which might embarrass the Department if released publicly.

“In our view the lack of Parliamentary accountability is part of the reason for the relatively high number of defective IT projects.”

The secrecy is not the fault of the DWP’s major suppliers -who include IBM, HP, Accenture, BT and Fujitsu. The Work and Pensions Committee said:

“During our enquiry, we were struck by how open IT suppliers seemed prepared to be in contrast with the tendency of officials to invoke commercial confidentiality.”

universal creditIn an echo of the Work and Pensions Committee’s 2004 report, the Public Accounts Committee said in February 2015, in its report: 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…”

Ministers powerless?

Ministers have so far been unable to persuade civil servants to publish contemporaneous reports on the government’s big IT-enabled projects and programmes.

Francis Maude came to power in 2010 expecting to publish “Gateway” reviews on IT schemes but senior civil servants refused, arguing in part that publication would have a “chilling effect” on those writing and researching the reports.

Maude gave up on trying to get the reports published but gained reluctant agreement from permanent secretaries to publishing the traffic light status of large projects – but only after these assessments have lost their topicality in the form of a six-month time lag.

FOI campaigners say there are several reasons senior civil servants do not want reports on big IT-based projects, including Universal Credit, published.

The main reason, they say, is tradition: departments have always kept secret their internal independent reports on the progress or otherwise of major schemes.

Another reason is that officials do not always implement the reports’ recommendations. If nobody outside a department’s inner circle knows what a report’s recommendations or findings are, will it matter if they go unimplemented?

A further reason is that disclosure of the reports may cause embarrassment by confirming that a department’s ministers and officials have been economical with the truth – giving Parliament and the media the wrong impression about a project’s successful progress.

Lucrative

Another reason for keeping the reports secret may be that it enables civil servants and consultants who write the reports to be kind – perhaps even deferential – to their Whitehall colleagues by producing positive reports on projects that may later go awry.

Writing and researching the reports can be lucrative work. They are sometimes worth £1,000 a day to some consultants. A positive report with comfortable conclusions is more likely to bring further commissions than a generally negative one.

Indeed an upper tribunal judge Edward Jacobs, in a ruling on the case of the four reports, hinted that they were so positive even a hostile press would be pressed to find things to criticise.

Jacobs said that if he grants a rehearing of the case it is possible that the new tribunal “will need to consider that some of the contents (of the four reports) could hardly be presented badly even in the most hostile media coverage”.

Why disclosure is important

Officials working on Universal Credit have repeated mistakes of the past: setting unrealistic deadlines, underestimating complexity and not being open about project problems – even internally: their minister, Iain Duncan Smith, to get the unvarnished truth, had to set up his own “red team” reviews to bypass civil servants who had been giving him information.

As John Slater has pointed out, the late Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham made an important statement on the need for openness:

“… Modern democratic government means government of the people by the people for the people. But there can be no government by the people if they are ignorant of the issues to be resolved, the arguments for and against different solutions and the facts underlying those arguments.

“The business of government is not an activity about which only those professionally engaged are entitled to receive information and express opinions. It is, or should be, a participatory process. But there can be no assurance that government is carried out for the people unless the facts are made known, the issues publicly ventilated.

“Sometimes, inevitably, those involved in the conduct of government, as in any other walk of life, are guilty of error, incompetence, misbehaviour, dereliction of duty, even dishonesty and malpractice. Those concerned may very strongly wish that the facts relating to such matters are not made public.

“Publicity may reflect discredit on them or their predecessors. It may embarrass the authorities. It may impede the process of administration. Experience however shows, in this country and elsewhere, that publicity is a powerful disinfectant. Where abuses are exposed, they can be remedied. Even where abuses have already been remedied, the public may be entitled to know that they occurred.”

Comment

The DWP’s culture of secrecy seems to overwhelm all new ministers who go along with it because they cannot run such a huge and complex department without the full support of their officials.

That’s perhaps why officials, on the matter of openness on IT projects, need never take seriously criticisms by the Information Commissioner, the Public Accounts Committee or the Work and Pensions Committee.

If officials have taken little notice of MPs for more than a decade, why should they start behaving differently under a new government?

The taxpayer suffers in the end. The DWP’s lamentable record on running major IT-based projects will probably continue, with huge financial losses and without accountability, while money continues to be poured into fighting pointless FOI legal battles.

It seems unlikely – and indeed would set a precedent – but perhaps a new set of ministers at the DWP will dare to try and change the culture.

 

 

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Universal Credit

Has 8 years of IT-based outsourcing really come to this?

Posted on 24/03/2015 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

In public, in the past, Taunton Deane Borough Council’s IT-based outsourcing deal has always been a success. Two years ago council officers and an executive at IBM were particularly upbeat about the success of their partnership.

