Category Archives: excessive secrecy

Francis Maude talks open govt – and Whitehall does the opposite

Posted on 12/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

“If people do not know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong.” – Sir Arnold Robinson, Cabinet Secretary in a discussion on open government in Yes Minister.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said all the right things at the Intellect World Class Public Services conference 2012.

He said that:

– smaller, innovative and efficient suppliers were finding themselves locked out of the supply of services to Government because of what was described by Parliament as a powerful “oligopoly” of large suppliers

– for the first time in Government “we are using agile, iterative processes, open source technology platforms and world-class in-house development teams alongside the best digital innovation the market can offer”

– “We must eliminate failure waste. At the moment, a large proportion of our service delivery costs are incurred through incomplete or failed digital transactions. And these transactions create cross-channel duplication, which burdens the user and costs Government a huge amount in repeated costs. For HMRC alone, they estimate that 35% of calls to its contact centres are avoidable, which would save £75m.”

– “Transparency is a defining passion for this Government …”

Comment:

How much influence does Maude really have? Can he persuade permanent secretaries to effect major change? The evidence so far is that departmental officials and Maude have different ideas on what reform means.

In “Yes Minister” civil servants were proud of a new hospital that was the best run and most hygienic in the country, with no medical staff, 500 administrators and no patients.

Maude may also recall that Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the acclaimed writers of Yes Minister, spoke of the Whitehall law of inverse relevance – “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it”.

Open government? 

Perhaps civil servants are letting Maude get on with talking the talk while they find every way to keep things much as they are. A good example: The Guardian reported yesterday that a key part of the Government’s transparency drive has stalled amid reports of ministry opposition.

The paper’s political editor Patrick Wintour reported that plans to publish regular ‘traffic-light’ progress reports on large, costly and risky IT projects “appear to have been shelved”.

When it comes to IT this could have been the coalition’s most important single reform. It would have given MPs and the public a way of knowing when mega projects such as Universal Credit are failing. Usually we don’t know about a failed IT-related project unless there is a leak to the media, or the National Audit Office finds out and decides, with its limited budget, to do a study.

Sir Bob Kerslake, who is head of the civil service,  had indicated to MP Richard Bacon that “Gateway” review reports on large and risky IT and construction projects may be published in the civil service reform plan which is expected to be released this month.

Gateway reports to go unpublished?

Now it seems that departmental civil servants  have persuaded the Sir Bob not to publish “Gateway” reports. So the secrecy over the progress or otherwise of government mega projects is set to continue.

Yes, civil servants will allow the Cabinet Office to have its way on the publication of data about, say, some government spending. But it’s becoming clear that the civil service will not allow any publication of its reports on the progress or otherwise of major projects. It has been that way since Gateway reviews were introduced in 2001.

Some senior officials – by no means all – say they want a confidential “safe space” to discuss the progress of projects. The reality is that they do not want outsiders – MPs, the media and NAO auditors – meddling in their failing schemes – schemes such as Firecontrol and e-filing at the Ministry of Justice.

Unlike Maude, senior civil servants have what Jay and Lynn call a “flexible approach to open government”. This means in practice that Whitehall will happily release data – but not project reports on which the civil servants themselves can be judged.

Activity is not achievement

Maude’s speeches will give the impression of activity. But activity is the civil service’s substitute for achievement. I quote Jay and Lynn again, in part because their depiction of Whitehall seems to have been taken as serious wisdom by those officials who think Sir Humphrey a character worth living up to.

It’s time Maude and his team got a grip on departments. Until they do, permanent secretaries and their senior officials will regard Maude as trying to get out of situations that don’t need getting out of.

Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects?

The empty hospital – Yes Minister

Government’s transparency drive stalls.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cost avoidance, cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, oversight, Politics, SME

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HMRC loses an important voice on its board

Posted on 11/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Steve Lamey, who is leaving HM Revenue and Customs as Director General, Benefits and Credits, has worked tirelessly to improve the organisation’s systems and administration; and he has gained a reputation for listening to IT suppliers.

In 2007 he  won a British Software Satisfaction award for his work in promoting collaboration within the business software industry. He joined HMRC in October 2004 as CIO.

He is perceived to be leaving at a time when there are a number of vacancies at the top of HMRC. Accountancylive reported last month there was an “exodus”of senior officials from HMRC, and morale is said to be low.  But a man as influential as Lamey can do only so much.  Anyone who wants to effect major change at  HMRC must move an iceberg with a rowing boat. That said there have been some HMRC IT-related successes.

Was Lamey an unexploded force at HMRC?

But it’s conceivable that Lamey could have achieved more if he had carried on the way he started: by highlighting the need for change.

