Category Archives: DWP

Is the Post Office to blame for Horizon IT dispute – or is it really ministers and civil servants?

Posted on 21/11/2019 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

How does a public institution behave when it has little effective oversight?

Mr Justice Peter Fraser is expected to rule shortly on a critical question that is at the heart of a long-running IT dispute between the Post Office and hundreds of former sub-postmasters.

His ruling may answer the question of whether the Post Office’s “Horizon” IT or sub-postmasters were likely to have been to blame for unexplained shortfalls of sometimes tens of thousands of pounds shown on local branch systems.

If the Post Office loses the High Court case, it could end up paying damages of hundreds of millions of pounds – which could fall to the taxpayer. The state owns 100% of the Post Office. Public funding of the Post Office amounted to £2bn between 2010 and 2017 and a further funding package of £370m is agreed until 2021. Any damages could be on top of this.

If the case ends up with the Post Office’s needing a taxpayer bail-out, this would raise some obvious questions:

  1. Who in government and the civil service provided oversight when the Post Office decided controversially to trust what was shown on a proprietary computer system rather than the word of hundreds of local branch sub-postmasters?
  2. Who in government and the civil service endorsed the Post Office’s decision to defend litigation that could end up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds?
  3. Who in government and civil service endorsed the decision to continue defending the litigation – and indeed deepening it – despite excoriating criticisms of the Post Office by two High Court judges?

It is still possible for the Post Office to win the case in which event its actions and decisions may be vindicated. But it has lost every interim ruling so far, in a case which has lasted two years to date.

When asked about their oversight of the Post Office, ministers have distanced themselves.

In August 2019, the then Minister for Postal Services, Kelly Tolhurst, said in a letter that Post Office Limited “operates as an independent, commercial business and the matters encompassed by this litigation fall under its operational responsibility”.

But thanks to extensive research by Eleanor Shaikh, a reader of the blog of journalist Nick Wallis, who is crowd-funded to cover the High Court hearings, we know that civil servants reporting to ministers have extensive responsibilities for oversight of the Post Office.

The state categorises the Post Office as an “Arm’s Length Body”]. Shaikh learned that the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy is required to “exercise meaningful and commensurate oversight of ALB [Arm’s Length Body] strategy, financial management, performance and risk management”.

A 2014 Civil Service document, Introduction to Sponsorship, adds that,

“the Secretary of State is ultimately accountable to Parliament for the overall effectiveness and efficiency of each ALB of which their department is responsible.”

It’s not only about oversight. Civil servants are,

“… expected to play an active role in the governance, financial management, risk management and performance monitoring of ALBs and are responsible for managing the relationship with an ALB on behalf of the Minister and the AO [accounting officer].”

Wallis reports in full on Shaikh’s findings.

How effective has civil service oversight been so far?

The judge’s comments in his ruling of March 2019, which the Post Office is seeking leave to appeal, suggest that there has been little effective civil service challenge to Post Office’s decisions. Indeed, one of the judge’s findings was that,

“The Post Office appears, at least at times, to conduct itself as though it is answerable only to itself.”

The judge also criticised,

  • untrue statements by the Post Office
  • threatening and oppressive behaviour by the Post Office.
  • the Post Office’s appearing “determined to make this litigation, and therefore resolution of this intractable dispute, as difficult and expensive as it can”.
  • the Post Office house style for some senior management personnel giving evidence which was to “glide away from pertinent questions, or questions to which the witness realised a frank answer would not be helpful to the Post Office’s cause”.
  • a culture of secrecy and excessive confidentiality generally within the Post Office but particularly focused on Horizon
  • Post Office witnesses in general who have become “so entrenched over the years, that they appear absolutely convinced that there is simply nothing wrong with the Horizon system at all …”
  • attempts by the Post Office to prevent some evidence from emerging into the public domain by applying to have it struck out as irrelevant
  • attacks by the Post Office on the credibility of sub-postmasters whom the judge found credible as witnesses in the case.
  • some Post Office procedures that went from the sublime to the ridiculous,
  • some Post Office submissions that were “bold, pay no attention to the actual evidence, and seem to have their origin in a parallel world”.
  • the Post Office’s asking a sub-postmistress to extend the local branch’s opening hours a day after her husband, who ran the branch, had died.

Of the Post Office’s most senior witness, a director, the judge described her as highly intelligent. She on occasions gave clear and cogent evidence. She helped to improve the Horizon system and had provided some useful evidence.

But in describing parts of her evidence he also referred to a “degree of obstinacy”, extraordinarily partisan”, “sought to obfuscate matters…”, “disingenuous” and a “disregard for factual accuracy”. He said at one point in his ruling, “I find that she was simply trying to mislead me.”

He concluded, “I find that it is necessary to scrutinise everything she said as a witness, both in her witness statement and in cross-examination, and treat it with the very greatest of caution in all respects.”

Comment

If the judge is right in his criticisms – and it is too early in the appeals process to say conclusively that he is right – is he simply describing the behaviour of a state institution that is, in essence, without higher control?

Civil servants from, among others, the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, the Ministry of Defence, Home Office and DEFRA appear regularly before the Public Accounts Committee and are the subject of value-for-money investigations by the National Audit Office. The Post Office has little of this scrutiny.

A large private company has many shareholders and the threat of going bust to keep it in check. But the Post Office is too big and important to the community to be allowed to fail.

When Boeing’s aircraft technology is the subject of independent, detailed and widespread criticism, its planes are grounded indefinitely while regulators investigate.

The Post Office has no fear of any regulators shutting down its Horizon system.

In an accountability vacuum, how can a state institution be expected to behave?

Individuals within a large organisation will have a sense of right and wrong. But collectively, can people within state institutions be expected to do much more than meet the requirements of the culture and law as they perceive it?

That is why effective and rigorous oversight of state institutions is critical, if only to protect the interests of taxpayers.

When the widow of a sub-postmaster who’d died the previous day took over his branch, the Post Office asked her to extend the opening hours, which seems to have surprised the judge. Wouldn’t that behaviour surprise anyone?

When shortfalls were shown on the computer system, how easy was it for the Post Office to demand that sub-postmasters made good the losses sometimes without full investigations? It was easier, perhaps, without effective oversight.

Can the Post Office be held entirely responsible for the Horizon IT debacle? It is a state institution. Responsibility for the debacle lies, therefore, with ministers and civil servants, whatever the outcome of the Horizon dispute.

Nick Wallis’ trial coverage including Eleanor Shaikh’s research on the oversight that ought to be provided by ministers and the civil service.

Computer Weekly’s useful summary of the latest position

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Department for Business, DWP, Energy and Industrial Strategy - BEIS, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, HMRC, Home Office, Horizon system, National Audit Office, Post Office IT

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Are you happy paying to help with problem Capita contract?

Posted on 01/05/2018 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

This week, as Barnet residents go to the polls, how many will be influenced by the continuing national and local media coverage of the council’s mass outsourcing deal with Capita?