“Service delivery … viewed in the round, is broadly on track. The majority of services perform well or extremely well…”

Now that the 10-year contract is 2 years away from expiry, which encourages officers to consider what happens then,  more of the truth is emerging.

A council report this month reveals that:

Savings are less than half those first envisaged – £3m against £10m projected. The £3m is an “identified” rather than actual saving.  The projected savings are “now out of alignment with our new financial circumstances and savings requirements”.

– Costs of exiting the contract with the IBM-run Southwest One partnership will be “significant”.

– Unravelling a shared services contract and reallocating work to the 50 council staff seconded to Southwest One will be “complex”. Says the report: “Any disaggregation from the shared service model will be complex and resource intensive and will also be challenging for SWO [Southwest One] as it attempts to satisfy the requirements of three partners whilst protecting and maximising its own financial position”.

– Use of lawyers will be intensive and already consultants have been engaged to advise on the implications of the contract’s ending. Funding this work will mean dipping into the council’s financial reserves.

– the joint venture with IBM has “not attracted new partner authorities” as first envisaged.

– IBM’s global strategy has changed, as has the council’s. Says Taunton Deane’s report of 10 March 2015: “Whilst central government once heralded large scale, multi agency and multi service partnerships with the private sector as the future, their advice now appears to be changing (in favour of) sustained competition, disaggregated services, small short contracts, transparency and diverse supply.”

– Technology strategies have changed. “Computer data centres are being replaced by cloud solutions and mobile technologies have become the norm in many business environments”.

It also emerges that the council is deeply unhappy with its SAP-based transformation, which was directed and implemented by IBM.  The SAP system is “costly”, “complex”, “not responsive to TDBC requirements”, and “resource intensive”.

The SAP system is also a “barrier to sharing services with other district councils”, and “does not support the customer access agenda in respect of channel shift as the SAP Citizen Portal (website) is inadequate”.

The “system is overly complex and users find the processes inefficient”.

Ending the contract means considering in depth:
– staffing implications
– premises and accommodation
– asset & third-party contract transfers
– communications
– logistics, technical infrastructure and system security and access
– intellectual property and authority data
– work in progress transfer
– service transition and knowledge transfer
– company dissolution

The council will also need to consider its service delivery options, which will involve:
– costed business case and recommendations
– understanding risks
– contractual implications and legal advice
– financial implications
– exploratory negotiations with SWO and discussions with the public
partners
– a detailed review to identify the options and costs for potential
replacement systems for the SAP system

Says the council report:

“Preparing for and implementing contract end and potentially exit from SWO [Southwest One] will require a significant amount of time and effort from the authorities due to the volume of work required, some of which is contractual and cannot be avoided.

“Contract end will require robust project governance and the appointment of an authority exit management team including work-streams around: exit management, HR, legal/contract representation, commercial, project management, communications, finance, technology and procurement.

“The resource requirement will be similar whichever future delivery option is selected.”

Comment

Councils that are considering large IT-based outsourcing deals could learn much from Taunton Deane’s experiences. At the start of such deals clients and suppliers find it easy to talk about what they’ll deliver – they need prove nothing by actions at this stage.

Taunton Deane and Somerset County Council, its lead partner in Southwest One, blew the trumpet in advance of their deal with IBM. Big savings were promised, and a transformation programme that would be led by a world-class supplier.

Barnet Council’s leading councillors  and officers also published numerous upbeat reports and gave zestful speeches in praise their forthcoming outsourcing deal with Capita.

At Taunton Deane, over time, expensive actions replaced cheap words. Partners did not join the partnership so economies of scale did not materialise. The transformation proved more complex than first envisaged. Reality overwhelmed aspirations.

Nobody could escape from the fact that the council was passing across to IBM a host of conflicting realities and expectations. Beyond the rosy Disney world of pre-contract euphoria was a harsh landscape.

Officers and councillors were actually passing across costs that were unlikely to decrease, and savings requirements that were likely to become more demanding. On top of this the supplier had to make a profit.

How can big savings and costly IT-led transformations not be in conflict with the inbuilt demands of suppliers whose share price is sensitive to the exacting expectations of investors who require ever increasing returns?

Councils will continue to outsource because their officers and lead councillors are unlikely to be in place in the later stages of a contract when they could otherwise be accountable for an administrative, financial and technological mess. In the early stages nobody need be held accountable for anything.  Words are sufficient. Promises cannot be tested yet.  Guarantees sound impressive.

It’s only actions that are hard to achieve.

