Category Archives: DWP

Whitehall’s legacy ICT here to stay?

Posted on 11/09/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Well done to the National Audit Office for reporting in detail on some of central government’s legacy ICT. It’s clear the NAO found the research difficult, in part because some of the system performance information it was seeking had to come from suppliers because it was not held by departments.

This gives a hint of the extent to which departments such as HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions are in the hands of IT companies.

The NAO report Managing the risks of legacy ICT to public service delivery suggests, but doesn’t say explicitly, that legacy ICT contracts are here to stay.

Attempts by the Cabinet Office to make large cuts in the costs of central government IT will be thwarted to some extent by the reliance of departments on big suppliers and big systems. Says the NAO

“A particular risk is that departments dependent on legacy ICT will find it more challenging to achieve the business transformation envisaged by the Government in its digital strategy.”

[But there appears to be little anyone can do about it.]

The NAO report says that major change that involves underlying ICT will “create a new set of risks which will increase as the degree of system change increases”.

HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions still rely on Fujitsu mainframes with the VME operating system, which was originally developed in the 1970s to run ICL mainframes.

These are some of the NAO’s other findings:

– “We estimate that in 2011-12 at least £480bn of the government’s operating revenues and at least £210bn of non-staff expenditure such as pensions and entitlements were reliant to some extent on legacy ICT.”

– “Managing the risk of legacy ICT has also prevented some government bodies from reducing their dependency on a few large ICT suppliers, reducing competition and increasing the risk to value for money.”

– “Departments with the largest legacy ICT estates have found it challenging to achieve value for money and improve customer service. For example:

• In 2009, HMRC described its 600 systems as “complex, ageing and costly”… By the end of 2011-12, HMRC had switched off 65 legacy applications…”

• Within DWP, we have previously found that administrative errors within the benefits system were, in part, caused by poor communication between its network of some 140 systems.  However, the Department is now rationalising its ICT estate with a view to reducing the number of ICT applications by 2017.

– “The administration cost involved in using legacy ICT can be considerable. The cost of operating HMRC’s VAT collection service is £430m per annum and the cost of the DWP pension payment service is £385m per annum.”

– Eight key legacy ICT risks are:

• Disruption to service continuity. Legacy ICT infrastructure or applications are prone to instability due to failing components, disrupting the overall service. Failure of the legacy ICT may be more difficult to rectify due to the complexity or shortage of components.

• Security vulnerabilities. Older systems may be unsupported by their suppliers, meaning the software no longer receives bug fixes or patches that address security weaknesses. The system may not therefore be able to adapt to cyber threats.

• Vendor lock-in. Legacy ICT systems are often bespoke and have developed more complexity over time to the extent that only the original supplier will have the knowledge to support them.

• Skills gaps. Specific skills in old programming languages may be required that are not widely available. Staff working with legacy ICT over a long period will have often developed a depth of understanding of the system that is difficult to replace.

• Manual workarounds. More manual processing can be required due to the lack of functionality within the system or its inability to interface with other systems. Examples of workarounds include performing detailed calculations outside the system on spreadsheets; re-entering data on to other systems or having to manually check for processing and input errors.

• Limited adaptability. New business requirements may not be supported by the legacy ICT. These may include requirements such as the provision of digital channels, the provision of real-time information and not being able to process transactions in a new way.

• Hidden costs. The true cost of operating the system may not be known. Workarounds to the system and the cost of the additional manual processes may not be recorded. By not having all the information available at the right time, legacy ICT may not be able to provide real-time performance information which could lead to poor decision-making.

• Business change. Due to the complexity or the limited availability of the skills required, change may be difficult, lengthy to implement and costly. This makes it difficult for the business to be responsive and changes may have to be prioritised.

–  “A potential ninth risk is that legacy ICT may be less energy efficient than modern systems.”

VME

-“ The legacy ICT we reviewed in DWP and HMRC both have origins that predate the internet and use technology based on Fujitsu’s Virtual Machine Environment (VME) operating system. Some of the applications using VME process the data in batches. Jobs are set serially such as checking the credibility of the amounts declared on VAT returns. Such a mode of operation would be incompatible with a fully digital service and so these applications may require replacement or modification. A fully digital service would then enable online end-to-end processes with systems that respond in real-time.

– “The current supplier of VME, Fujitsu, has announced that it will support the current version of VME until 2020. After this, organisations have the choice of moving to alternatives or extending VME applications by using Fujitsu’s planned managed service.”

Can legacy ICT be replaced?

–  “The scale and importance of both services, combined with the materiality of the public money they administer, have deterred both departments from replacing these systems. Neither department [HMRC or DWP] had considered replacing their legacy ICT with a completely new end-to-end service. Instead they built new functionality around existing processes or systems, replacing an existing paper-based system

“In both organisations we found that the ICT and business functions could have worked more closely together to develop a longer-term strategy for a complete end-to-end service. In addition, we found a lack of data that would enable management to assess the full cost of service and performance.”

Supplier lock-in?

– “HMRC has found it challenging achieving a ‘whole customer’ view, as its customer data is stored across a number of legacy ICT systems. Perpetuating the use of older systems creates challenges for sustaining the right technical skills, for improving customer service.”

–  “The scale, age and complexity of DWP and HMRC legacy ICT has meant that only a small number of large ICT suppliers are able to support them as they are far too complex for a small- or medium-sized business to maintain. This will be an important consideration when preparing for contract end points, even more than the age of the technology. The government has recognised the issue of vendor lock-in by announcing plans for the creation of common ICT infrastructure. Through greater separation of the business application from the physical hardware, the aim is to reduce reliance on individual vendors.”

Lack of data?

– The average number of major faults in the system is the number logged as severity 1 or 2 meaning that 10 per cent of users are unable to access the service or there is a failure of overnight processing or an inability to produce printed output for the public. DWP monitors the performance of its system on a four- or five-week period rather than calendar months. It was unable to provide us with detailed performance reports for the period under review but obtained the average quoted above from the supplier.

–  “Determining whether the management of legacy ICT within DWP and HMRC incurs hidden costs has proved challenging. DWP’s financial data was comprehensive but it lacked effective measures to assess overall service performance, quality of process activity and the reliability of its legacy ICT. This will make it difficult for DWP to robustly plan for the longer term.”