Barnet’s Capita contracts are a local election issue. The council’s conservatives and Capita say the outsourcing contracts have saved money and are performing as expected “in many areas”.

But a former local Tory councillor Sury Khatri , who has been deselected after criticising the Capita contract, described the deal as “disastrous”. Barnet has paid Capita £327m since the deals were signed in 2013. Capita runs council services that range from cemeteries to IT.

Councillor Khatri said,  “My time at the council has been overshadowed by the disastrous Capita contract that is falling apart at the seams. Four years on, issues still keep rolling out of the woodwork. This contract represents poor value for money, and the residents are being fleeced.”

Another critic of the Capita contracts is John Dix who blogs as “Mr Reasonable” and is one of several highly respected local bloggers. He has been studying the council’s accounts for some years. He runs a small business and is comfortable with accounts and balance sheets.

He writes,

“I have no problem with outsourcing so long as it is being done for the right reasons. Typically this is where it involves very specialist, non core activities where technical expertise may be difficult to secure and retain in house.

“In Barnet’s case this outsourcing programme covered so many services which were core to the running of the council and which in 2010 were rated as 4 star (good). Barnet has been an experiment in mass outsourcing and almost five years in, it appears to be a failure.

“Last night’s [19 April 2018] audit committee was a litany of service problems, system failures, lack of controls, under performance, a major fraud. Internal audit saying issues were a problem, Capita saying they weren’t.”

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has entered the debate. He has applauded Barnet’s Unison branch for its enduring, close scrutiny of the Capita contracts. Unison this week published a report on the deal.

Capita’s share price rises

Earlier this month the national press reported extensively on concerns that Capita would follow Carillion into liquidation.

Since the bad publicity, the company’s announcement of a pre-tax loss of £535m, up from £90m the previous year, £1.2bn of debt and a rights issue to raise £662m after fees by selling new shares at a discount, Capita’s share price has risen steadily, from a low a month ago of about 130p to about 191 yesterday.

Could it be that investors sense that Capita’s long-term future is secure: the company has a wide range of complex and impenetrable public sector contracts where history shows that public sector clients – ruling politicians and officials – will defend Capita more enthusiastically than Capita itself, whatever the facts?

A list of some of Capita’s problem contracts is below the comment.

Comment

Carillion, a facilities management and construction company, collapsed in part because the effects of its failures were usually obvious: it was desperately short of money and new roads and hospitals were left unfinished.

When IT-based outsourcing deals go wrong, the effects are usually more nuanced. Losses can be hidden in balance sheets that can be interpreted in different ways; and when clients’ employees go unpaid, or the army’s Defence Recruiting System has glitches or medical records are lost, the problems will almost always be officially described as teething even if, as in Capita’s NHS contracts, they last for years.

It is spin that rules and protects IT outsourcing contracts in the public sector. Spin hides what’s really going on. It is as integral as projected savings and key performance indicators.

When Somerset County Council signed a mass outsourcing deal with IBM, its ruling councillors boasted of huge savings. When the deal went wrong and was ended early after a legal dispute with IBM the council announced that bringing the deal in-house would bring large savings: savings either way. Liverpool council said the same thing when it outsourced to BT – setting up a joint venture called Liverpool Direct – and brought services back-in house: savings each time.

Barnet Council is still claiming savings while the council’s auditors are struggling to find them.

Spinmeisters know there is rarely any such thing as a failed public sector IT contract: the worst failures are simply in transition from failure to success. Barnet’s council taxpayers will never know the full truth, whoever is in power.

Even when a council goes bust, the truth is disputed. Critics of spending at Northamptonshire County Council, which has gone bust, blame secretive and dysfunctional management. Officials, ruling councillors and even the National Audit Office blame underfunding.

In March The Times reported that Northamptonshire had paid almost £1m to a consultancy owned by its former chief executive. It also reported that the council’s former director of people, transformation and transactions for services, was re-hired on a one-year contract that made her company £185,000 within days of being made redundant in 2016.  Her firm was awarded a £650-a-day IT contract that was not advertised.

In the same month, the National Audit Office put Northamptonshire’s difficulties down to underfunding. It conceded that the “precise causes of Northamptonshire’s financial difficulties are not as yet clear”.

Perhaps it’s only investors in Capita who will really know the truth: that the full truth on complex public sector contracts in which IT is central will rarely, if ever, emerge; and although Capita has internal accountability for failures – bonuses, the share price and jobs can be affected – there is no reason for anyone in the public sector to fear failure. No jobs are ever affected. Why not sign a few more big outsourcing deals, for good or ill?

Thank you to FOI campaigners David Orr and Andrew Rowson for information that helped me write this post.

Some of Capita’s problem contracts

There is no definitive list of Capita’s problem contracts. Indeed the Institute for Government’s Associate Director Nick Davies says that poor quality of contract data means the government “doesn’t have a clear picture of who it is buying from and what it is buying”. Here, nevertheless, is a list of some of Capita’s problem contracts in the public sector:

Barnet Council

A Capita spokesperson said: “The partnership between Capita and Barnet Council is performing as expected in many areas. We continue to work closely with the council to make service enhancements as required.”

Birmingham City Council

“The new deal will deliver a mix of services currently provided under the joint venture, plus project based work aimed at providing extra savings, with forecasts of £10 million of savings in the current financial year and £43 million by 2020-21.”

West Sussex County Council

A spokesman said, “Whatever your concerns and small hiccups along the way, I believe this contract has been and will continue to be of great benefit to this county council.”

Hounslow Council

A Capita spokesperson said: “We are working closely with the London Borough of Hounslow to ensure a smooth transition of the pensions administration service to a new provider.”

Breckland Council

“They concluded that planning officers, working for outsourcing company Capita, had misinterpreted a policy, known as DC11, which dictates the amount of outdoor playing space required for a development..”

Army

Mark Francois, a Conservative former defence minister,  said Capita was known “universally in the army as Crapita”. But Capita said in a statement,

“Capita is trusted by multiple private and public clients to deliver technology-led customer and business process services, as demonstrated by recent wins and contract extensions from clients including British Gas, Royal Mail, BBC, TfL Networks, M&S and VW.”

Electronic tagging

(but it’s alright now)

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “As the National Audit Office makes clear, there were challenges in the delivery of the electronic monitoring programme between 2010 and 2015…

“As a direct result, we fundamentally changed our approach in 2015, expanding and strengthening our commercial teams and bringing responsibility for oversight of the programme in-house.

“We are now in a strong position to continue improving confidence in the new service and providing better value for money for the taxpayer.”

Disability benefits

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said, “Assessments work for the majority of people, with 83 per cent of ESA claimants and 76 per cent of PIP claimants telling us that they’re happy with their overall experience…”

Miners

A Capita spokesperson said: “This issue has been resolved and all members affected will shortly receive letters to advise that they do not need to take any action. We sincerely apologise for any concern and inconvenience this has caused.”