Perhaps the answer is for auditors to become more proactive. The National Audit Office has this week published well considered guidelines for local authority auditors which calls for “professional scepticism”.  Auditors can stop councils making mistakes. They can see through promises and so-called guarantees.  It’s actions that matter.

At the start of a contract when the supplier’s executives, council officers and lead councillors are all in love they’ll say anything to reassure to each other. But everyone knows that when expectations are at their peak there is only one way to go – Taunton Deane has discovered to its cost.

Thank you to openness campaigner Dave Orr for providing the information on which this blog is based. 

TDBC SW1 contract exit planning Item 10 March 2015 (2)

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, change management, IBM, IT-related failures, legal disputes, local government, managing outsourced services, National Audit Office, outsourcing, SAP, supplier relationships

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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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Universal Credit project costs reach £36,222 per claimant (excluding the claim)

Posted on 17/11/2014 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

Iain Duncan Smith has told MPs that the costs of the Universal Credit project are £652m to March 2014 – which is about £36,222 per successful claimant.

The figure includes the money paid to the DWP’s Universal Credit IT suppliers which was £303m by the end of 2012/13.  An updated figure will be published in a UC report by the National Audit Office due to be published near the end of this month.

The costs of Universal Credit per successful claimant are disproportionately high for an IT-enabled programme that has been running for more than three years because numbers on the system are small.

If the UC programme were complete, at a forecast cost of £1.8bn, and the predicted 7.7 million people were receiving the benefit, the scheme’s delivery costs per claimant would be only about £234.

As at October 2014 17,850 people were on the Universal Credit caseload.  IDS told the Work and Pensions Committee on 5 November, in a hearing that lasted more than 2 hours,  that the costs of UC were £652m by March 2014.

That works out at about £36, 222 per successful UC claimant.

Total delivery costs for the programme are expected to be £1.8bn, down from an original prediction of £2.4bn, IDS told the committee.

IDS and the DWP hope many more successful claimants will be added to the systems next year when Universal Credit is rolled out to all jobcentres and local authorities across the country. But the scheme is subject to growing uncertainties, as the DWP’s permanent secretary Robert Devereux and IDS made clear to the committee.

DWP drops firm end date for UC

When an MP put it to IDS that he no longer has a concrete end date for when  7.7 million people will be on UC, he paused. Then he said the plan was for UC to be complete “by the end of 2018”. He gave no commitment and did not deny that there is no concrete end date.

“Er yes, yeah,” replied IDS. “We do envisage UC being complete by the end of 2018. That’s our plan.”  He said that UC would handle singles, couples, then families. In the meantime the DWP is developing an “end-state digital process” that will deliver benefits for claimants and the departments.

“The roll-out gives us phenomenal understanding of what we need to do to make sure the digital service ultimately comes in and completes that process properly. There is a de-risking of the process.”

UC may never be fully automated

Another uncertainty for UC is its ability to handle an estimated 1.6 million changes per month to people’s claims.

Changes in circumstances are handled manually at present.

Robert Devereux, permanent secretary at the DWP, told the committee that the UC systems are, for some claimants,  part manual, part automated. Devereux said:

“The peculiar nooks and crannies with individual circumstances  – we have deliberately not tried to code every permutation as we go along. We are trying to make sure it can be safely delivered within costs in a sensible fashion.

“It would not be sensible to code every possible permutation back at the start while you are still learning.  There are different elements of the system, some of which will be [digital] all the way through, some which are not.”

The committee chair Dame Anne Begg questioned whether UC will ever work effectively if manual processing is applied to some of the 7.7 million claimants. She received no clear answer.

Comment

It’s a good thing that the DWP is going slowly and cautiously but a spend of £652m to March 2014 per UC recipient does not seem cautious at all. If the project is being run on agile principles of fail early and fail cheaply, can this sum be justified?

On a more positive note IDS has stopped quoting a firm end date for UC. At first the DWP was saying UC would be completed by the end of 2017, then IDS said the programme would be “essentially complete” by the end of 2017.  Now he is saying it may be complete by the end of 2018 but is giving no commitment. His caution is probably because the NAO’s update on UC later this month will suggest that the programme is unlikely to be delivered in any certain time period. Nobody can say with authority or credibility when UC’s implementation will be complete.

It’s also a good thing that the DWP is conceding that UC can never be fully automated. It doesn’t make sense spending disproportionate sums on automating calculations that can be done more cheaply by hand.  But if the exceptions prove the rule UC could prove much more expensive to implement than planned.

UC is a good idea in theory but the next government needs to do a full review of its financial and practical feasibility, which the present government is unlikely to do.

Universal Credit could be complete by 2018 – Government Computing

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, HP, IBM, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Universal Credit and its IT – an inside track?