He unwittingly made a name for himself in 2005 after a speech he gave to a Government IT conference in which he revealed some of the corporate weaknesses of HMRC, an the organisation he had  joined not long before.

He  probably had not expected  his comments to be reported first in Computer Weekly and then on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

At that time Lamey was HMRC’s new CIO. He told delegates of some of his discoveries, namely that:

– At least 31 million wrongly addressed letters were being sent out.

– Nearly half of self-assessment tax forms were being incorrectly processed and had to be done again.

–  he had been struck by the out-of-date computer systems. He told the conference: “If I were an information technology historian I would love it. We need to move on from there.”

– his  “biggest, biggest, biggest challenge” was correcting “poor quality data”.

Later a Daily Telegraph article, quoted me as saying “Mr Lamey’s frank assessment of the state of the tax department’s processes and systems is a rare and fresh approach for a senior government official.”

But was Lamey muzzled?

After that article it seems that Lamey was effectively muzzled, at least from making disclosures in public about HMRC’s flaws. Board papers at the time indicated that senior civil servants at HMRC would, in future, have to clear their public speeches in advance. Lamey did not make a similar speech in public again, not to my knowledge at least.

Richard Bacon MP, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, spoke at the time of the apparent attempts by HMRC to silence Lamey.

“It was refreshing to have a senior IT specialist, who is familiar with the business issues, and who is prepared to identify clearly what the scale of the problems is. Unless you’ve got that degree of frankness and candour, I don’t think you’re really going to solve the underlying problems. The alternative is to be in denial, to suggest that the problems don’t exist. It is plain that they do.”

The then Shadow Treasury minister Baroness Noakes, who was formerly a partner at KPMG, said she was concerned that it was already hard for parliament to discover how well HMRC was managing its business.

She said HMRC was “apparently silencing people from telling the truth”. She added “Speaking the truth [in the public sector] in the way you do in the private sector may well not be as acceptable.”

Would Lamey have been even more influential if he had continued – in public – to point to the weaknesses HMRC needed to tackle?

So defensive is HMRC that it considered a positive PR campaign to highlight its strengths after the loss of two CDs which contained the details of 25 million people.

Can an organisation that intuitively discounts and suppresses the negatives while trumpeting the positives ever properly reform itself? Probably not. If you cannot accept you have problems you cannot resolve them. We wonder how HMRC is getting on with its part of the Universal Credit project … its officials say all is well.

Attempts to constrain HMRC directors.

Front page Telegraph article with references to Steve Lamey’s speech

HMRC honcho poached.

Time for truth on Universal Credit

Hungry re-seller bags Steve Lamey.

Whistleblower punished?

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Posted in excessive secrecy, Government IT, HMRC, managing change, openness and transparency, Politics, private sector lessons for the public sector, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects – after 10-year campaign?

Posted on 29/05/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office may be about to change its decade-old policy of not publishing reports on  the progress or otherwise of its large, costly and risky IT-based projects.

A change of policy from secrecy to openness would give MPs and the public warning of when a major project is in trouble and needs rescuing or cancelling.

Parliament last to know

For more than a decade campaigners have sought to persuade successive governments to publish “Gateway” reviews, which are short independent audits on the state of big projects.  The secrecy has meant that Parliament is usually the last to know when new national schemes go wrong. IT-related failures have hit many public services including those related to tax, benefits, immigration, passports, the fire service, prisons, schools examinations, student loans, the police and health services.

Now Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, has hinted to campaigning Conservative MP Richard Bacon that the Cabinet Office may change its policy and publish the “red, amber, green” status of large projects as they are routinely assessed.

Kerslake was replying to Bacon at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee meeting on transparency. Bacon pointed out at the hearing that the Public Accounts Committee had, years ago, called for Gateway reviews to be published.

Not learning from mistakes

“Something I have always been puzzled by is why government does not learn from its mistakes particularly but not only in the area of IT where things go wrong again and again, again and again,” said Bacon. “I have come to the conclusion government does not learn from its mistakes because it does not have a learning curve. If you don’t have a learning curve you are not going to learn.”

He cited the example of how Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, had, at Bacon’s request, arranged for an “Opening Gate” report on Universal Credit to be published in the House of Commons library.

But, said Bacon, when an IT journalist applied to the Department for Work and Pensions, under the FOI Act, for the release of all Gateway reports on Universal Credit, the DWP would not publish any of them  – and even refused an FOI request to release the report Watmore had arranged to be placed in the House of Commons library, which Bacon obtained.  “So there is still a culture of intuitive, instinctive secrecy,”  Bacon said. Kerslake replied:

“Yes, actually we are looking at this specific issue as part of the Civil Service Reform Plan….I cannot say exactly what will be in the plan because we have not finalised it yet, but it is due in June and my expectation is that I am very sympathetic to publication of the RAG [red, amber, green] ratings.”