NHS

Opticians

Dentists

BBC licence fee

Windrush

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Posted in Barnet Council, Birmingham City Council, Campaign4Change, Capita, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, IBM, Institute for Government, local democracy, local government, managing outsourced services, National Audit Office, NHS, NHS England, operational issues, outsourcing, PCSE, Politics

Has goodnewspeak gone too far when a mother whose allowance was blocked dies?

Posted on 09/11/2017 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

Yesterday’s post on goodnewspeak mentioned that officials at the Department for Work and Pensions had been celebrating the rollout of Universal Credit, not obviously mindful of the problems and delays in payments and the fact that some failed claimants had been on the brink of suicide.

Now Metro has reported that a 38 year-old mother of four who had mental health problems and an eating disorder died cold and alone after her benefits were cut because she was too ill to attend an Employment Support Allowance meeting.

Elaine Morrall was found dead in her home wearing a coat and scarf, her family said.  She’d had her benefits stopped because she failed to attend a meeting while in a hospital intensive care unit, they said.

Her family say wouldn’t put her heating on, because of the cost, until her children arrived home from school. The dead woman’s mother Linda Morrall blamed the Department of Work and Pensions for her death.

In an open letter on Facebook, Linda Morrall wrote: [My daughter] died on the afternoon of 2 November 2017 at home on her own … in the cold with her coat & scarf on…”

He daughter, she said, was in and out of intensive care but was “deemed not ill enough for ESA”. She had her benefits stopped numerous times, which in turn stopped her housing benefit. Being in intensive care was deemed insufficient reason for failing to attend a Universal Credit interview, said Linda Morrall.

“I went to the job centre to inform them that she couldn’t attend. But benefits stopped again.” Her daughter was due to go to court on Monday. “Is being dead now enough reason [not to attend court],” said Linda Morrall.  “How many people have got to die before this government realises they are killing vulnerable people?”

A spokesperson for the DWP told Metro, ‘Our thoughts are with Ms Morrall’s family at this difficult time. We understand that people can’t always attend appointments, which is why we will re-arrange alternative times.

“Assessment decisions are made with consideration of all the information provided, including supporting evidence from a GP or medical specialist.

“Anyone who disagrees with a decision can appeal.”

Metro article

Goodnewspeak and its Orwellian dark side

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, goodnewspeak, Universal Credit

Goodnewspeak and its Orwellian dark side

Posted on 08/11/2017 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

Orwell made no mention of goodnewspeak. But maybe today it’s an increasingly popular descendant of  Newspeak – a language devised by Orwell to show how the State could use words and phrases to limit thought.

This week, as a statue of Orwell was unveiled outside the BBC, a local council in Sussex made an announcement that was a fine example of goodnewspeak.

This was Horsham District Council’s way of not saying that it was scrapping weekly rubbish collections.

This was the benign side of goodnewspeak. The dark side is a growing acceptance in Whitehall, local authorities and the wider public sector that nothing negative can be thought of let alone expressed at work.

This suppression of negative thoughts means that the rollout of Universal Credit can be said officially to be going well and can be speeded up  despite the clamour from outsiders, including a former Prime Minister (John Major), for a rethink to consider the problems and delays.

[Labour MP Frank Field said last month that the DWP was withholding bad news on Universal Credit.]

It means that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy can continue to praise all aspects of its smart meters rollout while its officials keep silent on the fact that the obsolescent smart meters now being installed do not work properly when the householder switches supplier.

It means that council employees can think only good about their major IT suppliers – and trust them with the council’s finances as at Barnet council.

[Nobody at Barnet council has pointed out the potential for a conflict of interest in having outsourcing supplier Capita reporting on the council’s finances while having a financial interest in those finances. It took a local blogger Mr Reasonable to make the point.]

Goodnewspeak can also mean that public servants do their best, within the law, to avoid outside scrutiny that could otherwise lead to criticism, as at Lambeth council.

Last month Private Eye reported the results of a “People’s Audit” in which local residents asked questions and scrutinised the authority’s accounts. The audit found that:

 – The number of managers earning between £50,000 and £150,000 has increased by 88, at a cost of more than £5.5m year.
-Spending on Lambeth’s new town hall has gone from a projected £50m to £140m.
– The council “invested” a total of £57,000 on its public libraries last year – closing three of them – while spending £13m on corporate office accommodation.
-£10.3m was spent making people redundant.

These disclosures (and there are many more of them) raise the question of what Lambeth is doing to dispel the impression that it manages public money badly and that its decisions could be routine in the world of local authorities.

Lambeth council’s reaction to the audit was to denounce it and issue its own goodnewspeak statement; and it is considering a proposal to lobby the government to allow councils to ban such People’s Audits in future.

Lambeth’s website, incidentally, is entitled “Love Lambeth”. Which, perhaps, shows that its leaders have, at least, a deep sense of irony.

Whitehall

The following lists of announcements on the websites of the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Transport are examples of how goodnewspeak manifests itself in Whitehall:

And the Department of Transport’s website:

Ministry of Truth

Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four of the Ministry of Truth whose expertise was lying, the Ministry of Peace which organised wars and the Ministry of Plenty which rationed food.

Some of the Party’s slogans were:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

And Orwell, whose wife worked at the Ministry of Information at Senate House, London (Orwell’s model for the Ministry of Truth) said,

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

Comment

Of course goodnewspeak doesn’t exist as a policy anywhere. But its practice is all-pervasive in the public sector. And it seems to change the way people think when they’re at work.

It blocks out any view other than the official line.

In Nineteen Eight-four, Orwell created “Newspeak” as a language of the Party to coerce the public to shape their thoughts around the State’s beliefs. Its much-reduced vocabulary stopped people conceiving of any other point of view.

Not using Newspeak was a thoughtcrime. The Party advocated Duckspeak – to speak without thinking – literally quack like a duck.

Has this already happened in a minor way at Barnet? A council document on the benefits of its outsourcing policies was peppered with abstractions that could have been constructed by software-driven random-phrase generators:

“Ahead of the game”
“Top to bottom organisational restructure”
“Flexibility to meet future challenges whilst ensuring we provide excellent services to residents today.”
“Root of our success”
“New solutions to complex problems”
“Pioneering partnerships”
“Investing for the future”
“Protect what makes Barnet such a great place to live”
“Increasing resident satisfaction”
“Paying dividends”
“Prepared for the future”
“Great strides”
“A radical, ‘whole place’ approach to designing and providing services”
“We have not been backwards in coming forwards”
“Pursuing alternatives to the norm”
“Vision into reality”
“Frame our future strategic direction”
“Future Shape”
“Drivers for change”
“Genuine innovation in Local Government”
“Bold in its decision making”
“Forward looking change strategy”
“A new relationship with citizens”
“A one public sector approach”
“A relentless drive for efficiency”
“Focus on stimulating the market”
“Best in class’ range of tradable services to win and deliver work for other authorities.”
‘Form follows function’.
“Clear roles and responsibilities”
“An internal escalation model”
“Renewed focus on improving engagement”
“Increasing transparency, and developing trust”
“Connect with people and build relationships of trust”
“A steep demand line to climb”

Dark side

One worrying consequence is that Whitehall civil servants and public servants and ruling councillors at, say Barnet and Somerset councils (and even at Cornwall), made the assumption that their IT suppliers shared the public sector’s goodnewspeak philosophy.