Posted on 28/10/2014 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

An excellent BBC Radio 4 “Inside Welfare Reform” Analysis broadcast yesterday evening gave an insider’s view of the IT-based Universal Credit programme from its beginnings to today.

It depicted Iain Duncan Smith as a courageous reformer who’s kept faith with important welfare changes that all parties support. If they work, the reforms will benefit taxpayers and claimants. The broadcast concludes with an apparent endorsement of IDS’s very slow introduction of UC.

“When real lives and real money are at stake, being cautious is not the worst mistake you can make.”

So says the BBC R4 “Analysis” guest presenter Jonathan Portes who worked on welfare spending at the Treasury in the 1980s and became Chief Economist at the Department for Work and Pensions in 2002. He left the DWP in 2011 and is now director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

The BBC broadcast left me with the impression that UC would today be perceived as meeting expectations if DWP officials and ministers had, in the early days:

– been open and honest about the complexities of IT-related and business change

– outlined the potential problems of implementing UC as set out in internal reports and the minutes of programme team meetings

– explained the likelihood of the UC programme taking more time and money than initially envisaged

– urged the need for extreme caution

– made a decision at the outset to protect – at all costs – those most in genuine need of disability benefits

– not sold UC to a sceptical Treasury on the basis it would save billions in disability claims  – for today thousands of disability claimants are in genuine need of state help, some of whom are desperately sick, and are not receiving money because of delays.

Instead UC is perceived as a disaster, as set out in Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary last night.

A £500m write-off on IT?

Other noteworthy parts of the BBC R4 Analysis broadcast:

– The Department for Work and Pensions gave selective responses to the BBC’s questions. Portes: “We did ask the Department for Work and Pensions for an interview for this programme but neither Iain Duncan  Smith nor any minister was available. We sent a detailed list of questions and have had answers to some.”

– Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, gave her view that the next government will have to write off £500m on IT investment on Universal Credit – about £360m more than the Department for Work and Pensions has stated publicly.

Hodge told the BBC: “We are now on our fourth or official in charge of the project and the project has only been going four or five years. Anyone who knows about project management will tell you that consistency of leadership is vital. I don’t think there has been ownership of the project by a senior official within DWP.  I think they and ministers have only wanted to hear the good news. Management of the IT companies has been abysmal.

“I still believe, though I haven’t t got officials to admit to this, that after the general election we will probably be writing off in excess of half a billion  pounds on investment in IT that had failed to deliver… The investment in IT that they are presently saying they can re-use in other ways is not fit for purpose. The system simply cannot cope.”

The BBC asked the DWP for its comment on the scale of the write-offs. “No answer,” said Portes.

Parliament told the truth?

Stephen Brien, who has been dubbed the architect of Universal Credit, gave his first broadcast interview to Analysis. He worked with IDS at the Centre for Social Justice, a think tank set up by IDS in 2004. Brien saw IDS on a nearly daily basis.

Portes asked Brien when IDS first realised things were going off track. “The challenge became very stark in the summer of 2012,” said Brien.

Portes: What was your relationship with IDS?

“My office was across the corridor from his.  I would join him for all the senior meetings about the programme. I would keep him updated as a result of the other meetings I was addressing within the programme team. When it became materially obvious we had to change plans it was over that summer [2012].

Portes: But that was not the public line. In September 2012 this is what IDS said (in the House of Commons):

“We will deliver Universal Credit on time, as it is, on budget, right now.”

IDS appears to have given that assurance while being aware of the change to UC plans.

UC oversold to Treasury?

Portes: “The really big savings were supposed to come from disability benefit. And here trouble was brewing. The problem was the deal IDS had done with the Treasury. The Treasury never liked UC. It thought it was both risky and expensive. And the Treasury, faced with a huge budget deficit, wanted to save not spend.

“With pensions protected disability benefits were really the only place savings could be made.  The previous government had contracted ATOS to administer a new medical test – the Work Capability Assessment – to all 2.5 million people on Incapacity Benefit but only a few pilots had started.

“IDS and the Treasury agreed to press ahead.  Some claimants would be moved to new Employment and Support Allowance but the plan was that several hundred thousand would lose the benefit entirely – saving about £3bn a year.

“Disability living allowance which helps with the extra cost of disability would also be replaced with the new, saving another £2bn…

But …

“By now the new work capability assessment was supposed to have got more than 500,000 people off incapacity benefits. Instead they are stuck in limbo waiting for an assessment.

“By now the new Personal Independence Payment should have replaced disability living allowance saving billions of pounds more. Instead it too has been dogged by delay.

“Just a few days ago the Office for Budget Responsibility said delays in these benefits are costing taxpayers close to £5bn a year. This dwarfs any savings made elsewhere and leaves a potential black hole in the next government budget.”

