Category Archives: DWP

Treasury refusing to sign off Universal Credit business case?

Posted on 08/07/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Government Computing reports that the business case for the Universal Credit programme has yet to be signed off.

It appears that the Department for Work and Pensions receives money for the programme only when it needs it.

It is odd that the business case remains to be signed although the programme is more than three years old. The programme was “reset” last year.

At a hearing yesterday of the Public Accounts Committee the four top civil servants who appeared before MPs were reluctant to admit that the business case had not been signed off.

They four were:

– Sir Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary, Cabinet Office;

– Sir Bob Kerslake, Head of the Home Civil Service and Permanent Secretary, Communities and Local Government;

– Richard Heaton, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office and

– Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary, HM Treasury.

Government Computing reports that the four were “reduced to bluster” when the committee’s chair Margaret Hodge  questioned them repeatedly on whether the business case for Universal Credit had been signed off by the Treasury.

She said, “There is no argument about the policy. It is entirely an implementation issue. And I cannot understand a centre that fails to intervene when there is such a classic failure at the departmental level on something that the centre says it is interested in, which is IT.

“It’s supposed to be a digitisation exercise in the way we administer benefits so you can integrate the benefits. What we’ve got out there is not a digitisation – it’s an incredibly staff intensive, pathfinder thing. Why is the centre allowing that to happen? Have you signed off the business case yet?”

“Have you assigned off the business case?” she repeated to  MacPherson.

After some looks between the four permanent secretaries, Kerslake said, “I think we should stop beating about the bush. It hasn’t been signed off. What we’ve had is a set of conditional assurances about progress and the Treasury has released money accordingly. And that’s one of the key controls they have. “

Defending the role of the centre in the Universal Credit programme, Heywood said, “This is an example of where the centre did intervene very strongly, both the Treasury and the Major Projects Authority (MPA).

“The MPA with the support of the Treasury and with a lot of technical help from the Government Digital Service (GDS) has played a very clear role in bringing to the secretary of state’s attention that the project was way off track. And that was a very important intervention from the centre.

“It then followed up with the next technique that the centre has got, which is to provide support in seconding in the then head of the MPA, David Pitchford, to help re-programme the project, a lot of support from Mike Bracken and his team at GDS to help the digital underpinnings of it and also some help on the commercial renegotiation of some of the contracts from Bill Crothers and his team. So it’s a very good example of the assurance role was followed by a support role and that continues.”

Pressed by Margaret Hodge on whether Universal Credit was now on track, Heywood said, “In its current form, yes, I think it is.”

Comment

Among so-called enlightened democracies the UK, perhaps, stands alone. In what other country would the nation’s four most senior civil servants, when asked if the business case for a major project has been signed off, look like children in a playground who are being asked to reveal a secret?

What does it say about open government that the UK’s four most senior civil servants cannot immediately say yes or no to such a basic question?

[One thing it says, perhaps, is that they are all terrified of Iain Duncan Smith who doesn’t like anything being said about Universal Credit that isn’t entirely positive. Worse still, they probably all agree with him.]

Treasury still to fully sign off Universal Credit business case 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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HP’s tacit threat to government not to bid for contracts?

Posted on 03/07/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

HP has written to the Treasury  questioning whether it is worthwhile competing for contracts if the Government is no longer interested in doing business with multinationals, says The Independent.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is encouraging departments to spend more with SMEs and be less reliant on a small number of major IT suppliers. He wants departments to avoid signing long-term contracts which lock-in ministers to one major supplier.

The Independent says:

“In a striking case of Goliath accusing David of bullying, the American giants Microsoft and Hewlett Packard have complained that they are being unfairly picked on by the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

“…the Government’s largest IT supplier Hewlett Packard has written to the Treasury to express its concern at plans by Mr Maude to award more Government contracts to smaller suppliers.

“At the same time Microsoft is fighting a rearguard action against the Cabinet Office to protect the million pounds it gets each year from Whitehall by selling popular Office programmes such as Word and Excel.

“Both companies are concerned that they are being singled out by ministers as unpopular and easy targets in their rhetoric about cutting public sector waste…

“Microsoft is attempting to prevent the Government from migrating its own computer systems from those that rely on the multinational to open-source documents that are free to use…

“Both companies look set to be disappointed – at least unless there is a change in Government. Mr Maude is understood to be looking to next year – when a significant number of big IT contracts are up for renewal – to push ahead with the new policy that could significantly denude the profits of IT multinationals.”

A Cabinet Office spokesman said it was unaware of HP’s letter to the Treasury and added: “We value the contribution companies of all sizes make to the UK economy, driving innovation, growth and jobs.”

A spokeswoman for HP told The Independent:  “HP is a proud and long-standing supplier of IT products and services to Her Majesty’s Government and provides vital public services to UK citizens.  We maintain an ongoing dialogue with government about our programme of work.”