But suppliers are commercially savvy. They don’t exist purely to serve the public. They have to make a profit or they risk insolvency.

For years, goodnewspeak at Somerset County Council led to officers and councillors regularly praising the successes of a joint venture with IBM while covering up the problems and losses, in part by routine refusals of FOI requests.

Goodnewspeak at Liverpool Council meant that its officials had nothing but praise for BT when they ended a joint venture in 2015. They said that ending the joint venture would save £30m. But the joint venture itself was supposed to have saved tens of millions.

Somerset County Council made a similar good news announcement when it terminated its joint venture Southwest One with IBM.

Such announcements are consistent with Newspeak’s “Doublethink” – the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.

DWP

Outsiders can find goodnewspeak shocking. The Daily Mirror reported on how the DWP celebrated the rollout of Universal Credit at Hove, Sussex, with a cake. Were managers mindful of the fact that some failed UC claimants have been driven to the brink of suicide?

Disillusioned

Francis Maude, when minister for the Cabinet Office, was almost universally disliked in the civil service. He was an outsider who did not accept the Whitehall culture.  Even though he believed the UK had the best civil service in the world, he did not always show it.

He tried to reduce Whitehall spending on IT projects and programmes that could not be justified. He spoke an IT supplier oligopoly.

Now he has left government, most of his civil service reforms (apart from the Government Digital Service) have settled back to how they were before he arrived in 2010.

In a speech last month, Maude spoke of a “distressing” disillusionment with the civil service culture. He said:

“Based on my experience as a Minister in the eighties and early nineties my expectations (of the civil service) were high. And the disillusionment was steep and distressing.

“It remains my view that we have some of the  very best civil servants in the world … But the Civil Service as an institution is deeply flawed, and in urgent need of radical reform.

” And it is civil servants themselves, especially the younger ones, who are most frustrated by the Service and its culture and practices.”

World’s best civil service

He added that, as the new minister responsible for the civil service, every draft speech or article presented to him started: ‘The British Civil Service is the best in the world.’

But complaints by ministers in all parties about the lack of institutional capability, inefficiency and failed implementation were legion, he said.

“When we queried the evidential basis for this assertion, it turned out that the only relevant assessment was a World Bank ranking for ‘government effectiveness’, in which the UK ranked number 16.”

Speaking the unsaid

Perhaps more than any former minister, Maude has expertly summarised the civil service culture but in a way that suggests it’s unredeemable.

“I and others have observed that all too often the first reaction of the Civil Service when something wrong is discovered is either to cover it up or to find a scapegoat, often someone who is not a career civil servant and who is considered dispensable.
“There seems to be an absolute determination to avoid any evidence that the permanent Civil Service is capable of failure.
“Another indicator is that if a Minister decides that a Civil Service leader is not equipped for his or her task, this has to be dressed up as “a breakdown in the relationship”, with the unspoken suggestion that this is at least as much the fault of the Minister as of the civil servant.
“It can never be admitted that the mandarin was inadequate in any way.
“When I suggested that there might be room for improvement, the distinguished former Civil Service Head, Lord Butler, accused me of a failure of leadership. Actually the leadership failure is to pretend that all is well when no one, even civil servants themselves, really believes that.

The good news

All is not lost – thanks to a vibrant and investigative local press in some areas and resident auditors such as Mr Reasonable, Mrs Angry, David Orr, Andrew Rowson and the people’s auditors in Lambeth.

Along with the National Audit Office and some MPs, these resident auditors are the only effective check on goodnewspeak. They are reminder to complacent officialdom that it cannot always hide behind its barrier of unaccountability.

Long may these dogged protectors of the public interest continue to highlight financial mismanagement, excess and self-indulgent,wasteful decisions.

Earlier this year Nineteen Eight-Four hit the No 1 spot in Amazon’s book sales chart.

Perhaps copies were being scooped up by shortlisted candidates for top public sector jobs as vital homework before falling in with the culture at their interviews.

**

Outside the BBC, Orwell’s new statute is inscribed with a quotation from a proposed preface to Animal Farm that was never used:

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Thank you for David Orr, one of the dogged local resident auditors referred to above, for drawing my attention to some of the articles mentioned in this post.

DWP good news announcements

Newspeak

Whitewashing history in education

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, GDS, Government IT, IBM, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, Institute for Government, IT-enabled projects and waste, managing outsourced services, National Audit Office, outsourcing, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

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A proposed Bill and charter that could change the face of Whitehall IT and save billions

Posted on 02/11/2017 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

A government-commissioned review yesterday backed a Bill that could, if enacted and applied to Whitehall generally, prevent billions of pounds being lost on wasteful projects.

The Public Authority Accountability Bill – known informally as the Hillsborough Law – would establish an offence of intentionally or recklessly misleading the public, media or court proceedings.

It would also impose a legal requirement on public authorities to act with candour, transparency and frankness when things go wrong.

Although the Bill was a reaction, in part, to the cover up by public authorities of their failings in the light of Hillsborough, it could, if enacted, deter public authorities from covering up failings generally – including on major IT programmes.

For decades public authorities have had the freedom – unrestricted by any legislation – to cover up failures and issue misleading statements to the public, Parliament and the media.

In the IT sphere, early problems with the Universal Credit IT programme were kept secret and misleadingly positive statements issued. The National Audit Office later criticised a “good news” culture on the Universal Credit programme.

And still the DWP is fighting to block the disclosure of five project assessment reviews that were carried out on the Universal Credit IT programme between 2012 and 2015.

It could be argued that billions of pounds lost on the NPfIT – the National Programme for IT in the NHS – would have been avoided if the Department of Health had been open and candid at the start of the programme about the programme’s impractically ambitious aims, timescales and budgets.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is currently keeping secret its progress reports on the £111bn smart meters rollout – which independent experts have said is a failing programme.  The department routinely issues positive statements to the media on the robust state of the programme.

The Public Authority Accountability Bill was drafted by lawyers who had been involved with representing bereaved Hillsborough families. It is aimed mainly at government inquiries, court proceedings and investigations into lapses of public services.

But it would also enshrine into law a duty on public authorities, public servants, officials and others to act within their powers with “transparency, candour and frankness”.

Lawyers who drafted the Bill refer on their website to “institutional defensiveness and a culture of denial” when things go wrong. They say,

“In 2017 we expect public authorities and individuals acting as public servants to be truthful and act with candour. Unfortunately, repeated examples have shown us that this is not generally the case.