– “HMRC was still providing us with data in the very late stages of finalising this report and several months after it had originally been requested. For financial data, the late provision of data has prevented us from verifying that costs are on a consistent basis with other departments and forming clear conclusions. For performance information, we saw indications that HMRC has a good set of data that it uses in its day-to-day management. However, we were unable to fully confirm this finding or obtain sufficient data to allow us to conclude on the performance of the VAT service. The challenges we faced in obtaining data from HMRC suggest that it may face challenges in planning for the longer term robustly.”

NAO report: Managing the risks of ICT legacy to public service delivery

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, DWP, Fujitsu, HMRC, Legacy ICT, managing change, managing outsourced services, npfit

A reason many govt IT-enabled projects fail?

Posted on 11/09/2013 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Last week’s highly critical National Audit Office report on Universal Credit was well publicised but a table in the last section that showed how the Department for Work and Pensions had, in essence, passed control of its cheque-book to its IT suppliers, was little noticed.

The NAO  in 2009 reported that the Home Office had handed over £161m to IT suppliers without knowing where the money had gone.

Now something similar has happened again, on a much bigger scale, with Universal Credit. The National Audit Office said last week that the Department for Work and Pensions has handed over £303m to IT suppliers. The NAO found that the DWP was unclear on what the £303m was providing. Said the NAO

“The Department does not yet know to what extent its new IT systems will support national roll-out … The Department will have to scale back its original delivery ambition and is reassessing what it must do to roll-out Universal Credit to claimants.”

After paying £303m, the “current programme team is developing new plans for Universal Credit,” said the NAO.

Surprising?

More surprising, perhaps, are the findings by PWC on its investigations into the financial management of Universal Credit IT. I and others in the media little noticed the summary of PWC’s work when I first read the NAO report.

PWC’s findings in the NAO’s report are in figure 15 on page 36. The table summarises PWC’s work on Linking outcomes to supplier payments and financial management. This is some of what the NAO says

– Insufficient challenge of supplier-driven changes in costs and forecasts because the programme team did not fully understand the assumptions driving changes.

– Inadequate controls over what would be supplied, when and at what cost because deliverables were not always defined before contracts were signed.

– Over-reliance on performance information that was provided by suppliers without Department validation.

– The Department did not enforce all the key terms and conditions of its standard contract management framework, inhibiting its ability to hold suppliers to account.

– Insufficient review of contractor performance before making payments – on average six project leads were given three days to check 1,500 individual timesheets, with payments only stopped if a challenge was raised.

– 94% of spending was approved by just four people but there is limited evidence that this was reviewed and challenged.

– Inadequate internal challenge of purchase decisions; ministers had insufficient information to assess the value for money of contracts before approving them.

– the presentation of financial management information risked being misleading and reducing accountability.

– Limited IT capability and ‘intelligent client’ function leading to a risk of supplier self-review.

– Charges were on the basis of time and materials, leaving the majority of risks with the Department.

Comment

How can civil servants knowingly, or through pressure of other work, effectively give their suppliers responsibility for the sums they are paid? This is a little like asking a builder to provide and install a platinum-lined roof, then giving it the authority to submit invoices up to the value of its needs, which you pay with little or no validation.

On BBC Newsnight this week, Michael Grade, a past chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, told Jeremy Paxman about the Corporation’s corporate culture. 

“I think the BBC suffers more and more from a lack of understanding of the value of money. A cheque comes in every April – for £3.5bn – and if you don’t have to earn the money, and you have that quantity of money, it is very hard to keep to keep a grip on the reality of the value of money.

“If you run a business, if you own a business, you switch the lights out at 6 O’Clock. Everybody’s gone. You walk around yourself. You own the business. It’s your money. You have earned it the hard way. The culture of the BBC of late has been, definitely, a loss of the sense of the value of money.”

Does this help to explain why so many government IT-enabled change programmes fail to meet expectations? One can talk about poor and changing specifications, over-ambitious timescales, poor leadership and inadequate accountability as reasons that contribute to failures of public sector IT-enabled change programmes.

But, at bottom, is there simply too much public money available and too few people supervising payments to suppliers? Is it asking too much of senior civil servants and ministers to treat public money as their own? Is there a lack of the reality of the true value of money, as Michael Grade says when he refers to the BBC?

It is perhaps inconceivable that any private company would spend £303m and not be sure exactly what it is getting for the money.

It may also be inconceivable that a private company would accept supplier-driven changes in costs and forecasts without fully understanding the assumptions driving those changes.

And would a private company not control what is to be supplied, when it is to be delivered and at what cost? Would it not define what is to be delivered before contracts are signed?

Would a private company not check properly whether submitted invoices are fully justified before making payments?

Perhaps central government is congenitally ill-suited to huge IT-based projects and programmes and should avoid them – unless ministers and their officials are prepared to accept the likelihood of delays of many years and costs that are many times the amounts in the early business cases. They would also need to accept that success, even then, is not guaranteed, as we know from the NPfIT.

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government IT, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, npfit, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, PWC, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Why does truth on Universal Credit emerge only now?

Posted on 04/09/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

For nearly a year the Department for Work and Pensions, its ministers and senior officials, have told Parliament that Universal Credit IT is on track and on budget.

Together with DWP press officers, they have criticised parts of the media and some MPs for suggesting otherwise.

Now the truth can be held back no longer: the National Audit Office is expected tomorrow to report on UC’s problems. Ahead of that report’s publication, and perhaps to take the sting out of it, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has allowed Howard Shiplee, the latest DWP lead on delivery of UC, to own up to the project’s difficulties.

IDS has given permission for Shiplee to write an article for the Telegraph on the UC project. Every word is  likely to have been checked by senior DWP communications officers.

It’s the first time anyone on the UC project has publicly acknowledged the project’s difficulties though, as with nearly every government response to critical NAO reports, the administration depicts the problems as in the past. Shiplee’s article says

“… it’s also clear to me there were examples of poor project management in the past, a lack of transparency where the focus was too much on what was going well and not enough on what wasn’t and with suppliers not managed as they should have been.