A report by the Institute for Government Government Contracting:  Public data, private providers says that HP is the largest supplier to government with earnings in excess of 1.7bn in both 2012 and 2013.

In 2013, 86% (£1.49bn) of HP’s revenue from central government came from a DWP contract to supply infrastructure and systems for DWP and its job centres. “This contract is likely to be the largest single non-defence contract in central government,” says the Institute.

Capgemini, BT and Capita were the next largest suppliers to central government. Capgemini’s work is mainly from HMRC through the “Aspire” contract which is worth about £850m a year.

Departments are more open than they used to be but the Institute found big gaps in the information provided.

These gaps include:

– Contractual transparency –  contracts and contractual terms, including who will bear financial liabilities in the event of failures

– Information about how well contractors perform, allowing a vital assessment of value for money

– Supply chain transparency – information including the proportion of work subcontracted to others, terms of subcontracting (particularly levels of risk transfer), and details on the types of organisation (for example, voluntary and community sector organisations) in the supply chain.

Comment

What concerns Maude and his team is not the existence of major suppliers in central government contracts but the reliance by central departments on long-term contracts that lock-in ministers and lead to costly minor changes.

Nobody wants the major suppliers to stop bidding for contracts. What’s needed is for departments to have the in-house expertise to manage suppliers adroitly, and not to be adroitly managed by their suppliers which seems to be the position at present.

Thank you to openness campaigner Dave Orr for the information he sent me which helped with this article.

The IT giants who fear losing the government’s favour

Opening the door to data transparency

 

 

 

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, Capita, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, HMRC, HP, Institute for Government, managing outsourced services, open source, open standards, openness and transparency, supplier relationships

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Upper Tribunal refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports

Posted on 26/06/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

An upper tribunal judge this week refused consent for the Department of Work and Pensions to appeal a ruling that four reports on the Universal Credit programme be published.

It’s the third successive legal ruling to have gone against the DWP as its lawyers try to stop the reports being released.

The DWP is likely to request further consideration of its appeal. History suggests it will devote the necessary legal time and funding to stop the reports being published.

In March 2014, the first-tier information tribunal rejected the DWP’s claim that disclosure of the four reports would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to them – the so-called chilling effect.

The DWP sought the first-tier tribunal’s leave to appeal the ruling, describing it as “perverse”. External lawyers for the DWP said the tribunal had wholly misunderstood what is meant by a “chilling effect”, how it is manifested and how its existence can be proved.

They claimed the misunderstanding and the perverse decision were “errors of law”. For the first-tier tribunal’s finding to go to appeal to the “upper tribunal”, the DWP would have needed to prove “errors in law” in the findings of the first-tier tribunal.

The judge in that case, David Farrer QC, found that there were no errors in law in his ruling and he refused the DWP leave to appeal. The DWP then asked the upper tribunal to overrule Farrer’s decision – and now the DWP has lost again.

The upper tribunal’s judge Nicholas Wikeley says in his ruling this week:

“This [chilling effect] is a well known concept, and I can see no support for the argument that the [first-tier] Tribunal misunderstood its meaning.

“The Tribunal was surely saying that whilst it heard Ms Cox’s claim that disclosure would have a chilling effect, neither she nor the Department provided any persuasive evidence to that effect.” [Sarah Cox is a senior DWP executive on the Universal Credit programme.]

“Indeed, the Tribunal noted, as it was entitled to, that Ms Cox did not suggest that frank discussion had been inhibited in any way by a third party’s revelation of the ‘Starting Gate Review’.”

In conclusion the judge says:

“I therefore refuse permission [for the DWP] to appeal to the Upper Tribunal.”

The DWP’s lawyers asked the upper tribunal for a stay, or suspension, of the first-tier tribunal’s ruling that the four reports be published. This the judge granted temporarily.  The lawyers also asked for a private hearing, which the judge did not decide on.

DWP too secretive?

John Slater, who has 25 years experience working in IT and programme and project management, requested three of the four reports in question under the FOI Act in 2012. He asked for the UC issues register, high-level milestone schedule and risk register. Also in 2012 I requested a UC project assessment review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

The Information Commissioner ruled that the DWP should publish three of the reports but not the Risks Register.  In March 2014 the first-tier information tribunal ruled that all four reports should be published.

Excluding these four, the DWP has had 19 separate reports on the progress or otherwise of the Universal Credit programme and has not published any of them.

Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud, told the House of Lords, in a debate on Universal Credit this week:

“I hope we are as transparent as we can be.”

What happens now?

Slater says that as the DWP has been refused permission to appeal it will probably ask for an oral hearing before the upper tribunal. This would mean that the DWP would get a second chance to gets its point across directly in front of the Upper Tribunal rather than just on paper, as it has just tried, says Slater. There is no guarantee that the DWP would be granted an oral hearing.