“Instead of acting in the public interest by telling the truth, public authorities have tended to according to narrow organisational and individual motives by trying to cover up faults and deny responsibility …”

Backing for the Bill came yesterday from a 117-page report on the Hillsborough disaster by Bishop James Jones. The government commissioned him to produce a report on the experiences of the Hillsborough families so that their “perspective is not lost”.

Jones’ impressive report refers to institutions that “closed ranks, refused to disclose information, used public money to defend its interests and acted in a way that was both intimidating and oppressive”

His report refers to public bodies in general when it points to a “cultural condition” and “mindset” that features an “instinctive prioritisation of the reputation of an organisation over the citizen’s right to expect people to be held to account for their actions”. This, says the report, “represents a barrier to real accountability”.

It adds,

“As a cultural condition, this mindset is not automatically changed, still less dislodged, by changes in policies or processes. What is needed is a change in attitude, culture, heart and mind.”

The report urges leaders of “all public bodies” to make a commitment to cultural change by publicly signing a new charter.

The charter commits public bodies to:

  •  Place the public interest above its own reputation.
  • Approach forms of scrutiny with candour, in an open, honest and transparent way, making full disclosure of relevant documents, material and facts.
  • Learn from the findings of external scrutiny and from past mistakes.
  • Avoid seeking to defend the indefensible or to dismiss or disparage those who may have suffered where the organisation has fallen short.
  • When falling short, apologise straightforwardly and genuinely.
  • Not knowingly mislead the public or the media.

The report says that institutional defensiveness and a culture of denial are “endemic amongst public institutions as has been demonstrated not only by the Hillsborough cover up but countless other examples.”

Stuart Hamilton, son of Roy Hamilton who died at Hillsborough, is quoted in the report as saying,

“Police, officials and civil servants should have a duty of revealing the full facts and not merely selecting some truths to reveal but not others. Not lying or not misleading is simply not good enough. Without this, future disasters cannot be averted and appropriate policies and procedures cannot be developed to protect society.

“Such selective revealing of information also results in the delay of justice to the point where it cannot be served”.

He added,

“I believe that without a change not only in the law but also in the mindset of the public authorities (which a law can encourage) then very little exists to stop the post-event actions happening again.”

IT-enabled projects

Whitehall departments and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority publish their own narratives on the progress on major IT-enabled projects and programmes such as Universal Credit and smart meters.

But their source reports aren’t published.

Early disclosure of failings could have prevented hundreds of millions of pounds being lost on FireControl project, BBC’s Digital Media Initiative, the Home Office Raytheon e-borders and C-Nomis national offender management information projects and the Rural Payments Agency’s CAP delivery programme (which, alone, contributed to EU penalties of about £600m).

Comment:

Yesterday’s beautifully-crafted report into the Hillsborough disaster – entitled “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power” – is published on the Gov.uk website.

It has nothing to do with IT-enabled projects and programmes. But, in an unintentional way, it sums up a public sector culture that has afflicted nearly every Whitehall IT-based project failure in the last 25 years.

A culture of denial is not merely prevalent today; it is pervasive. All Whitehall departments keep quiet about reports on their failings. It is “normal” for departments to issue misleadingly positive statements to the media about progress on their programmes.

The statements are not lies. They deploy facts selectively, in a way that covers up failings. That’s the Whitehall culture. That’s what departments are expected to do.

According to Bishop Jones’ Hillsborough report, one senior policeman told bereaved families that he was not obliged to reveal the contents of his reports. He could bury them in his garden if he wished.

It’s the same with government departments. There is no legal duty to keep programme reports, still less any requirement to publish them.

If Bishop Jones’ charter is signed by leaders of public authorities including government departments, and Andy Burnham’s Bill becomes law,  the requirement for candour and transparency could mean that IT programme progress reports are made available routinely.

If this happened – a big if – senior public officials would have to think twice before risking billions of pounds on a scheme that held out the prospect of being fun to work on but which they knew had little chance of success within the proposed timescales, scope and budget.

It’s largely because of in-built secrecy that the impossibly impractical NPfIT was allowed to get underway. Billions of pounds was wasted.

Some may say that the last thing ministers and their permanent secretaries will want is the public, media and MPs being able to scrutinise what is really happening on, say, a new customs IT project to handle imports and exports after Brexit.

But the anger over the poor behaviour of public authorities after Hillsborough means that the Bill has an outside chance of eventually becoming law. Meanwhile public sector leaders could seriously consider signing Jones’ charter.

John Stuart Mill wrote in 1859 (On Liberty and The Subjection of Women) that the “only stimulus which can keep the ability of the [public] body itself up to a high standard is liability to the watchful criticism of equal ability outside the body”.

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, culture, DWP, excessive secrecy, Firecontrol, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, HMRC, Home Office, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, IT-enabled projects and waste, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, npfit, project management, public sector, Universal Credit

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Did Gauke and Couling break free today of DWP “good news” stance on Universal Credit rollout?

Posted on 18/10/2017 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Two leaders of the Universal Credit rollout, David Gauke and Neil Couling, faced MPs’ questioning this morning on problems with the rollout of Universal Credit.

They were asked, among other things, about excessive delays in payments and payments made on the basis of incorrect data.

Gauke and Couling appeared before the work and pensions committee. There is also a Commons debate today on the Universal Credit rollout.

Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, and civil servant Neil Couling, Director General of Universal Credit, are known to resent criticism of the Universal Credit programme or its rollout.

Couling tweeted last week, in response to academic Jonathan Portas:

But MPs on the work and pensions committee, particularly its chairman Frank Field,  are sensitive to the DWP’s “good news” culture.

Field is reported to have said he suspected that ministers had only pressed ahead with the accelerated rollout of universal credit this month because civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions had withheld the true scale of the problems.

Field said:

“Given everything we have heard, I was surprised that David Gauke opted to proceed with the accelerated rollout.

“I strongly suspect his decision, together with the failure to tell us anything, reflects a culture at the DWP of those most invested in universal credit not telling anyone, including their ministers, bad news.”

In its 2013 report “Universal Credit Early Progress“, the National Audit Office said,

“Both the Major Projects Authority [now the Infrastructure and Projects Authority] and a supplier-led review in mid-2012 identified problems with staff culture; including a ‘fortress mentality’ within the programme.

“The latter also reported there was a culture of ‘good news’ reporting that limited open discussion of risks and stifled challenge.”

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme heard this morning (18 October 2017) that a Universal Credit claimant who’d been the victim of “mistake after mistake” on his claim had threatened to take his own life and police had been called.

Update:

Gauke and Couling told the work and pensions committee this morning that the rollout may be paused in January 2018 as part of the department’s test and learn philosophy. They called it a “fire-break.  Couling said the rollout was paused in February 2016 for two months and “nobody noticed”.

He added that he was prepared to advise his minister, the Treasury and the prime minister to pause the rollout whenever the “evidence merits”..