“There is no doubt there have been missteps along the way. But we’ve put that right…

“I’m not in the business of making excuses, and I think it’s always important to acknowledge in any project where things may have gone wrong in order to ensure we learn as we go forward.

“To that end, the key decision taken by the Secretary of State to reset the programme to ensure its delivery on time and within budget has been critical.

“When David Pitchford arrived from the Major Projects Authority earlier this year, at the Secretary of State’s request, he began this process in line with those twin objectives…

“I’ve also ensured that as a programme we have a tight grip on our spending, and I have put in place a post for a new Director who will be dedicated to ensuring that suppliers deliver value for money. I am confident we are now back on course and the challenges are being handled.”

Parliament has a right to ask why nearly every central government IT project that goes wrong – whatever the government in power – is preceded for months and sometimes years in the case of the NPfIT by public denials.

From the over-budget and fragmented Operational Strategy project for welfare benefits in the 1980s, to the repeatedly delayed and over budget air traffic control IT at the New En Route Centre at Swanwick, Hampshire, and the abandoned Post Office “Pathway” project in the 1990s, to the failed National Programme for IT – NPfIT –  in the NHS in the last decade, ministers and senior officials were telling Parliament that all was well and that the project’s critics were misinformed. Until the facts became only too obvious to be denied any longer.

These are some of the reassurances ministers and DWP officials have been giving Parliament and the media about the UC project. None of their statements has given a hint of the  “missteps along the way” that Shiplee’s article refers to now.

House of Commons, 20 May 2013

Universal Credit (IT System)

Clive Betts (Lab): What assessment he [the secretary of state for work and pensions] has made of the preparedness of the universal credit IT delivery system.

Iain Duncan Smith: The IT system to support the pathfinder roll-out from April 2013 is up and running…

Betts: I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but will he confirm that three of the pathfinders are not going ahead precisely because the computer system is not ready? …

Duncan Smith: The hon. Gentleman is fundamentally wrong. All the pathfinders are going ahead. The IT system is but a part of that, and goes ahead in one of the pathfinders. The other three are already testing all the other aspects of universal credit and in July will, essentially, themselves roll out the remainder of the pathfinder, and more than 7,000 people will be engaged in it. All that nonsense the hon. Gentleman has just said is completely untrue.”

**

BBC – 9 Sept 2012

 “A Department for Work and Pensions spokeswoman said: “Liam Byrne [Labour] is quite simply wrong. Universal Credit is on track and on budget. To suggest anything else is incorrect.”

**

Iain Duncan Smith, House of Commons, 20 May 2013

“This [Universal Credit] system is a success. We have four years to roll it out, we are rolling it out now, we will continue the roll-out nationwide and we will have a system that works—and one that works because we have tested it properly.”

Howard Shiplee – FT July 2013

“… Howard Shiplee, who has led UC since May, denied claims from MPs that the original IT had been ‘dumped’ because it had not delivered. ‘The existing systems that we have are working, and working effectively,’ he said. He added, however, that he had set aside 100 days ‘not to stop the programme, but to reflect on where we’ve got to and start to look at the entire total plan’.”

**

DWP spokesperson 16 August 2013

“… a DWP spokesperson said: “The IT supporting Universal Credit is working well and the vast majority of people are claiming online.”

**

Howard Shiplee Work and Pensions Committee, House of Commons, 10 July 2013.

“…The pathfinder, first of all, has demonstrated that the IT systems work…”

Mark Hoban, DWP minister, House of Commons, 6 March 2013.

“The shadow Secretary of State has been touting this story for months. No it has been longer than that. The last outing was in today’s Guardian. I want to make it clear that nobody has walked off the project; all the contractors are in place and the project is on schedule to be delivered at the end of April. Now, if he thinks the idea is good in theory, it is about time he supported it. It is working and the contractors are in place, doing the job and ensuring that the pilots will be up and running at the end of April.”

[Hoban’s response was to a question on whether personnel or contractors at Accenture, Atos Origin, Oracle, Red Hat, CACI or IBM UK had been stepped down, or in any way notified by the Department, that they were to suspend work on Universal Credit. The main IT contractors for UC are Accenture, Hewlett Packard and BT plus input from Agile specialists Emergn. The DWP awarded UC IT contracts without any specific open competitive tender.]

Comment

On this site various posts have questioned whether Iain Duncan Smith has been getting the whole truth on the state of the UC IT project. He repeatedly went before MPs of the Work and Pensions Committee and gave such confident reassurances on the state of the UC project that it was difficult to believe that he knew what was really going on.

What we now know about the UC project’s “missteps along the way” shows, if nothing else, how gullible ministers are in believing their officials.

It is hard or impossible to believe that officials would lie but it is probable they would tell their ministers what they want to hear – and IDS has been in no mood to hear about problems.

Every big IT-based project in government that is failing ends up in a pantomime. From the back of the auditorium the media and MPs shout out when they receive leaks about problems. “Look behind you – there’s chaos,” they call out to departmental ministers and officials who don’t look behind them and reply “Oh no there isn’t!”

One reason this pantomime is repeated over decades is that independent reports on the progress or otherwise on big IT-based projects and programmes in central government are kept under departmental lock and key.  Even FOI requests for the keys consistently fail. 

So it’s usual for ministers and officials to answer media and Parliamentary questions about departmental projects without fear of authoritative contradiction.

Until the NAO is in imminent danger of publishing  a revealing report.

Perhaps it’s a lack of openness and accountability that contributes to IT-enabled change projects in central government going seriously awry in the first place.

With openness would come early and public recognition of a scheme that’s too ambitious to be implementable. With secrecy and the gung-ho optimism that seems to pervade projects like Universal Credit many on the project pretend to each other and perhaps even themselves that it’s all doable, while money continues to be thrown away.

When will the pantomime of misinformation and long-delayed revelation stop? Perhaps when Whitehall becomes genuinely open and accountable on the progress or otherwise of its IT-enabled projects. In other words: never.

Thank you to David Moss for drawing my attention to Howard Shiplee’s article in the Telegraph.