Comment

If all was going well with the DWP’s largest projects its lawyers could argue, with some credibility, that the “safe space” civil servants need to produce reports on the progress or otherwise of major schemes is having a useful effect.

In fact the DWP has, with a small number of notable exceptions such as Pension Credit, presided over a series of major IT-based projects that have failed to meet expectations or business objectives, from  “Camelot” in the 1980s to “Operational Strategy” in the 1990s. Universal Credit is arguably the latest project disaster, to judge from the National Audit Office’s 2013 report on the scheme.

The”safe space” the DWP covets doesn’t  appear to work.  Perhaps it’s a lack of firm challenge, external scrutiny and transparency that are having a chilling effect on the department.

Upper Tribunal ruling Universal Credit appeal

My submission to FOI tribunal on universal credit

Judge [first-tier tribunal] refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports – April 2014

 

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, Universal Credit

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Labour promises new NAO inquiry into Universal Credit project if elected

Posted on 23/06/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

“All our [Universal Credit] IT at the moment is working and it’s working well, which is why we’ve taken the decision to roll it out to the whole of the North West,” said Iain Duncan Smith on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics programme at the weekend.

But IDS is not publishing any of the Department for Work and Pensions’ reports on Universal Credit  IT, such as the project assessment reviews, risk registers or issues registers, so it’s difficult to verify independently his assurances that the IT is working well.

Labour, meanwhile, has promised, if it wins the 2015 election,  a new National Audit Office inquiry into Universal Credit.

In an interview with BBC One’s Sunday Politics programme, shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves said:

“We set up a universal credit rescue committee in the autumn of last year because we had seen, from the National Audit Office [and] from the Public Accounts Committee, report after report showing that this project is …not going to be delivered according to the government timetable.

“We believe in the principle of universal credit, we think it is the right thing to do.”

Reeves criticised ministers for not being open about what had gone wrong with the project. “There is no transparency,” she said. “It’s going to cost £12.8bn to deliver and we don’t know what sort of state it is in.

“So we have said that if we win the next election we will pause… the build of the system for three months, calling in the National Audit Office to do a warts-and-all report on it.”

She said the “pause” would not involve halting the pilot schemes that were already in place. She urged coalition ministers to follow her prescription immediately.

“The government doesn’t need to wait for the next election,” she said. “They could do this today: call in the National Audit Office … and finally get a grip on this incredibly important programme.”

The Department for Work and Pensions has announced the roll-out of UC to all job centres in the north west by the end of this year but the IT will handle only the simplest of cases and some of these involve clerical intervention.

Integration with back-office systems is handled manually, and claims from couples or those with dependents are still not allowed.

The DWP said last month that the IT would be handle claims from couples starting this summer but this now seems unlikely.

UC claimants for the time being must be single, without children, newly claiming a benefit, fit for work, not claiming disability benefits, not have caring responsibilities, not be homeless or in temporary accommodation, and have a valid bank account and National Insurance number.

The National Audit Office in a report on UC last September questioned whether the IT will work for the millions of people whose claims are complicated.

Comment

Labour’s promise of an NAO investigation if it wins power – and its suggestion that the NAO publish an update to its September 2013 report on UC before the next election – are welcome.

Probably the last thing IDS wants at the moment is an up-to-date report by the NAO on Universal Credit. At present IDS and the Department for Work and Pensions can say without fear of authoritative contradiction that the IT is working well.  An NAO update would show whether that assurance is optimistic.

Labour if it wins the election cannot force the NAO to investigate the UC project. No political party instruct the NAO to investigate anything.  The NAO is independent of government and decides what to investigate, often in conjunction with the cross-party Public Accounts Committee.

It’s likely, however, that the NAO would agree to publish a new report on the UC project if Labour wins the next election.

Whoever wins the NAO will publish a new report on UC – it is already monitoring the programme – but is likely to do so sooner if Labour wins.

IDS could still win much credibility for the DWP and himself by deciding to publish the UC project assessment reviews, risk registers, issues registers and high-level milestone schedules.

Universal Credit creeps into north west 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, IT projects, IT-related failures, Universal Credit

Has DWP suppressed a “red” rating on Universal Credit project?

Posted on 28/05/2014 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office’s Major Project Authority gave the Universal Credit programme a “red” rating which IDS and the Department for Work and Pensions campaigned successfully to turn into a neutral “reset” designation, says The Independent.

Universal Credit was “only given a reset rating after furious protests by Iain Duncan Smith and his department,” says the newspaper.

A “reset” rating is unprecedented. All major projects at red will need a reset. That is one of the reasons the Major Projects Authority gives a red rating: to signal to the senior responsible owner that the project needs resetting or cancelling. A “reset” designation is a non-assessment.