Gauke said the advantages of the Universal Credit system were of such a “prize” that there was  cost of slowing down the rollout. “It can transform lives and it’s my determination is to deliver this successfully,” said Gauke.

Gauke and Couling told MPs that the rollout was working successfully. Neither expressed any criticisms of the programme or the rollout; and neither accepted the many criticisms of the committee’s MPs of the programme. At one point, Couling helpfully suggested to the committee some of the questions they “should” have been asking.

Where there were problems it was outside the DWP’s control – because of information supplied, or not supplied, by claimants or employers. The real-time information supplied to DWP by HM Revenue and Customs was only as good as the information provided to HMRC by employers.

Comment:

There’s universal support for the idea of Universal Credit. But there is almost universal criticism of the way it is being rolled out. Critics of the rollout also find it difficult to understand the DWP’s continuing refusal to accept that there are any serious problems.

For decades the DWP and its predecessor the Department of Social Security have been culturally unable to accept criticism of any of their big IT-based projects and programmes, even after a project was aborted.

One DWP director last year used the word “paranoid” when referring to her colleagues and their concerns about leaks of any bad news on the Universal Credit programme.

The DWP routinely declines FOI requests to publish its performance reviews on the Universal Credit programme. This lack of official information on the DWP’s performance leaves officials and ministers free to say that criticism of the programme is subjective or anecdotal.

Stephen Crabb was one of the few politicians who have ever made a difference to the DWP’s closed culture of secrecy and defensiveness. He ordered that internal reports on the risks and progress of the Universal Credit programme be released, against the advice of his civil servants. But Crabb didn’t stay long.

And the “good news” culture has returned, as unremitting as ever. Will any minister or civil servant be able to change the DWP’s “good news” culture?

Probably not.

The DWP’s permanent secretary Robert Devereux is retiring in January 2018, which will open the door to a successor who could try and change the department’s defensive culture.

It’s more likely, however, that Devereux’s replacement will be chosen on the basis that he or she will be a “safe pair of hands” which, in civil service terms, means a staunch defender of the department, its performance, all it is doing and the civil service in general.

However many independent voices call for a brake on the Universal Credit rollout, it seems inevitable that the DWP’s mandarins (and their pliant ministers) will carry on doing whatever they can justify to themselves.

The DWP hasn’t let humility or democratic openness get in the way before. Why would it give in to them now?

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, National Audit Office, operational issues, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Is Gauke being told the whole truth on Universal Credit’s rollout problems?

Posted on 03/10/2017 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

“It is working,” said Work and Pensions secretary David Gauke in Manchester yesterday. He was referring to a plan to accelerate the rollout of Universal Credit from this month.

“I can confirm that the rollout will continue, and to the planned timetable,” he added.

But are civil servants giving Gauke – and each other – full and unexpurgated briefings on the state of the Universal Credit programme?

Last year, in a high-level DWP document that government lawyers asked a judge not to release for publication, a DWP director referred to

“a lack of candour and honesty throughout the [Universal Credit] programme.”

Senior civil servants were not passing bad news on the state of the Universal Credit IT programme even to each other.

The DWP document was dated several years after Iain Duncan-Smith, the original force behind the introduction of Universal Credit, found his internal DWP briefings on the state of the UC programme so inadequate – a “good news” culture prevailed – that he brought in his own external advisers – what he called his “red team”.

In 2013 the National Audit Office, in a report on Universal Credit, said a “good news” mentality within the DWP prevented problems being discussed.

If problems could not be discussed they could not be addressed.

Last year the Institute for Government, in a report on Universal Credit, said IT employees at the DWP’s Warrington offices burst into tears with relief when at last permitted – by external advisers –  to talk openly about problems on the programme.

The Work and Pensions Committee has questioned why DWP ministers told MPs all was going well with the programme when it was well behind schedule and beset with problems.

The Public Accounts Committee called the DWP “evasive and selective” when it came to passing on information about the state of the Universal Credit programme.

Is there any reason to believe that the “fortress mentality” that the NAO referred to in its report on Universal Credit in 2013 is no longer present?

When David Gauke announced yesterday that he is continuing the rollout of Universal Credit, was he basing his decision on the full facts – or a “good news” version of it as told to him by the DWP?

Comment

David Gauke will have been given the “new minister” treatment when he joined the DWP on 11 June 2017.

“The first thing you’ve got to overcome when you walk through the door is that everybody is being almost far too nice to you,” said one of Gauke’s predecessors, Iain Duncan Smith. He was speaking in 2016 after leaving the DWP.

IDS was much criticised for assuring Parliament all was well with the Universal Credit IT programme when it wasn’t. But maybe he was right to point out that, when he joined the DWP, he found that the “biggest cultural barrier” was getting civil servants to be honest about difficulties.

“The Civil Service, legitimately, see it as their role to deliver on politicians’ policy demands and this can sometimes make them resistant to the idea that they should inform you early of problems,” said IDS.

It was IDS who told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme in December 2013, that Universal Credit was on track.

“It’s on budget. It’s on budget. Some 6.5million people will be on the system by the end of 2017.”

In fact, fewer than 700,000 people are claiming Universal Credit,  according to the latest DWP statistics.

DWP’s 30 years of a “good news” culture

In the past 30 years, it has been almost unknown for the DWP’s mandarins to concede that they have had serious problems with any of their major IT-based projects and programmes.

Perhaps it’s understandable, then, that Gauke apparently refuses to listen to critics and continues with the accelerated rollout of Universal Credit.

Would he have any idea that the Citizens Advice Bureau, in a carefully-researched report this year, said that some claimants are on the DWP’s “live service” (managed by large IT suppliers) which is “rarely updated” while other claimants are on a separate “full service” – what the CAB calls a “test and learn” system – which is still being designed?

Would Gauke know of the specific concerns of the all-party Work and Pensions Committee which wrote to the DWP earlier this year about Universal Credit decision makers being “overly reliant on information from [HMRC’s] Real-time information” even when there is “compelling evidence” that this data is  incorrect?

Would Gauke have any reason to believe those who refer to regular computer breakdowns and inaccurate and inconsistent data?

In the DWP’s own document that it did not want published, the DWP director said that, internally, “people stopped sharing comments which could be interpreted as criticism of the Programme, even when those comments would be useful as part of something like an MPA [Major Projects Authority] review.”

Many staff believed the official line was ‘everything is fine’. Nobody wanted to be seen to contradict it.

All this suggests that the DWP will carry on much as before, regardless of external criticism.  Individual ministers are accountable but they move on. Their jobs are temporary. It’s the permanent civil service that really matters when it comes to the implementation of Universal Credit.

But mandarins are neither elected nor effectively accountable.

NHS IT programme?

There may be some comparisons between Universal Credit and the NHS IT programme, the £10bn NPfIT.

A plethora of independent organisations and individuals expressed concerns about the NPfIT but minister after minister dismissed criticisms and continued the rollout. The NPfIT was dismantled many years later, in 2011. Billions was wasted.