How many people left stuck in the system?

The BBC asked the Department of Work and Pensions’ press office how many claimants, and for how long, they have been waiting for claims to be resolved. Portes: “They didn’t answer. But their own published statistics suggest it is at least half a million.

“One aim of the reforms was to cut incapacity benefit and the numbers had been on a long slow decline between 2003 and 2012 but now it is rising again. So much for the Treasury saving.”

Who is at fault?

Publicly IDS talks about a lack of professionalism among civil servants and that he has lost faith with their ability to manage the UC-related problems. Rumours in the corridors of Westminster are that behind the scenes IDS has attempted to blame his permanent secretary Robert Devereux.  On this point, again, the DWP refused the BBC’s request for a comment.

Gus O’Donnell, former head of the civil service, who appointed Devereux, told the BBC that tensions between IDS and Francis Maude at the Cabinet Office did not help. “Robert [Devereux] was in a very difficult position. He was in a world where Francis Maude was trying to deliver, efficiently, programmes for government and on the other hand IDS was seeing the centre as interfering and criticising whereas he knew best: it was his project; he was living it every day. There was a lot of tension there. Really what we need to do is get everyone sitting round a table trying to work out how we can deliver outcomes that matter.”

Was Devereux set up to fail?

O’Donnell: “With hindsight one can say this is a project that could not be delivered to time and cost.”

Were DWP officials to blame?

Stephen Brien said: “There was a real desire from the very beginning to get this done. I think there was a desire within DWP to demonstrate that it could again do big programmes. The DWP had not been involved in very large transformation programmes over the previous decade. There was a great enthusiasm to get back in the saddle,  a sense that it [UC] had to get underway and it had to be well entrenched through Parliament.

“These forces – each of them – contributed to a sense of ‘we have got to get this done and therefore we will get this done.’”

Too ambitious?

Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, told the BBC: “If you know what it is you want to do and you understand what is required to get there, then what’s wrong with being ambitious?

“The trouble is that when you get into the detail you find you are bruising people, damaging people, people who genuinely will always need our help. Taxpayers, our constituents, expect us to implement things so that they work, rather than see project after project go wrong and money squandered.

“There may come a point where we say: ‘we have spent so much money on this and achieved so little, is the game worth the candle?’”

Thank you to Dave Orr for drawing my attention to the Dispatches documentary. 

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, Atos, BT, Campaign4Change, change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, HP, IBM, outsourcing, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Real time information – the good and bad

Posted on 14/10/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Widespread publicity over the past week has drawn attention to inaccuracies in Real Time Information, HMRC’s system for handling PAYE submissions from employers every time they pay an employee rather that at the year-end. The Daily Telegraph broke the story with the headline

“Five million UK workers face uncertainty after tax bills wrongly calculated twice in HMRC blunder”

The BBC said tax  statement errors affect thousands of people.  Accountancy Live reported that tax experts were urging HMRC to review RTI to see if it’s fit for purpose. The FT reported HMRC as admitting that an “unknown number of inaccurate P800 statements and payment orders for the 2013/14 tax year had been sent to taxpayers since September 15”.

But HMRC says that RTI is a success for more than 98% of those employers who have to use it.

Tens of millions of PAYE employees are now on RTI – and if the system were a disaster HMRC and MPs would be deluged with complaints. That hasn’t happened.

Indeed the National Audit Office was complimentary in its audit of HMRC’s 2013/14 accounts of the ability of RTI to give employees the correct tax code when their jobs change – thereby reducing the levels of under and overpayments.

“Data quality has improved and HMRC’s own evaluation suggests that RTI is helping to change employer behaviour by encouraging them to tell HMRC of changes in employee circumstances earlier,” said the NAO.

RTI – the good and bad

The good news for HMRC and the government’s welfare reformers is that Universal Credit, which relies on RTI to calculate benefits, is running well behind its original schedule.

UC is rolling out to a small number of people – fewer than 12,000 by 14 August 2014 –  rather than the expected 184,000 by April 2014, according to the DWP’s revised December 2012 business case.  This means that inaccuracies in RTI will have little effect on UC for the foreseeable future.

The bad

If RTI cannot be relied on to provide accurate information on whether Universal Credit claimants are paying the right amount of tax, UC cannot be relied on to provide correct payments to claimants – which would undermine the welfare reform programme.

Another problem is that tax experts are weary of HMRC’s repeated blaming of employers for RTI’s problems. One of the reasons RTI contains inaccuracies is that HMRC uses employers’ changing internal “works” numbers as individual identifiers, as well as the National Insurance Number.