The MPA’s official definition of a red rating is:

“Red: Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues on project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”

The suppression of Universal Credit’s red rating may indicate that the project, at the top, is driven by politics – the public and Parliamentary perception of the project being all-important – rather than pragmatics.

It is a project management aphorism that serious problems cannot be tackled until their seriousness is admitted.

Normally the Major Projects Authority will give even newly reconfigured projects traffic light ratings, to indicate its view of the risks of the revised plans.

The Independent calls for the replacement of Iain Duncan Smith as political head of the project.

Comment

The National Audit Office warned last September of the DWP’s fortress mentality and “good news” culture.

The suppression of Universal Credit’s red rating on top of the DWP’s repeated refusals to publish the Universal Credit project assessment report, risk register, issues register and milestone schedule shows that the DWP still avoids telling it like it is. That will make successful delivery of Universal Credit’s complexities impossible.

Well-run IT projects are about problem-solving not problem-denying.

The Independent is right to say that IDS is not the person to be running Universal Credit. He has too much emotional equity to be an objective leader. He sees himself as having too much to lose. The programme needs to be run by an open-minded pragmatist.

In asking the Cabinet Office to agree with a “reset” rating for Universal Credit IDS is acting like a schoolboy who has done something wrong and asks the school not to tell his parents. That’s no way to run something as important as Universal Credit.

IDS and DWP accused of hiding bad news on Universal Credit – The Independent

 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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DWP – and Cabinet Office – hide new Universal Credit secrets

Posted on 23/05/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

In 2009 Francis Maude promised, if the Conservatives came to power,  that his party would publish “Gateway” reviews on the progress or otherwise or big IT-based projects.

He was surprised when I told him that civil servants wouldn’t allow it, that they wouldn’t want Parliament and the media knowing how badly their big programmes were being managed. Maude said he couldn’t see a problem in publishing the reports.

When Maude and the Conservatives won power, the Cabinet Office promised in its forward plans to publish Gateway reviews but it never happened.

The Cabinet Office told me its forward plans were “draft” (although they were not marked “draft”) and the commitment to publishing Gateway reviews was no longer included. It didn’t say why.

Still Maude worked privately within government to persuade departmental ministers to at least publish the “traffic light” status of major projects – red, amber or green. Eventually this happened – sort of.

Senior civil servants and their ministers agreed to publish the traffic light status of major projects only if the disclosures were at least six months old by the time they were published.

Maude agreed – and last year the Major Projects Authority published its delayed 2013 annual report. It revealed the out-of-date traffic light status of big projects.

Today the 2014 Major Projects Authority annual report is published. Alongside publication, departments are publishing the traffic light status of major projects – except the Universal Credit programme.

Where the DWP should be publishing the red, amber or green designation of the UC programme the spreadsheet says “reset”.

Therefore the DWP is avoiding not only the publication of Universal Credit reports as part of a 2-year FOI legal battle, it has stopped publishing the traffic light status of the Universal Credit programme.

Secrecy over the state of the UC programme is deepening, which could be said to make a mockery of the Cabinet Office’s attempts to bring about open government.

It seems that the DWP is happy for MPs, journalists and the public to speculate on the state of the Universal Credit programme. But it is determined to deny its critics authoritative information on the state of the programme.

Universal Credit is looking to me rather like a programme disaster of the type seen during Labour’s administration. And the detail is being kept hidden – as it was under Labour.

The DWP argues that UC reports cannot be published because of the “chilling effect” on civil servants who contribute to the reports. In other words they will not be candid in their assessments if they know their comments will be published.

What’s remarkable about this claim is the assumption that the status quo works. The DWP assumes that publication of the UC reports – even if there is a demonstrable chilling effect – will have a bad effect on the UC programme. But how could things be worse than they are? The National Audit Office report “Universal Credit – early progress” showed that the programme was being poorly managed.

The absence of a chilling effect has not served the UC programme well. Will the non-publication of a traffic light status for UC serve the programme well?

It may be that more rigorous Parliamentary scrutiny – by well informed MPs – is essential for the UC programme’s welfare.

But for that to happen IDS and the DWP’s ministers and senior civil servants will need to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the door marked “open government”. Will it ever happen? I doubt it.

PS: It appears that the Cabinet Office and its Major Projects Authority have agreed with departments that the MPA’s Annual Report will be published today – a Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend . Is this to reduce the chances it will be noticed by the trade press and national media?  

Update:

Shortly after publishing the blog post above a DWP press officer gave me the following statement:

“Universal Credit is on track. The reset is not new but refers to the shift in the delivery plan and change in management back in early 2013.

“The reality is that Universal Credit is already making work pay as we roll it out in a careful and controlled way.