Based on their civil service briefings, NPfIT ministers had no reason to believe the programme’s critics.

Universal Credit has more support than the NPfIT and the IT is generally welcomed, not shunned. But the Universal Credit rollout is clearly not in a position yet to be speeded up.

Whether Gauke will recognise this before his time is up at the DWP is another matter.

Like IDS, Stephen Crabb and Damian Green – all secretaries of state during the rollout of Universal Credit – Gauke will move on and his successor will get the “new minister” treatment.

And the cycle of ministerial “good news” briefings will continue.

Perhaps the DWP’s senior civil servants believe they’re protecting their secretaries of state.

As the civil servant Bernard Woolley said in “Yes Minister”

“If people don’t know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

Thank you to David Orr, an ardent campaigner for open government, who alerted me to Universal Credit developments that form part of this article.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, GDS, HMRC, Institute for Government, Legacy ICT, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, npfit, Universal Credit

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Whitehall renews facade of openness on major IT projects

Posted on 20/07/2017 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Headlines yesterday on the state of major government IT projects were mixed.

Government Computing said,

“IPA: Whitehall major projects show ‘slow and steady’ delivery improvement”

Computer Weekly said,

“Government IT projects improving – but several still in doubt”

The Register said,

“One-quarter of UK.gov IT projects at high risk of failure – Digital borders, digital tax and raft of MoJ projects singled out”

The headlines were prompted by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s annual report which was published yesterday.

The report listed the RAG – red/amber/green – status of each of 143 major projects in the government’s  £455bn major projects portfolio. Thirty-nine of these are ICT projects, worth a total of £18.6bn.

Publication of the projects’ red/amber/green status – called the “Delivery Confidence Assessment” – seemed a sign that the government was being open over the state of its major IT and other projects.

A reversal of decades of secrecy over the progress or otherwise of major IT projects and programmes?

In a foreword to the Infrastructure and Project Authority’s report, two ministers referred twice to the government’s commitment to openness and accountability.

MP Caroline Nokes, Cabinet Office minister, and MP Andrew Jones, a Treasury minister, said in their joint foreword,

“The government is also committed to transparency, and to being responsive and accountable to the public we serve.

“Accordingly, we have collected and published this data consistently over the past five years, enabling us to track the progress of projects on the GMPP [Government Major Projects Portfolio] over time.

“We will continue to be responsive and accountable to the public.”

But the report says nothing about the current state of major IT projects. The delivery confidence assessments are dated September 2016. They are 10 months out of date.

This is because senior civil servants – some of whom may be the “dinosaurs” that former minister Francis Maude referred to last month – have refused to allow politicians to publish the red/amber/gtreen status of major projects (including the Universal Credit programme and the smart meters rollout) unless the information, when published, is at least six months old.

[Perhaps one reason is to give departmental and agency press officers an opportunity to respond to journalists’ questions by saying that the red, red/amber of amber status of a particular major project is out of date.]

Amber – but why?

An amber rating means that “successful delivery appears feasible but significant issues already exist” though any problems “appear resolvable”.

In September 2016 the Universal Credit programme was at amber but we don’t know why. Neither the IPA or the Department for Work and Pensions mention any of the “issues”.

The £11bn smart meters rollout is also at amber and again we don’t know why. Neither the IPA nor the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy mention any of the “issues”. Permanent secretaries are allowed to keep under wraps the IPA’s reasons for the red/amber/green assessments.

Even FOI requests for basic project information have been refused.  Computer Weekly said,

“Costs for the Verify programme were also withheld from the IPA report, again citing exemptions under FOI.”

Comment

The senior civil servants who, in practice, set the rules for what the Infrastructure and Projects Authority can and cannot publish on major government projects and programmes are likely to be the “dinosaurs” that former Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude referred to last month.

Maude said that Whtehall reforms require that new ministers “face down the obstruction and prevarication from the self-interested dinosaur tendency in the mandarinate.”

Clearly that hasn’t happened yet.

The real information about Universal Credit’s progress and problems will come not from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority – or the Department for Work and Pensions – but from local authoritities, housing associations, landlord organistions, charities and consumer groups such the Citizen’s Advice Bureau (which has called for Universal Credit to be halted), the local press, the National Audit Office and Parliamentary committees such as the Public Accounts Committee and Work and Pensions Committee.

On the smart meter rollout, the real information will come not from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority – or the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – but from business journalist Paul Lewis, consumer advocate Martin Lewis, business organistions such as the Institute of Directors,  experts such as Nick Hunn, the Energy and Climate Change Committee and even energy companies such as EDF.

Much of this “real” information will almost certainly be denied by Whitehall press officers. They’ll be briefed by senior officials to give business journalists only selected “good news” facts on a project’s progress and costs.

All of this means that the Infrastructure and Projects Authority may have good advice for departments and agencies on how to avoid project failures – and its tact and deference will be welcomed by permanent secretaries – but it’s likely the IPA will be all but useless in providing early warnings to Parliament and the public of incipient project disasters.

Ministers and some senior civil servants talk regularly about the government’s commitment to openness and accountability. When it will start applying to major government IT projects?

 

UK.gov watchdog didn’t red flag any IT projects. And that alone should be a red flag to everyone

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, Energy and Industrial Strategy - BEIS, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, IT-enabled projects and waste, Major Projects Authority, Ministry of Justice, National Audit Office, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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Some officials “smuggle their often half-baked proposals past ministers” says Cabinet Office adviser who quits

Posted on 04/05/2017 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Jerry Fishenden has resigned from the Cabinet Office‘s Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group after nearly six years. First he was its chairman and more recently co-chairman.

The Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group comprises privacy and security experts who give the government independent analysis and guidance on personal data and privacy initiatives by departments, agencies and other public sector bodies. This includes GOV.UK Verify.

The group’s advice has had the citizens’ interests in mind. But the group might have been seen by some Whitehall officials as having an open and frank “outsiders” culture.

Francis Maude, then Cabinet Office minister, helped to set up the group but he left in 2015 and none of his replacements has had a comparable willingness to challenge the civil service culture.

Maude welcomed the help of outsiders in trying to change the civil service.  He tried to bring down the costs of Government IT and sought to stop unnecessary or failing projects and programmes. He also wanted to end the “oligopoly” of a handful of large IT suppliers. But Maude’s initiatives have had little continuing support among some Whitehall officials.

Fishenden said in a blog post this week that Maude had wanted the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group to be a “critical friend” – a canary that could detect and help fix policy and technology issues before they were too far down the policy / Bill process.

“The idea was to try to avoid a repeat of previous fiascos, such as the Identity Card Act, where Whitehall generalists found themselves notably out of their depth on complex technical issues and left Ministers to pick up the pieces.”

He added that “since Francis Maude’s departure, there has been only one meeting” with subsequent Cabinet Office ministers.