Time for truth on Universal Credit

Millions of pounds worth of secret DWP reports

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, change management, DWP, Gateway reviews, HP, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing outsourced services, npfit, openness and transparency, operational issues, oversight, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Universal Credit IT working well claims DWP

Posted on 21/08/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Staff in job centres working on Universal Credit system are writing jobseekers’ personal information down on paper because their IT systems are so “clunky and cumbersome”, Dame Anne Begg, chair of the Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee, told Civil Service World.

“When we visited the Bolton Jobcentre Plus the IT system seemed clunky and cumbersome,” Begg said. Staff making appointments for UC applicants at the Bolton pilot scheme “had to write out some of the [jobseekers’] personal details, just to transfer them from one computer system to another. That’s something that we would have expected to be ironed out.”

The handwriting of jobseekers’ details “could lead to transposing errors”, she said.  Further, the Universal Credit IT system doesn’t allow jobseekers to save their data midway through an online application, Begg said.  She warned that this will penalise those who don’t own computers, who will have to remember to take all of their personal details in one batch to open access computers such as those at local libraries.

But a spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said:

“The IT supporting Universal Credit is working well and the vast majority of people are claiming online. Making a claim to Universal Credit in one session… helps ensure the security of a claimant’s information.”

Last month a leaked survey of staff at the Department of Work and Pensions who are working on Universal Credit programme found dishonesty, secrecy, poor communications, inadequate leadership and low morale.

[ Computer Weekly reports that the DWP placed just 0.5% of its Universal Credit IT spending directly with SMEs, and that the department’s major suppliers – Accenture, Atos, BT, IBM, Capita, HP and SCC – subcontracted little to SMEs. “The Universal Credit supply chain flowed downstream mostly to multinational technology suppliers such as Oracle, Nuance, Genband and RedHat.” Most Universal Credit IT spending has gone to Accenture, IBM and HP: £57m, £41m and £34m respectively, between January 2011 and May 2013.]

Comment

While keeping secret internal reports on the Universal Credit IT project, and while all the signs are that Universal Credit’s IT is in trouble – it’s easier to handle claims at least in part by hand – the DWP’s senior officials, spokespeople and Iain Duncan Smith are telling the public and Parliament that all is well.

Perhaps the next logical step is that they come onto the public stage in costume to tell us nursery tales, while playing stock characters who sing, dance, and perform skits. Maybe then they’ll be more believable.

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, Campaign4Change, Capita, DWP, excessive secrecy, IBM, managing change, openness and transparency, Oracle, procurement, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

Is Major Projects annual report truly ground-breaking?

Posted on 29/05/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, describes as “nothing short of groundbreaking” a report of the Major Projects Authority which gives the RAG (Rred/Amber/Green) status of more than 100 major projects.

That the report came out late on Friday afternoon as most journalists were preparing to go home, some of them for the whole bank holiday weekend, suggests that the document was a negotiated compromise: it would be published but in such a way as to get minimal publicity.

Indeed the report is a series of compromises. It has the RAG status of projects but not the original text that puts the status into context.

Another compromise: senior civil servants in departments have persuaded Maude to publish the RAG decisions when they are at least six months old.

This enables departmental officials to argue their case in the “narrative” section of the MPA annual report that a red or amber/red decision is out-of-date and that there has been significant improvement since. This is exactly the DWP’s justification for the amber/red status on Universal Credit.

The DWP says in the MPA report: “This rating [amber/red] dates back to September 2012, more than seven months ago. Since then, significant progress has been made in the delivery of Universal Credit. The Pathfinder was successfully launched and we are on course both to expand the Pathfinder in July 2013 and start the progressive national roll-out of Universal Credit in October.”

That the Pathfinder was launched successfully might have nothing to do with Universal Credit’s amber/red status which could be because of uncertainties over how the IT will perform at scale, given the complexities and interdependencies.  The MPA report says nothing about the uncertainties and risks of Universal Credit.

More compromises in the MPA annual report: the Cabinet Office appears to have allowed departments to hide their cost increases on projects such as HMRC’s Real-time Information [RTI] in the vague phrase “Total budgeted whole life costs (including non-government costs).”

The Cabinet Office has also allowed departments to write their own story to accompany the RAG status. So when HMRC writes its story on RTI it says that “costs have increased” but not by how much or why. We know from evidence that HMRC gave to the Public Accounts Committee that RTI costs have risen by “tens of millions of pounds”. There is nothing to indicate this in the MPA annual report.

Another compromise in the MPA annual report: there are no figures to compare the original forecast costs of a project with the projected costs now. There are only the 2012/13 figures compared with whole-life projected costs (including non-government projected spend).

And the MPA report is not comprehensive. It came out on the same day the BBC announced that it was scrapping its Digital Media Initiative which cost the public £98m. The MPA report does not mention the BBC.

The report is more helpful on the G-Cloud initiative, showing how cheap it is – about £500,000. But there is little information on the NHS National Programme for IT [NPfIT] or the Summary Care Record scheme. 

Yet the MPA annual report is ground-breaking. Since Peter Gershon, the then head of the Office of Government Commerce, introduced Gateway reviews of risky IT projects about 12 years ago with RAG decisions, they have remained unpublished, with few exceptions. The Cabinet Office is now publishing the RAG status of major departmental projects for the first time. Maude says

“A tradition of Whitehall secrecy is being overturned. And while previous Governments buried problems under the carpet, we are striving to be more open. By their very nature these works are high risk and innovative.

“They often break new ground and dwarf anything the private sector does in both scale and complexity. They will not always run to plan. Public scrutiny, however uncomfortable, will bring about improvement. Ending the lamentable record of failure to deliver these projects is our priority.”

Comment

The MPA annual report is a breath of fresh air.

Nearly every sentence, nearly every figure, represents compromise. The report reveals that the Universal Credit project was last year given an amber/red status – but it doesn’t say why. Yet the report has the DWP’s defence of the amber/red decision. So the MPA report has the departmental defences of the RAG decisions, without the prosecution evidence. That’s a civil service parody of openness and accountability: Sir Humphrey is allowed to defend himself in public without the case against him being heard.