“It’s already operating in 10 areas and will start expanding to the rest of the North West in June. Jobseekers in other areas are already benefiting from some of its positive impacts through help from a work coach, more digital facilities in jobcentres, and a written agreement setting out what they will do to find work.”

The DWP says the “reset” rating reflects the fact that the Secretary of State decided to reset the programme in 2013, with a clear plan developed since then to deliver the programme.

Now this reset has taken place, future Major Projects Authority reports will give a traffic light status, says the DWP.

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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Was Churchill more open with MPs in 1940 than DWP is over Universal Credit?

Posted on 22/05/2014 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

As the DWP manoeuvres again to stop reports on the Universal Credit programme being published it’s worth asking: has the DWP got its 2-year legal battle to keep the reports secret out of perspective?

Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud personally signed off his department’s request to keep the UC reports secret; and his secretary of state Iain Duncan Smith seems untroubled by MPs’ criticisms that Parliament is not kept properly informed about the UC programme’s problems.

The lack of openness and transparency over problems with the UC programme is “not acceptable,” said the all-party Work and Pensions Committee in April.

The four reports would, if published, inform Parliament about how much senior civil servants knew about the problems with UC while ministers and the department  were assuring MPs the scheme was on time and to budget.

This isn’t the reason the DWP does not want the reports published: it has an unofficial rule not to publish any reports on the progress or otherwise of its big IT-based projects and programmes.

Not even Parliament is allowed sight of minutes of UC meetings, the updated UC business case, UC risk registers, issues registers, project assessment reviews or high-level milestone schedules.

In its arguments to the Upper Tribunal this week lawyers for the DWP argue in paragraph after paragraph that publication of the UC reports would have a “chilling effect” on senior civil servants.

But the DWP may not appreciate the extent to which its attempts to keep Parliament, the press and public in the dark trivialise the vigorous and noble attempts by some prime ministers in the last century to keep Parliament well informed on what was going well or not with major government plans.

Churchill stands out as a PM who was remarkably open, even during one of the darkest times in the history of Britain, in 1940, when the government had every reason to marginalise Parliament. It’s easy to believe Churchill was too busy to attend Parliament and that he had the best possible excuse for not keeping MPs informed: he didn’t want to forewarn Britain’s enemies.

In fact Parliamentary archives show that Churchill in 1940 was meticulous about keeping Parliament informed – about his concerns as well as as his reasons for optimism.

With London being bombed and a fleet of 1900 fully-armed ships and barges gathered at German-occupied ports ready to invade Britain, Churchill came to the House of Commons to account for government actions. He even answered a Parliamentary question in September 1940 on pensions.

On 30 July 1940 Churchill opened a public debate in the House of Commons on whether Parliament should go into secret session. France had just fallen and the government was preparing for what Churchill called the Battle of Britain. He had every reason to go into secret session. He allowed a free vote.

Churchill also rejected calls for automatic secret sessions of Parliament. There had to be a debate and free vote each time.

Compare Churchill’s determination to keep Parliament properly informed at a time when the freedom of every British citizen was in peril and the DWP’s repeated attempts to stop information reaching Parliament, the press and the public on what departmental reports were saying about the Universal Credit programme in 2012.

Churchill and other MPs, including Labour’s Josiah Wedgwood, argued that openness was needed because criticism of the government by an informed press and Parliament was an essential part of the democratic process. Criticism could be a stimulus to act.

But what we now have at the DWP are departmental civil servants and ministers who want information on the Universal Credit programme to be state-controlled, apart from the one-off reports of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee which the DWP cannot control.

Only the Work and Pensions Committee provides regular scrutiny of the UC programme – but its MPs complain of being kept in the dark.

Churchill in Parliament’s secret sessions had good reason for secrecy. His notes published after the war show that he spoke in a secret session of Parliament in 1940 on the need for British forces to “get through the next 3 months” then they will “get through the next 3 years”. He discussed the Allies’ military errors and German strengths and weaknesses.

Now we have the DWP marginalising Parliament – not publishing the contents of departmental reports on UC – because of the chilling effect on senior civil servants.

There can be little dispute that Churchill was more open in Britain’s darkest hour than the DWP is today on Universal Credit programme.  For even  when Parliament went into secret session in 1940, all MPs, including the government’s opponents, were included in the discussions. Only “strangers” – non-MPs – were excluded.

That’s a million miles from what’s happening at the DWP. All ordinary MPs are excluded from the DWP’s detailed discussions on the UC programme.  The DWP is shielding Parliament from knowing what is in the UC programme reports.

As I asked earlier: is the DWP’s fear of openness over UC reports out of perspective?

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Universal Credit

DWP tries anew for leave to appeal FOI ruling on Universal Credit reports

Posted on 22/05/2014 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

The DWP is continuing its protracted legal fight to stop publication of four reports on the Universal Credit programme.