“Without such backing, those officials who find the group’s expert reviews and analyses “challenging” have found it easier to ignore, attempting instead to smuggle their often half-baked proposals past Ministers without the benefit of the group’s independent assistance…

“Let’s just hope that after the election the value of the group will be rediscovered and government will breathe life back into the canary. Doing so would help realise Francis Maude’s original purpose – and bring significant benefits to us all, whether inside or outside of government.”

Comment

One of the Privacy and Consumer Group’s strengths has been its independent view of Government IT-related initiatives  – which is probably the main reason it has been marginalised.

Fishenden’s departure is further confirmation that since Maude’s departure, the Cabinet Office – apart from the Government Digital Service – has settled back into the decades-old Whitehall culture of tinkering with the system while opposing radical change.

While Whitehall’s culture remains unreformable, central government will continue to lose the best IT people from the private sector. Some of these include the former Government Digital Service executive director Mike Bracken, Stephen Foreshew-Cain, who took over from Bracken, Janet Hughes, programme director of Verify,  Andy Beale, GDS’s chief technology officer, Paul Maltby, GDS’s director of data and former Whitehall chief information officers Joe Harley, Steve Lamey, Andy Nelson and Mark Dearnley.

The unfortunate thing is that a few powerful career civil servants, including some permanent secretaries, will be delighted to lose such outsiders.

Jerry Fishenden is simply the latest casualty of a civil service tradition that puts the needs of the department before those of the citizen.

It’s a culture that hasn’t changed for decades.

The canary that ceased to be – Jerry Fishenden’s blog on his departure

Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, GDS, Government digital Service, Government IT, HMRC, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, Institute for Government, private sector lessons for the public sector

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Does Universal Credit make a mockery of Whitehall business cases?

Posted on 27/04/2017 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Does Universal Credit make a mockery of this Treasury guidance on business cases?

It’s supposed to be mandatory for Whitehall departments to produce business cases. They show that big projects are “unequivocally” affordable and will work as planned.

But Computer Weekly said yesterday that the Department for Work and Pensions has not yet submitted a full business case for Universal Credit although the programme has been running for six years.

The result is that the Universal Credit IT programme may be the first big government computer project to have reached the original completion date before a full business case has been finalised.

Its absence suggests that the Department for Work and Pensions has not yet been able to produce a convincing case to the Treasury that the IT programme will either work or be affordable when it is due to roll out to millions of claimants.

The absence also raises a question of why the Department for Work and Pensions was able to award contracts and proceed with implementation without having to be accountable to Parliament for milestones, objectives, projected costs and benefits – all things that would have been recorded in the full business case.

If the DWP can proceed for years with project implementation without a full business case, does this mean that other Whitehall department need have no final structured plan to justify spending of billions on projects?

Will Universal Credit work?

By early March 2017, fewer than 500,000 people were on Universal Credit. On completion, the system will be expected to cope with seven million claimants.

Although the rollout of the so-called “digital” system – which can handle all types of claim online – is going well (subject to long delays in payments in some areas and extreme hardship for some), there are uncertainties about whether it will cope with millions of claimants.

Universal Credit campaigner John Slater has been unable to obtain any confirmation from the DWP on whether it is planning to complete the rollout by 2022 – five years later than originally scheduled.

Business cases present arguments that justify the spending of public money. They also provide a “clear audit trail for purposes of public accountability,” says Cabinet Office guidance on business cases.

But hundreds of millions has already been spent on Universal Credit IT, according to the National Audit Office.

Business cases are mandatory … sort of

The Treasury says that production of business cases is a

“mandatory part of planning a public sector spending proposal …”

Yesterday, however, Computer Weekly reported that,

“Amazingly, given the programme has been going since 2011, the full business case for Universal Credit has still not been submitted or signed off by the Treasury – that’s due to take place in September this year.”

The Treasury says that preparation of the Full Business Case is “completed following procurement of the scheme – but prior to contract signature – in most public sector organisations.”

But by March 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions had already spent about £303m on Universal Credit IT, mostly with Accenture (£125m), IBM (£75m), HP (49m) and BT (£16m), according to the National Audit Office.

Why a business case is important

The Treasury sums up the importance of business cases in its guidance to departments,

“… it is vital that capital spending decisions are taken on the basis of highly competent professionally developed spending proposals.

The business case provides a

“structured process for appraising, developing and planning to deliver best public value.”

The full business case, in particular, sets out the

  • contractual arrangements
  • funding and affordability
  • detailed management arrangements
  • plans for successful delivery and post evaluation.

In the absence of a full business case the DWP was able to start the Universal Credit IT programme with little structured control on costs. The National Audit Office found in 2013 that there was

  • Poorly managed and documented financial governance
  • Limited evidence that supplier invoices were properly checked before payments were made.
  • Inadequate challenge of purchase decisions
  • Insufficient information on value for money of contracts before ministers approved them
  • Insufficient challenge of suppliers’ cost changes
  • Over-reliance on performance information from suppliers that the Department for Work and Pensions didn’t validate.
  • No enforcement by the DWP of key parts of the supplier contracts

Comment

Officials at the Department for Work and Pensions have gone to the bank for money for a new business venture – the building of Universal Credit IT – and said in effect,

“We’ll let you have an outline business case that may change a few times and in a few years, perhaps on completion of the programme or thereabouts, we’ll provide a full business case. But we’d like the money now please.”

In response the bank – HM Treasury – has replied in effect,

“You’re supposed to supply a full business plan before we decide on whether to give you the money but we know how important Universal Credit is.

“We’ll tell you what: we’ll let you have a few tens of millions here and there and see how you get on.

“For the time being, without a full business case, you’re restricted to an IT spend of around £300m.

“In terms of the eligibility criteria for the money, you can let us know what this should be when you’re a few years down the road.

“We accept that you’ll be in a much better position to know why you should be given the money once you’ve spent it.”

Does “mandatory” mean anything when there is no sanction against non-compliance?

And when the DWP is able to embark on a multi-billion pound programme without submitting a full business case until after the original completion date (2017), what’s the point of a business case?

The fact that the DWP is six years into implementation of Universal Credit without a full business case suggests that departments make up the rules as they go along.

What if the Treasury rejects the Universal Credit business case when it’s eventually submitted?

Will the DWP wait another few years to submit a case, when an entirely new set of officials will be in place? By then, perhaps, the Universal Credit rollout will have finished (or been aborted) and nobody at that stage could be effectively held to account if the scheme didn’t work or money had been wasted.

If Whitehall routinely waits until an IT-based programme is finished before presenting a full business case for Treasury approval, there’s nothing the Treasury can do if it wants and needs the programme.

Sir Humphrey is all-powerful.  Why should officials worry about presenting full business cases on programmes they know there’s a political imperative to deliver?

Can DWP meet its revised 2022 target for completion of Universal Credit? – Computer Weekly

Treasury guidance on business cases

 

 

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government digital Service, Government IT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, procurement, project management, Universal Credit

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