But it’s still useful to know that Universal Credit is at amber/red.  It implies well into the project’s life that the uncertainties and risks are great. A major project at amber/red at this stage, a few months before go-live, is unlikely to turn green in the short term, if ever.

Congratulations

The Cabinet Office deserves congratulations for winning the fight for publication of the RAG status of each major project. Lord Browne, the government’s lead non-executive director and a member of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform group, has said  that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being frittered away because of “worryingly poor” management of government projects.

“Nobody ever stops or intervenes in a poor project soon enough. The temptation is always to ignore or underreport warning signs,” he says.

The management of some large projects – usually not the smaller ones – is so questionable that departments ignore advice to have one senior responsible owner per major project, says the MPA.

The MPA annual report will not stop the disasters. Its information is so limited that it will not even enable the public – armchair auditors – to hold departments to account. Senior civil servants have seen to that.

But the report’s publication is an important development: and it provides evidence of the struggle within Whitehall against openness. Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, have had to fight to persuade departmental officials to allow the RAG status of projects to be published. The Guardian’s political editor Patrick Wintour says of the MPA annual report

“Publication led to fierce infighting in Whitehall as government departments disputed the listings and fought to prevent publication.”

Large-scale change

If Maude and Kerslake struggled to get this limited distance, and there is still so much left to reform, will large-scale change ever happen?

Maude and his officials have as comprehensive mandate for change from David Cameron as they could hope for. Yet still the Cabinet Office still seems to have little influence on departments. When it comes to the big decisions, Sir Humphrey and his senior officials hold onto real power. That’s largely because the departments are responsible to Parliament for their financial decisions – not the Cabinet Office.

Maude and his team have won an important battle in publishing the MPA annual report. But the war to bring about major change is still in its very early stages; and there’s a general election in 2015 that could halt Maude’s reform plans altogether.

The Major Projects Authority Annual Report.

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Posted in capacity building, change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Why isn’t Universal Credit IT a disaster yet?

Posted on 30/04/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

voltaireVoltaire said those who walk well-trodden paths tend to throw stones at those who show a new road. 

Iain Duncan Smith has had nothing but criticism in the media for his extreme caution over the go-live yesterday of the innovative Universal Credit scheme. But he told Radio 4’s Today presenter Justin Webb he was learning from the NHS IT scheme and the implementation of tax credits.

[With the NPfIT the Department of Health threw caution to the wind and spent billions on IT work and contracts that were unnecessary. After working tax credits went live the Office of National Statistics estimated that, of the £13.5bn paid out in tax credits in 2004, £1.9bn was in overpayments; and IT-related problems led to delays in issuing payments, which caused hardship for those on low incomes.]

Iain_Duncan_Smith,_June_2007IDS said on R4 Today yesterday:

“What I have introduced here is a deliberate and slower process introduction because I learned from the chaos of tax credits where it collapsed and the chaos of the health department’s changes to their IT systems. I want to do this carefully to make sure we get it right.”

Justin Webb: But your critics say you are not testing the things that could go wrong – children and homeless people are not involved.  When are you going to involve them in a pilot?

IDS: They are all going to be involved as we roll out.

Webb: There will be a pilot that includes those more difficult groups?

IDS: These pilots are to test two things; first of all that the base process works and secondly that all the other issues …

Webb: No homeless people involved in that. The difficult people are not involved?

IDS: What we are doing is testing the basic process. As we roll out from October onwards we then complicate the process and we roll it out in such a way as we are able to bring those people in and ensure that we also test them as we are going through. It’s a perpetual process of rolling out and checking, rolling out and checking. That is the better way to do it. I have done this in the private sector and Lord Freud [work and pensions minister] did this in the banking sector. We have insisted on it because this is the right way to do it. Get it right. Not get it early.

Can IDS be too cautious?

Universal Credit is live on GOV.UK.  To claim it now you need to live in an OL6, OL7, M43 or SK16 postcode, have just become unemployed, fit for work, have no children, not be claiming disability benefits, not have any caring responsibilities, not be homeless or living in temporary accommodation, and have a valid bank account and national insurance number.

But still it’s a test of links between UC  and HMRC’s RTI systems. If the links are working properly the systems should verify that the new UC claimant has recently left PAYE employment. The pilot in Ashton is also a test of the UC payment system and whether the new scheme will encourage claimants to find a job and stay in work longer.

On Sunday, on BBC Radio 5’s Double Take, I praised the Department of Work and Pensions for an ultra-cautious approach in going live with UC.

But IT consultant Brian Wernham, author of Agile Project Management for Government, pointed out to BBC’s World This Weekend that thousands of people will need to claim UC every day from the official start of the scheme in October 2013 to the end of 2017 if the DWP is to complete its UC roll-out within the coalition’s promised schedule.

Yet the limited pilot in Ashton has restricted claimants to about 300 a month. At this rate the roll-out to more than eight million claimants will not be anywhere near complete by the end of 2017.

Comment

The Financial Times quotes Iain Duncan Smith as saying that one million claimants would be receiving universal credit by the end of April 2014.

This is now unlikely if not impossible. Even in October when the UC roll-out begins nationally, it will start with simple cases. By April 2014 it is hard to see that there will be 100,000 people claiming UC, let alone one million. Indeed the most complex cases may be handled outside of the main UC system, possibly manually or on a spreadsheet.

Why should the coalition care if the 2017 deadline is not met? A general election on 7 May 2015 means that UC will become the responsibility of a new government. IDS is then unlikely to be the DWP’s secretary of state. He could argue at that time that he should not be held responsible for any delays in the roll-out. Indeed the Tories could be out of government by then.

So what the coalition says now about UC’s future means little or nothing.

That said, the coalition seems to be learning lessons from past IT-related failures. It deserves praise for its extreme caution over the introduction of UC.

It is not doing everything right: the DWP is refusing to publish any of its expensive consultancy reports on the progress of the UC IT systems. Partly that is because of DWP culture and because shadow ministers are waiting to jump on any putative weakness in the UC scheme. Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said on yesterday’s Today programme that universal credit was “a fine idea that builds on Labour’s tax credits revolution”.

liam byrneHe added: “The truth is the scheme is late, over budget, the IT system appears to be falling apart and even DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] ministers admit they haven’t got a clue what is going on.”