The department this week asked the upper tribunal for leave to appeal a decision of the first-tier information tribunal that the four reports be published.  The first-tier tribunal had refused the DWP leave to appeal.

As expected, the DWP is doing everything possible within the FOI Act to stop the UC programme reports being published. This is despite MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee saying there is a “lack of transparency” on the Universal Credit programme.

The reports in question are more than two years old but they would show how much ministers knew about UC programme problems at a time when the DWP was issuing regular press releases claiming the scheme was on time and to budget.

By law the DWP has to deal with every FOI request individually but in practice the department has rejected every FOI request for reviews and assessments of its major IT-enabled projects and programmes including Universal Credit.

The four reports in question are:

– A project assessment review on the state of the UC programme in November 2011, as assessed by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

– A risk register of possible risks to the development or eventual operation of UC as perceived by those involved.

– An issues register of problems that have materialised, why and how they can be minimised or eliminated.

– A milestone schedule of progress and times by which activities should be completed.

In his request to the upper tribunal for leave to appeal the first-tier tribunal’s decision, the DWP’s lawyer  argues that the first-tier tribunal wholly misunderstood the nature of any “chilling effect” that publishing the reports would have on the frankness of civil servants contributing to them.

He said that the tribunal’s finding that disclosure of the reports would have no chilling effect was “perverse”, and that the tribunal failed to give due weight to the evidence of a senior civil servant Sarah Cox on the chilling effect.

He said that “many ex-ministers and others have spoken of the chilling effect of disclosure as an observable phenomenon within government” though he provided no evidence of this in his submission.

He added that the first-tier tribunal’s reasoning was “defective” in a number of respects. The tribunal had made a fundamental error of law, he said.

The tribunal’s “factual conclusion that disclosure of the disputed information would have no chilling effect whatsoever was one which no reasonable tribunal, properly directing itself as to the relevant legal principles, could have reached,” said the DWP’s lawyer.

Judge refuses DWP leave to appeal FOI ruling on Universal Credit reports

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Is working on Universal Credit a risk to health or career?

Posted on 14/05/2014 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

IT-related projects are about solving problems – and  if you cannot own up to the most serious of them, how can they be solved? For those working on Universal Credit it may be stressful, perhaps even hazardous to health, if they cannot discuss serious project problems openly.

Could it be that the DWP’s unnatural grip on information – what the National Audit Office called a good news reporting culture that “stifled open discussion and challenge”  – is a major factor in the delays, rising costs and lack of success in the Universal Credit programme?

Could it also explain why the programme has had so many leaders – who perhaps found that speaking their minds was culturally unacceptable?

I had a taste of the DWP’s grip on information when I asked a department press officer last week about Howard Shiplee, Director General  of Universal Credit who went off sick with bronchitis. Was he back at work? He may no longer be working full time, suggests Computer Weekly.

The DWP appointed Shiplee in May 2013 and he went off sick in December 2013. He took over the UC programme from David Pitchford who quit to return to his native Australia. Terry Moran who ran the universal credit programme at its inception retired from the DWP last year after an extended  period of sick leave.

Philip Langsdale, a highly respected IT expert with public and private sector experience, took over responsibility for the UC programme in September 2012 but died four months later.

Another short-serving incumbent was Hilary Reynolds, a departmental civil servant who was appointed programme director in November 2012 but moved to another role four months later. She replaced Malcolm Whitehouse, who had stepped down as UC programme director.

Andy Nelson, Chief Information Officer at the DWP who had partial control of UC, has resigned after little more than a year in the job.

Truthful?

Government press officers and other public-facing officials usually like to be helpful, open and truthful. But they also reflect an organisation’s culture, whether it is open or closed, or liable to dissemble. The DWP press officer I spoke to last week seemed unable to depart from her pre-agreed script. Clearly she was allowed to say that Shiplee was “at work and fully engaged in delivering Universal Credit” – but no more about him.

“Howard Shiplee is at work,” she said.

Is it accurate to say he is “at work” when it’s for one day a week only?

“He is at work and fully engaged in delivering Universal Credit.”

Isn’t it misleading for the DWP to imply that Howard Shiplee is working full time on Universal Credit when he is only working one day a week?

“He is fully engaged in delivering Universal Credit.”

So he is working full-time on Universal Credit?

“He is at work. And we have announced the next steps in the Universal Programme …”

That started a different line of questioning on whether the DWP was being misleading in its announcement that the “full” Universal Credit benefit will be rolled out in the north-west of England in June.

I asked what “full” meant, when the reality is that new UC claimants must be single, without children, newly claiming a benefit, fit for work, not claiming disability benefits, not have caring responsibilities, not be homeless or in temporary accommodation, and have a valid bank account and National Insurance number. Specifically excluded from UC “pathfinder” claims – although the original plan was include them – are income support, housing benefits, working tax credits, child tax credits and difficult cases.