Employers change their payroll works numbers for a variety of reasons, say when an employee is promoted to management, when the company wants to distinguish various groups for the employer’s own purpose, or when an employee moves location.

The works number is for the internal use of the employer but is included in information submitted to HMRC. The number is “owned” by employers and is for them to use and administer as they see fit. It should have no relevance to HMRC.  But when the works number changes, it can trigger a false assumption in HMRC’s systems that the employee has two employments, with the same employer.  This would generate an incorrect tax code – and would be HMRC’s fault, not the employer’s.

Steve Wade, tax director at KPMG, puts it well.  He says of the latest publicity about RTI errors:

“These systems issues are causing so called ‘employer errors’, which is where the data supplied by the employer is not processed by HMRC systems as expected.

“Sometimes this can be due to bad data being supplied but equally it can be due to errors in HMRC systems which were not designed to deal with all the complexities of PAYE.

“The upshot for employers and employees is that they find that the PAYE tax and National Insurance Contributions that have been paid do not match those calculated by HMRC, despite their providing the information as requested.  As a result, they now face uncertainty over whether they have paid the right amount of tax.

“There needs to be some significant and urgent investment in the processing and back end software systems at HMRC which collect and process this data to generate the operational efficiencies envisaged when the whole RTI initiative was conceived.”

Wade told Accountancy Live: “At the moment, RTI just does not seem to be delivering information that is real. What we need is a thorough investigation of what has happened by a team which includes not just HMRC personnel but external specialists. Only that will give the necessary degree of confidence in the system that is vital for everyone who depends upon it.”

Natalie Miller, President of the Association of Taxation Technicians, says of RTI’s inaccuracies:

“This is an alarming revelation and further underscores the need for collaboration with external stakeholders, all of whom have a vested interest in the success of RTI.

“We have been drawing HMRC’s attention to the quirks and complexities of RTI in meetings and correspondence from its inception. We have also highlighted the significant burdens it places on employers and agents. What we are seeing now are real and serious practical problems for possibly many thousands of employees at a time when building confidence in the system is crucial.

“Some of those difficulties might have been avoided if HMRC had heeded advice from ATT and similar bodies at an early stage.

“In light of this latest revelation, we are calling for an urgent review of the RTI system to ensure that it is fit for purpose. This is essential because every employer and employee is entitled to know that PAYE is being dealt with properly. It is doubly important because the RTI system underpins the Universal Credit system that is being rolled out by the Department for Work and Pensions to replace certain state benefits.

“If, as HMRC’s reported comments suggest, the particular problem arose because employers had failed to send in final payment statements for the full 2013/2014 tax year, that suggests two things.

“Firstly, that the process is simply too complex for employers to understand. Secondly, that either HMRC know the information to be incomplete and are failing to address this before placing reliance on the information, or HMRC do not know the information is incomplete, which raises the equally worrying prospect that the system cannot identify when important information is missing.

“It is in nobody’s interest that RTI stumbles from problem to problem; that threatens its credibility. We all need a system that does what it says on the tin. At the moment, Real Time Information just does not seem to be delivering information that is real. What we need is a thorough investigation of what has happened by a team which includes not just HMRC personnel but external specialists.

“Only that will give the necessary degree of confidence in the system that is vital for everyone who depends upon it (employees, pensioners, employers, payroll bureaux, tax advisers, other parts of government and HMRC itself). The review’s remit should extend to other areas of RTI where systemic problems have been identified. The ATT and many other professional bodies stand ready to assist HMRC in that review.”

George Bull, senior tax partner at Baker Tilly, said that the RTI system had so far failed to demonstrate that it can put an end to the annual problem of incorrect tax demands and refunds. “It seems to me that in 2014, this is a pretty sorry state to be in.”

HMRC note to employers, professional bodies and business groups in full (published by Accountingweb)

“We are today emailing our stakeholders to explain that we are aware that a number of employees recently received a form 2013-14 P800 which was issued during our bulk 2013-14 End of Year reconciliation exercise.

“The 2013-14 P800 shows an incorrect overpayment or underpayment where the pay and tax shown on the P800 is incorrect and does not match that shown on their 2013-14 P60.

“The most common scenarios are where:

  • An incorrect overpayment is created as the 2013-14 reconciliation is based upon the Full Payment Submission (FPS) up to month 11 although the employment continued all year.
  • Where the year to date figures supplied are incorrect, for example where an employer reference changed in-year and the previous pay and tax is incorrectly included in the “year to date” (YTD) totals.
  • We have received an “Earlier Year Update” (EYU) and this is yet to be processed to the account.
  • There is a duplicate employment (often caused by differences in works numbers and other changes throughout the year)

“We are urgently investigating these cases and will look to resolve the matter in the next 6-8 weeks.