But when Byrne was in government he was an unswerving advocate of the disastrous NPfIT. So can his criticism of the UC project be trusted now?

Despite a generally negative media there are no signs yet that UC is a disaster in the making.  Indeed RTI is working so far, which was the biggest single risk.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is said to remain concerned that UC could prove an electoral disaster, and his concern is good for the UC IT project. It means the coalition will continue to roll out UC with extreme caution.

Such a play-it-safe approach might never have occurred before on a major government IT project. So does it matter that UC  takes years to roll out?

Perhaps the roll-out may continue well beyond 2017 but it’s better to complete a simplification of the benefits system over an extended time than pay claimants the wrong amounts or leave the vulnerable without payment altogether.  

Teething troubles on day one of Universal Credit scheme – Guardian

Could HMRC have a major success on its hands? – RTIis working

The vultures circle over Universal Credit IT.

DWP hides the facts on UC IT progress.

Are civil servants misleading IDS over Universal Credit IT progress?

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Posted in Agile, change management, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, innovation, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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Could HMRC have a major IT success on its hands?

Posted on 17/04/2013 | 11 comments

By Tony Collins

It’s much too soon to say that Real-Time Information is a success – but it’s not looking  like another central government IT disaster.

A gradual implementation with months of piloting, and HMRC’s listening to comments from payroll professionals, software companies and employers, seems to have made a difference.

The Cabinet Office’s high-priority attempts to avoid IT disasters, through the Major Projects Authority, seems also to have helped, by making HMRC a little more humble, collegiate and community-minded than in past IT roll-outs. HMRC is also acutely sensitive to the ramifications of an RTI roll-out failure on the reputation of Universal Credit which starts officially in October.

On the GOV.UK website HMRC says that since RTI started on 6 April 2013 about 70,000 PAYE [pay-as-you-earn] returns have been filed by employers or their agents including software and payroll companies.

About 70,000 is a small number so far. HMRC says there are about 1.6 million PAYE schemes, every one of which will include PAYE returns for one or more employees. About 30 million people are on PAYE. Nearly all employers are expected to be on RTI by October 2013.

The good news

 Ruth Owen, HMRC’s Director General Personal Tax, says:

“RTI is the biggest change to PAYE in 70 years and it is great news that so many employers have started to report PAYE in real time. But we are under no illusions – we know that it will take time before every employer in the country is using RTI.

“We appreciate that some employers might be daunted by the change but …we are taking a pragmatic approach which includes no in-year late filing penalties for the first year.”

It hasn’t been a big-bang launch. HMRC has been piloting RTI for a year with thousands of employers. Under RTI, employers and their agents give HMRC real-time PAYE information every time the employee is paid, instead of yearly.

When bedded down the system is expected to cut administrative costs for businesses and make tax codes more accurate, though the transitional RTI costs for some businesses, including training, may be high and payroll firms have had extra costs for changes to their software.

RTI means that employers don’t have to complete annual PAYE returns or send in forms when new employees join or leave.

The bad news

The RTI systems were due to cost £108m but HMRC’s Ruth Owen told the Treasury sub-committee that costs have risen by tens of millions:

“… I can see that it [RTI] is going to cost £138m compared with £108m. I believe that is going to go up again in the scale of tens of millions.”

She said that in October 2012.

Success?

The Daily Telegraph suggested on Monday that RTI may be “ready to implode”.

But problems with RTI so far seem to be mainly procedural and rule-based – or are related to long waits getting queries answered via the helpline – rather than any major faults with the RTI systems.

In general members of the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals report successes with their RTI submissions, and some comment on response times being good after initial delays at around the launch date.

Payroll software supplier Sage says the filing of submissions has been successful. There was a shaky start, however, with HMRC’s RTI portal being under maintenance over the weekend.

Jonathan Cowan from the Sage Payroll Team said: “There was understandable confusion and frustration over the weekend with businesses unable to file due to HMRC site issues.”

Accountingweb’s readers have had many problems – it said RTI “stumbled into action –  but few of the difficulties are, it seems, serious. “Have I missed something, but RTI despite all the commotion doesn’t seem that bad,” says an accountant in a blog post on the site.

Payrollworld says RTI problems have been minor. “The launch of Real Time Information (RTI) has encountered a number of minor issues, though payroll suppliers broadly report initial filing success.”

Comment

It’s not everyday we report on a big government IT project that shows signs of succeeding. It’s too early to call RTI a success but it’s difficult to see how anything can go seriously wrong now unless HMRC’s helplines give way under heavy demand.

It’s worth remembering that RTI is aimed at PAYE professionals – not the general public as with Universal Credit. Payroll specialists are used to solving complex problems. That said, RTI’s success is critical to the success of Universal Credit. A barrier to that success has, for now, been overcome.

Perhaps HMRC’s RTI success so far shows what a central department can achieve when it listens and acts on concerns instead of having a mere consultation; and it has done what it could to avoid failure. They’re obvious precepts for the private sector – but have not always in the past been characteristics of central government IT schemes such as the NPfIT.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cost reduction, culture, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, managing change, npfit, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Another Universal Credit leader stands down

Posted on 11/03/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Universal Credit’s Programme Director, Hilary Reynolds, has stood down after only four months in post. The Department for Work and Pensions says she has been replaced by the interim head of Universal Credit David Pitchford.

Last month the DWP said Pitchford was temporarily leading Universal Credit following the death of Philip Langsdale at Christmas. In November 2012 the DWP confirmed that the then Programme Director for UC, Malcolm Whitehouse, was stepping down – to be replaced by Hilary Reynolds. Steve Dover,  the DWP’s Corporate Director, Universal Credit Programme Business, has also been replaced.

A DWP spokesman said today (11 March 2013),

“David Pitchford’s role as Chief Executive for Universal Credit effectively combines the Senior Responsible Officer and Programme Director roles.  As a result, Hilary Reynolds will now move onto other work.” She will no longer work on UC but will stay at the DWP, said the spokesman.