The DWP’s latest announcement on the next steps in the UC programme refers four times to the “full” UC benefit:

From the DWP’s May 2014 UC announcement:

“The expansion of the full [my emphasis] Universal Credit benefit to the rest of the North-West of England will start in June, it was announced today. On top of that claimants in 10 parts of the country are also benefiting from the better work incentives of the full benefit.”

“In total 90 jobcentres, or one in eight jobcentres in Britain, will offer the full Universal Credit once the North-West expansion is completed.”

“During the summer the new benefit will also be made available for new claims from couples in a number of jobcentres that already deliver the full Universal Credit, expanding to all the current live sites over time.”

The DWP press officer did not answer my question directly.  She said couples will soon be able to claim UC in parts of the country. It appears she was not allowed to lie. But was she also forbidden from telling the truth?

For nearly 2 years the press office’s script was that the UC programme was “on time and on budget”. As the Guardian reported in April last year:

“The DWP has repeatedly claimed that the development is on schedule and on budget.”

But after the National Audit Office reported in depth in September 2013 that the UC programme was in a mess and that tens of millions had been written off the press office changed its script. Now press officers are instructed to say, if asked if the programme is on time and to budget, that it is “on track”, whatever that means.

The Work and Pensions Committee has criticised the DWP’s lack of openness and transparency on the Universal Credit programme. It said:

“On two occasions, the Government has made public the details about major changes to the timetable for UC implementation only when forced to do so by the prospect of oral evidence in front of the Committee. This lack of openness and transparency is not acceptable.”

The National Audit Office identified a ‘fortress’ mentality within the programme team; and the Public Accounts Committee said that the DWP’s UC team became

“isolated and defensive, undermining its ability to recognise the size of the problems the programme faced and to be candid when reporting progress”.

Now the DWP may be looking for Shiplee’s replacement. If so, how long will the appointee stay in post – a few months at best? Can any good UC project leader survive the DWP’s closed and dissembling culture?

Comment

As competent and talented UC leaders come and go it’s becoming easier to see why turnover is so high. The DWP and Accenture successfully built the enhanced National Insurance Recording System (NIRS2), in part by having daily round-table discussions about project problems.  I sat in on one of them. The meetings were marked by the openness of the exchanges.

For that reason IDS may unwittingly be the worst sort of person to be boss of a big IT-based programme. Can the UC’s programme leaders take their workplace problems to IDS without their suffering stress or worse?

The DWP was becoming innately secretive, not open to internal or external challenge, even before IDS was appointed. Since he took over in 2010 the department has become more defensive, introspective, closed, and excessively sensitive to its public image and reputation.

Can anyone run a big IT-based government programme amid a good news culture that permeates all levels of the hierarchy and IT teams at the DWP? It especially infects the DWP’s entrenched US-based major IT suppliers.

IDS has the advantage of understanding the UC programme and he is right to slow down its introduction, but if he stood down as UC’s political leader, the programme’s leaders could find their lives becoming less stressful, less hazardous perhaps.

[A more suitable political leader of the UC programme would, perhaps, be a pragmatist who is a good listener and is not preoccupied with self-image and looking strong – perhaps Frank Field (Labour), Norman Lamb (Liberal) or Richard Bacon (Conservative). ]

Privately the DWP’s ministers would probably argue that being open would give ammunition to the opposition which exploits for party political reasons every supposed UC problem. But openness could have pre-empted that.

If the DWP would publish the UC reports it has so far repeatedly refused to publish it could show in detail how it is tackling the problems in a measured and open way.

Nothing will change its culture. All we can hope for is that scrutiny will be intensified. The Work and Pensions committee is doing a good job, as is the NAO, the Public Accounts Committee, the Information Commissioner and the Information Tribunal but the scrutiny is spasmodic, not month to month or week to week, let alone day to day.

So where is the UC programme heading?

It seems that the Universal Credit programme will remain inherently flawed until after the general election when a new administration may own up to the depth of the problems and a new long-term rollout will be announced, perhaps extending beyond 2020.

You won’t hear that from the DWP, and particularly not its press officers.  But if they’re not allowed to tell the truth spare a thought for those working on the programme. Some of them are highly paid. But what’s money when your health is at stake?

Brian Wernham on UC leadership changes

 

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Posted in Accenture, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Judge refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports

Posted on 30/04/2014 | 28 comments

By Tony Collins

An information tribunal judge has unexpectedly refused consent for the Department of Work and Pensions to appeal his ruling that four reports on the Universal Credit programme be published.

The ruling undermines the DWP’s claim that there would be “chilling effect” if the reports were published.