“We currently do not know the scale of the issue, but some large employers are involved, so several thousands of employees may be affected.

“Next Steps

“We are very sorry that some customers will receive an incorrect 2013-14 P800 tax calculation.

“We are urgently investigating these cases and will look to resolve the matter and issue a revised P800 to the employee in the next 6-8 weeks.

“Employers and their agents should not send any 2013-14 EYUs unless requested by us. We are aware that there are still some 2013-14 EYUs which we have yet to process to the relevant account.

“If an employee asks about a 2013-14 P800 which they think is incorrect, they should advise them:

  • Not to repay any underpayment shown on the P800
  • Not to cash any payable order they may have received
  • Employees will not be affected by the incorrect tax code as we will issue a revised P800 before Annual Coding.”

Comment

RTI is not a disaster but it’s clearly not in a fit state to support Universal Credit – another uncertainty for UC. When the National Audit Office reports on UC, as it is due to do in the next few weeks, it would be useful if it also reports on the state of RTI.

If it does so report, the NAO should not take at face value HMRC’s claims that the fault with RTI lies mainly with employers.

[The NAO will find that, even after the modernisation of PAYE processes, the systems still incorporate COP/CODA/BROCS software that dates back more than 30 years.]

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, KPMG, managing change, managing outsourced services, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, software quality, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Universal Credit’s “multiple frustrations and complications”

Posted on 08/10/2014 | 8 comments

By Tony Collins

universal creditJournalists who are trying to find out the current state of the Universal Credit programme will get little help from the Department for Work and Pensions unless its press officers sense that the eventual outcome will be positive.

Sometimes journalists call me as part of their research. They want to know whether UC will end up as another government IT disaster. I had such a call yesterday.

The conversation focused on IT. But it’s a maxim in the industry that major change programmes in the public sector usually fail or are delayed for managerial rather than technical reasons.

The introduction of a new passport system failed when a better, more secure system slowed down the issuing of new passport applications.

Instead of halting the roll-out to see how to speed up the issuing of passports – by changing procedures or spending more on staff and equipment – the Home Office continued the rollout and chaos ensured. That wasn’t the fault of the IT.

It may be a similar story with Universal Credit. Even if the IT as far as it goes works well, claims handling is a laborious process,  The main systems do not handle calculations of gross income, net income or back-office integration, all of which are managed manually.

Chaos is unlikely because the rollout is going so slowly.  But the amount of manual intervention required means the slow rollout is enforced rather than merely voluntary.

[This slow rollout is despite an IT budget for UC including migration costs from 2010 to 2014/15 of £812m as at December 2012. Within this budget, £303m had been spent to March 2013, mostly with the DWP’s main IT suppliers Accenture, IBM, HP and BT.]

The programme is also running into non-IT difficulties such as delays in issuing first-time payments to claimants because of a variety of reasons around the complexity of new procedures, and tenants unable to pay rent because the money hasn’t gone directly to landlords.

If UC goes nationwide, as Iain Duncan Smith says it will next year, it will still be able to handle only limited numbers of claimants, in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands and certainly not millions.

This article is a reminder that Universal Credit faces problems that go beyond the IT. A North West housing association said a survey of its tenants had exposed flaws in the universal credit system, with some claimants turning to pay day lenders to get by.

After taking part in a pilot in 2013 of the roll out of UC, First Choice Homes Oldham found that their tenants had suffered “multiple frustrations and complications with the system”. Data collected this summer from 40% of the housing association’s tenants on UC found that:

• 55% found the period between making their UC claim and receiving their first payment very difficult. 44% managed financially by borrowing and 18% had taken out a pay day loan.

• 74% had not been offered personal budgeting support by the Department for Work and Pensions. However, 57% of the tenants that were offered this service took up the offer.

• 37% did not receive their payment on the same day each month, making budgeting even more difficult.

• 59% of tenants had not found work since claiming UC.

When asked by FCHO to name the first three bills that would be paid once they were in receipt of UC, 19% of tenants did not name rent as a priority bill.

So will UC succeed?

It’s laudable that the coalition is trying to simplify the benefits system. No pain no gain. But it’s not doing it openly. IDS pretends all is well when clearly it isn’t.

This means that UC becomes an impossible project to manage well. No programme leader can take big problems to IDS because big problems are not supposed to exist. UC desperately needs a new political leader who has no emotional equity in its success.

It’s right (and largely involuntary) that the DWP is going slowly in rolling out UC. This way chaos is avoided.

But to handle millions of claims, the processing of UC transactions and payments needs to be a fully automated process. The DWP is working on that – what Iain Duncan Smith calls an “enhanced digital service”.  Nobody seems to know much about it. IDS says it is going to be tested later this year.