Raised in New Zealand, Reynolds is straight-talking. When she wrote to local authority chief executives in December 2012, introducing herself as the new Director for the Universal Credit Programme, her letter was free of the sort of jargon and vague management-speak that often characterises civil service communications.  It is a pity she is standing down.

Some believe that Universal Credit will be launched in such a small way it could be managed manually. The bulk of the roll-out will be after the next general election, which means the plan would be subject to change. Each limited phase will have to prove itself before the next roll-out starts.

Reynolds’ letter to local authorities suggests that the roll-out of UC will, initially, be limited.  She said in her letter,

“For the majority of local authorities, the impact of UC during the financial year 2013/14 will be limited. .. Initially, UC will replace new claims from single jobseekers of working age in certain defined postcode areas.

“From October 2013 we plan to extend the service to include jobseekers with children, couples and owner-occupiers, gradually expanding the service to locations across Great Britain and making it available to the full range of eligible working age claimants …by the end of 2017.”

Some IT work halted? 

Accenture, Atos Origin, Oracle, Red Hat, CACI and IBM UK have all been asked to stop work on UC, according to shadow minister Liam Byrne MP, as reported on consultant Brian Wernham’s blog.

Wernham says that Minister Mark Hoban did not rebut Byrne’s statement but said that HP was committed to carrying on with the project. HP is responsible for deployment of a solution, not development, says Wernham’s agile government blog.

Comment

The DWP says that Pitchford has taken over from Reynolds – but separately the DWP had confirmed that Pitchford was leading UC temporarily and that Reynolds had a permanent job on the programme. Pitchford’s usual job is running the Major Projects Authority in the Cabinet Office.

All the changes at the DWP, and the reported halting of work by IT contractors, imply that the UC project is proving more involved, and moving more slowly,  than initially thought. It’s also a reason for the DWP to continue to refuse FOI requests for internal reports that assess the project’s progress.

Perhaps the DWP doesn’t want people to know that the project is on track for such a limited roll-out in October that it could be managed, in the main, by hand. With the bulk of the roll-out planned for after the next general election Labour may be denied the use of UC as an effective electoral weapon against the Conservatives. In other words, the riskiest stage of UC is being put off until 2016/17.

 Francis Maude, who is worried that UC will prove an IT and electoral disaster, has his own man, David Pitchford, leading the project, if only temporarily. Meanwhile UC project leaders from the DWP continue to last an extraordinarily short time. Reynolds had been UC programme director for only four months when she stood down. Pitchford is in a temporary role as the programme’s head, and Andy Nelson has recently become the DWP’s Chief Information Officer.

So much for UC’s continuity of leadership.

The truth about the project hasn’t been told. Isn’t it time someone told Iain Duncan Smith what’s really happening – Francis Maude perhaps?

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, Atos, DWP, FOI, Government IT, IBM, local government, openness and transparency, Oracle, outsourcing, Politics, Universal Credit

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Universal Credit and Pitchford – good move or a potential conflict of interest?

Posted on 21/02/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that the executive director of the Major Projects Authority, David Pitchford, is to take interim charge of the delivery of Universal Credit, starting this week, says Government Computing.

Pitchford will stay initially for a three-month stint until a permanent replacement is appointed. He joins DWP’s CIO Andy Nelson, who was previously at the Ministry of Justice,  in helping to oversee the Universal Credit project.

Pitchford and Nelson are jointly taking the place of Philip Langsdale, DWP’s highly respected CIO, who passed away just before Christmas last year.

The Daily Telegraph and Independent have portrayed Pitchford’s appointment as a sign that Universal Credit is in trouble. The Telegraph’s headline on Monday was

Welfare reforms in doubt as troubleshooter takes over

And the Independent reported that:

“Ministers have been forced to draft in one of the Government’s most experienced trouble-shooters to take charge of the troubled Universal Credit programme – amid fears the complex new system could backfire.”

But DWP officials say Pitchford’s appointment is not a sign Universal Credit is behind schedule.

A DWP spokesperson said, “David Pitchford will be temporarily leading Universal Credit following the death of Philip Langsdale at Christmas. This move will help ensure the continued smooth preparation for the early rollout of Universal Credit in Manchester and Cheshire in April. A recruitment exercise for a permanent replacement will be starting shortly.”

In Pitchford’s absence, the day-to-day running of the Major Projects Authority will be handled by Juliet Mountford and Stephen Mitchell, with oversight from government chief operating officer Stephen Kelly. Pitchford will retain overall responsibility for the MPA’s activities, says Government Computing.

Comment

On the face of it Pitchford’s appointment is a clever move: the Cabinet Office now has a senior insider at the DWP who can report back on the state of the Universal Credit project.

Francis Maude, who is the Cabinet Office minister in change of efficiency and is trying to distance the government from from Labour’s IT disasters, is almost openly worried about the smell that could come from a failure of the Universal Credit project.

DWP secretary of state Iain Duncan Smith keeps reassuring his ministerial colleagues that critics are ill-formed and all is well with the project. But it is not clear whether he has an overly positive interpretation of the facts or understands the complexities of the project and all that could go wrong.

Even officials at HMRC are having difficulty understanding some of the detailed technical lessons from the work so far on RTI – Real-time information. Although RTI does not need Universal Credit to succeed, Universal Credit is dependent on  RTI.

With  much conflicting information within government over the state of the Universal Credit project – which is compounded by DWP’s refusal under FOI to publish several consultancy reports it has commissioned on the scheme – it is useful for the Cabinet Office to have the highly experienced and much respected Australian David Pitchford run Universal Credit. 

Pitchford is a much-valued civil servant in part because he is straight-talking. He said in  2011 that government projects failed because of:

– Political pressure

– No business case

– No agreed budget
– 80% of projects launched before 1,2 & 3 have been resolved
– Sole solution approach (options not considered)
– Lack of Commercial capability  – (contract / administration)
– No plan
– No timescale
– No defined benefits

Since he made this speech, and it was reported, Pitchford has become a little more guarded about what he says in public. The longer he stays in the innately secretive UK civil service, the more guarded he seems to become but he is still one the best assets the Cabinet Office has. His main advantage is his independence from government departments.