The judge’s decision, which is dated 25 April 2014, means the DWP will have to publish the reports under the FOI Act  – or it has 28 days to appeal the judge’s refusal to grant consent for an appeal.  The DWP is certain to appeal again. It has shown that money is no object when it comes to funding appeals to keep the four reports secret.

In 2012 John Slater, who has 25 years experience working in IT and programme and project management, had requested the UC Issues Register, Milestone Schedule and Risk Register. Also in 2012 I requested a UC project assessment review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

Last month the “first-tier” information tribunal ruled that all four reports should be published. It rejected the DWP’s claim that disclosure would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to the reports – the so-called chilling effect.

The DWP sought the tribunal’s leave to appeal the ruling, describing it as “perverse”. It said the tribunal had wholly misunderstood what is meant by a “chilling effect”, how it is manifested and how its existence can be proved.

It claimed the misunderstanding and the perverse decision were “errors of law”.  For the first-tier tribunal’s finding to go to appeal to the “Upper Tribunal”, the DWP would have needed to prove “errors in law” in the findings of the first-tier tribunal.

Now Judge David Farrer QC says his tribunal has understood the chilling effect but found no evidence that it was relevant to the four reports in question. Indeed the judge implies that if the chilling effect existed there would be evidence of it.

“The so-called chilling effect implies Government departments and other public authorities have by now extensive experience of decisions requiring them to disclose information which they sought to withhold for the reasons advanced by DWP here,” says the judge in dismissing the DWP’s request for permission to appeal.

“If the chilling effect is a widespread and damaging result of the fear of disclosure, there is every reason for central government to investigate the matter, enabling a government department to present a case based on its research.

“Quite apart from that, those receiving reports, conducting discussions and reading advice might be expected to observe, over a period, any trend in changing style and content of their colleagues` written work, so as to be able to present examples and relate them to the perceived threat of disclosure.

“Obviously the form of document will remain the same but it is hard to believe that the experienced observer could not spot and demonstrate a general loss of trenchancy, of innovation or of boldness in the content over a period if that were indeed the effect of possible public exposure.

“Such changes would constitute ‘concrete and specific effects’, adopting DWP`s wording.”

Although the reports requested under the FOI Act are now old – they date back to 2011 – their publication could throw light on how much DWP ministers and civil servants knew about the many problems with Universal Credit IT at a time when the department was issuing unswervingly positive press releases about the UC programme.

Judge Farrer hinted that DWP ministers and civil servants could have misled the public about the real state of UC programme.

Having read the four reports in question, the judge said in his ruling that the Tribunal was “struck by the sharp contrast with the unfailing confidence and optimism of a series of press releases by the DWP or ministerial statements as to the progress of the Universal Credit Programme during the relevant period”.

At the information tribunal in January 2014 a senior civil servant Sarah Cox, on behalf of the DWP, spoke on the supposed effects of disclosure on the candour and boldness of reviewers.

But the Tribunal noted that a Starting Gate review of Universal Credit was published [in 2011] which the DWP had refused to release under FOI. The Information Tribunal noted that Ms Cox did not suggest that the revelation of this document had inhibited frank discussion within the Universal Credit programme.

The Tribunal said reports such as the risk register and project assessment review are important indicators of the state of a project. Their disclosure can give the public a chance to test whether ministers and civil servants are giving out correct information on the state of a project.

This week the judge says that the Tribunal “read and heard the evidence of Ms. Cox, considered the subject matter and the withheld material, took account of her experience, applied its own experience of these cases and its commonsense and, on this issue, found her testimony unpersuasive, as it was entitled to do.”

In conclusion the judge says the Tribunal “rejects the claim that its handling of the ‘chilling effect’ issue involved an error of law.”

Comment:

The DWP was claiming in 2012 that all was well with the UC programme when in reality they knew there wasn’t even an agreed project plan.

That is a good reason for the DWP to want to keep the reports secret – but the main reason its senior civil servants want to stop publication is tradition. The DWP does not publish any of its reports on the state of big IT-enabled projects and programmes.

It’s perhaps because the DWP has always buried itself under the covers of secrecy that it is so imperious – to the point of arrogance – in its handling of FOI requests and appeals. It acts like an institution that is not used to having outsiders, including the information tribunal and National Audit Office – peep into its affairs.

Perhaps this is why the NAO found that the UC programme was being managed so badly. When complex institutions operate in secrecy and without effective day to day scrutiny standards can continue to fall to a point when even the best leaders are powerless to intervene.

There may come a time – if that time hasn’t been reached already – when the DWP will be held together, and only remain credible in the eyes of the public and Parliament, because of the solid work of its major IT suppliers that have been there for decades, bolstered by a plethora of media announcements and ministerial assurances.

We are certainly getting the media announcements and ministerial statements, but without the publication of reports on UC’s progress, do the official pronouncements mean anything at all?

FOI ruling judge refuses DWP leave to appeal

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, procurement, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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