Uncertainty

Now into its fourth year of implementation, UC is still mired in uncertainty, despite IDS’s self-confident remarks at the Tory conference.

The facts are likely to emerge when the National Audit Office publishes its updated report which is expected before the end of this year. The DWP may already have drafted its press release saying the NAO report is outdated, which is part of the problem with UC and other big government IT-based programmes: they are more governed by politics than pragmatism.

 

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Fujitsu, Government IT, HP, IBM, Major Projects Authority, Politics, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Labour asks good questions on Universal Credit programme

Posted on 22/09/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Labour has a “Universal Credit Rescue Committee” whose membership includes a former Rolls Royce CIO Jonathan Mitchell.

Mitchell is quoted in Government Computing as saying that it would be irresponsible for a Labour government to continue spending large amounts of money on Universal Credit without getting answers to important questions such as:

  • Is there a comprehensive business case – one that clearly outlines the expected benefits, demonstrating that the Universal Credit project is viable?
  • Is the business case agreed by all stakeholders?
  • Is there clarity about what needs to be achieved?
  • Is there a stable specification explaining exactly how the new processes will work and how they will be automated?
  • Is the project being managed and staffed by people and organisations with appropriate levels of experience, track-record and expertise, all of whom are capable of delivering the benefits of the project and ensuring safe roll-out in a timely manner?
  • Is the project fully under control?
  • Can it absorb the changes demanded by a new incoming Government? If not, can the project be brought under control at an acceptable cost with respect to the business case, through a re-planning exercise?
  • Once such a re-planning exercise is completed, are we convinced that it was successful and that the project will now proceed to a satisfactory completion in a controlled fashion?
  • Are there appropriate “control gates” in place to ensure that all aspects of each phase of the plan are fully completed (and that projected costs to completion preserve the business case) before allowing the project to move safely onto each next stage?

Mitchell said, “Universal Credit is one of those applications that might look straightforward when you first look at it, but this is most definitely not the case. I believe there are significant process and technical challenges to overcome.”

Comment

Good questions, most of which the Department for Work and Pensions is unlikely to be able to answer satisfactorily today.

The Treasury still hasn’t approved the full business case, which is odd for a project that started in earnest more than three years ago.

It’s hard to see, given the rate of progress, the amount of work being completed manually, the lack of integration with legacy systems, the complexity of changes of behaviour required, the reliance on other parties such as local authorities, the inflexibility of some supplier contracts, regularly changing project leadership, the variable performance of HMRC’s RTI systems, and the DWP’s poor history of success on big IT-related projects, how the UC programme will be completed before 2020 whoever wins the next election.

Labour committee outlines Universal Credit “rescue” strategy – Government Computing

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, public sector, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

Secrecy is one reason gov’t IT-based projects fail says MP

Posted on 25/07/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The BBC, in an article on its website about Fujitsu’s legal dispute with the Department of Health, quotes Richard Bacon MP who, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, has asked countless civil servants about why their department’s IT-based change projects have not met expectations.

Bacon is co-author of a book on government failures, Conundrum, which has a chapter on the National Programme for IT [NPfIT] in the NHS.

In the BBC article Bacon is quoted as saying that the culture of secrecy surrounding IT-based projects is one of the main reasons they keep going so badly – and expensively – wrong.

He says it has been obvious to experts from an early stage that the NPfIT, which was launched by Tony Blair’s government, would be a “train wreck” because the contracts were signed “in an enormous hurry” and contained confidentiality clauses preventing contractors from speaking to the press.

He says the urge to cover things up means that “we never learn from our mistakes because there is learning curve, but when things go wrong with IT the response is to keep it quiet”.

Citing the example of air accident investigations, which are normally conducted in a spirit of openness so lessons can be learned, he says “It is the complete opposite in IT projects, where everyone keeps their heads down and goes hugger-mugger.”

Fujitsu versus Department of Health

Fujitsu sued the Department of Health for £700m after the company was ejected six years early [2008] from a 10-year £896m NPfIT contract signed in January 2004.  The case went to arbitration – and is still in arbitration, largely over the amount the government may be ordered to pay Fujitsu.  Bacon says the amount of the settlement will have to be disclosed.

“I don’t know how the government can honestly keep this number quiet. It simply cannot do it. It is not possible or sensible to keep it quiet when you are spending this much money,” says Bacon.

The BBC article quotes excerpts from a Campaign4Change blog

Government ‘loses £700m NHS IT dispute with Fujitsu’ – BBC News

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, Department of Health, e-health, excessive secrecy, Fujitsu, Government IT, health, health records, IT-related failures, NHS, npfit, public sector, public services, supplier relationships