Potential for a conflict of interest?

The Major Projects Authority exists to provide independent oversight of big projects that could otherwise fail. Regularly it is  in polite conflict with departments over the future direction of questionable projects and indeed whether they should come under the scrutiny of the MPA at all.

Pitchford’s taking over of Universal Credit, even on an interim basis, raises questions about whether he can ever  be seen in future as an independent scrutineer of the project. According to The Independent, Pitchford will report directly to Iain Duncan Smith – bypassing the DWP’s permanent secretary Robert Devereux.

Once his secondment to the DWP ends Pitchford may wish to criticise aspects of the project. Can he do so with the armour of independence having run the project? Would he have the authority to delay Universal Credit’s introduction?

Pitchford is now an integral part of Universal Credit. He is in the position of the local government ombudsman who is seconded to a local authority, or an auditor at the National Audit Office who sits on the board of a government department.  If a big project at the department goes wrong, the permanent secretary can say to the NAO:  “Well you had a representative on our board. Are you in a position to criticise us?”

The MPA does a good job largely because it is independent of departments. There are signs that it is intervening to stop failing projects or put them on a more secure footing. Can the MPA remain independent of departments if its head has been seconded to a department?

On the other hand Francis Maude is likely to receive an account of how Universal Credit is going. And the Universal Credit project will have the benefit of an external, independent scrutineer as its head.

But if the MPA and Universal Credit are inextricably linked how can the MPA do its job of being an independent regulator of big IT projects including Universal Credit?

Pitchford takes on Universal Credit role

Government brings in troubleshooter to get Universal Credit on track.

Welfare reforms in doubt after troubleshooter takes over

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HMRC, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Big IT suppliers and their Whitehall “hostages”

Posted on 30/01/2013 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Mark Thompson is a senior lecturer in information systems at Cambridge Judge Business School, ICT futures advisor to the Cabinet Office and strategy director at consultancy Methods.

Last month he said in a Guardian comment that central government departments are “increasingly being held hostage by a handful of huge, often overseas, suppliers of customised all-or-nothing IT systems”.

Some senior officials are happy to be held captive.

“Unfortunately, hostage and hostage taker have become closely aligned in Stockholm-syndrome fashion.

“Many people in the public sector now design, procure, manage and evaluate these IT systems and ignore the exploitative nature of the relationship,” said Thompson.

The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages bond with their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them.

This month the Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued  a pre-tender notice for Oracle ERP systems. Worth between £250m and £750m, the framework will be open to all central government departments, arms length bodies and agencies and will replace the current “Prism” contract with Capgemini.  

It’s an old-style centralised framework that, says Chris Chant, former Executive Director at the Cabinet Office who was its head of G-Cloud, will have Oracle popping champagne corks. 

“This is a 1993 answer to a 2013 problem,” he told Computer Weekly.

In the same vein, Georgina O’Toole at Techmarketview says that central departments are staying with big Oracle ERP systems.   

She said the framework “appears to support departments continuing to run Oracle or, indeed, choosing to move to Oracle”. This is “surprising as when the Shared Services strategy was published in December, the Cabinet Office continued to highlight the cost of running Oracle ERP…”

She said the framework sends a  message that the Cabinet Office has had to accept that some departments and agencies are not going to move away from Oracle or SAP.

“The best the Cabinet Office can do is ensure they are getting the best deal. There’s no doubt there will be plenty of SIs looking to protect their existing relationships by getting a place on the FCO framework.”

G-Cloud and open standards?

Is the FCO framework another sign that the Cabinet Office, in trying to cut the high costs of central government IT, cannot break the bond – the willing hostage-captive relationship –  between big suppliers and central departments?

The framework appears to bypass G-Cloud in which departments are not tied to a particular company. It also appears to cock a snook at the idea of replacing  proprietary with open systems.

Mark Thompson said in his Guardian comment: 

– Administrative IT systems, which cost 1% of GDP, have become a byword for complexity, opacity, expense and poor delivery.

– Departments can break free from the straitjackets of their existing systems and begin to procure technology in smaller, standardised building blocks, creating demand for standard components across government. This will provide opportunities for less expensive SMEs and stimulate the local economy.

– Open, interoperable platforms for government IT will help avoid the mass duplication of proprietary processes and systems across departments that currently waste billions.

–  A negative reaction to the government’s open standards policy from some monopolistic suppliers is not surprising.

Comment

It seems that Oracle and the FCO have convinced each other that the new framework represents change.  But, as Chris Chant says, it is more of the same.

If there is an exit door from captivity the big suppliers are ushering senior officials in departments towards it saying politely “you first” and the officials are equally deferential saying “no – you first”. In the end they agree to stay where they are.

Will Thompson’s comments make any difference?

Some top officials in central departments – highly respected individuals – will dismiss Thompson’s criticisms of government IT because they believe the civil service and its experienced suppliers are doing a good job: they are keeping systems of labyrinthine complexity running unnoticeably smoothly for the millions of people who rely on government IT.

Those officials don’t want to mess too much with existing systems and big IT contracts in case government systems start to become unreliable which, they argue, could badly affect millions of people.

These same officials will advocate reform of systems of lesser importance such as those involving government websites; and they will champion agile and IT-related reforms that don’t affect them or their big IT contracts.

In a sense they are right. But they ignore the fact that government IT costs much too much. They may also exaggerate the extent to which government IT works well. Indeed they are too quick to dismiss criticisms of government IT including those made by the National Audit Office.

In numerous reports the NAO has drawn attention to weaknesses such as the lack of reliable management information and unacceptable levels of fraud and internal error in the big departments. The NAO has qualified the accounts of the two biggest non-military IT spending departments, the DWP and HMRC.

Ostensible reformers are barriers to genuine change.  They need to be replaced with fresh-thinking civil servants who recognise the impossibility of living with mega IT contracts.

Mark Thompson’s Guardian article.

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, Cloud, Cloud Computing, cost avoidance, cost reduction, culture, DWP, G-Cloud, Government IT, HMRC, innovation, managing change, managing outsourced services, open source, open standards, operational issues, Oracle ERP, Politics, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, reducing cost strategically, supplier relationships

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