Bacon pointed out that the Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates had said Gateway reviews would be published.  But the commitment was removed for no apparent reason. When the Cabinet Office was asked why,  it said the Structural Reform Plans were only ever “drafts”.

Bacon asked Kerslake if the Government now plans to publish the Gateway reports.  “The Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates originally said Gateway reviews would be published  and then it somehow got downgraded into a draft; and from what’s publicly available at the moment the position of the government is not to publish Gateway reviews.  You sound as if you’re saying that’s going to change. Is that right?” asked Bacon.

“Watch this space,” replied Kerslake. “I am sympathetic. I generally broadly welcome, in principle, the idea of publishing information but there are lots of risks …”

Peter Gershon introduced Gateway reviews when he was Chief Executive of the Office of Government Commerce, which is now part of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group. The reviews are carried out at key decision times in a project and are sometimes repeated:

  • Gateway Review 0 – Strategic assessment
  • Gateway Review 1 – Business justification
  • Gateway Review 2 – Procurement strategy
  • Gateway Review 3 – Investment decision
  • Gateway Review 4 – Readiness for service
  • Gateway Review 5 – Benefits realisation

Are Gateway reviews a success?

Gateway reviews are now supplemented by regular assurance audits carried out for the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. None of the reports is published.

Gateway reviews have not stopped costly failures such as Firecontrol or the NPfIT.  One permanent secretary told an MP that the reviews in his department were considered unimportant by senior responsible owners, for whom the reports are written. This may be because SROs often have charge of many projects; and even their SRO responsibilities are often in addition to their main jobs.

But Gershon had high hopes of Gateway reviews when they were introduced in February 2001. This is evident from the number of times he referred to Gateway reviews at one hearing of the Public Accounts Committee in December 2001.

 “… as the Gateway review process cuts in, which I have referred to on a number of occasions when I have appeared at this Committee …”

“… Through things like the Gateway process we are helping to sharpen the focus on the whole life aspects of these and other forms of complex projects in public sector procurement…”

“ …First, we have the introduction of the Gateway review process…”

“ … The Gateway process is a demonstrable example of how we have introduced a technique to support that whole life approach…”

“… If you look at the guidelines around the Gateway review process that is one of the things that is tested by these independent reviews …”

“… we recognised that that was a problem some time ago, which is why in the Gateway review one of the things that is explicitly tested is things like the skills and capabilities of the team at the design and build stage and that the skills and capabilities of the team at the procurement stage …”

“… in this area with the Gateway review process, from when we first launched it last February, we have been helping the department take a whole life approach to these forms of complex projects …”

“… Part of the Gateway Review process is to get a much sharper insight on to where we see good things happening where we can encourage other clients to replicate them…”

“… Now, with the Gateway Review process, my experience has been because of where we have deliberately focused the attention on the early life of projects where there is the greater scope for management to take corrective action, the accounting officers are paying a lot of attention to the recommendations that are emerging because, much to my surprise, most of them do not seem to like coming here defending what has gone wrong in the past. They seem to welcome the recommendations that we are providing to them to help try to get projects on to much stronger foundations in the future…”

“… With the Gateway Review, my experience has been that the Accounting Officers respond to the recommendations very positively…”

“…Gateway Reviews explicitly test how the department is planning in the pre-contract phase to secure ongoing value for money in the post-contract phase…”

“… Take, firstly, the Gateway Review process. That is testing various points in the life cycle of the project, from the very earliest stage…”

“… I would certainly expect in Gateway Reviews that the review team would be testing what methods were in place to facilitate the ongoing management of the contract…”

“… I think it is encouraging that Sir Ian Byatt thought the Gateway Review process had sufficient value to recommend it in his own review…”

And so forth.

Comment:

We applaud Richard Bacon MP for his persistent call for Gateway reports to be published.

Gateway reviews have defeated expectations that they would stop failures; and the National Audit Office tells us that central departments don’t even request Gateway reviews on some big and risky projects although they are supposed to be mandatory.

But Gateway and other project assurance reports could prove invaluable if they are published. In the public domain the reports would enable Parliament and Francis Maude’s “armchair auditors” to hold officials and SROs to account for projects that are in danger of failing. That would be an incentive for officialdom to fail early and fail cheaply; and Gateway reviewers may take greater care to be neutral in their findings – not too lenient, or too harsh – on the basis that the reports would be open to public scrutiny. SROs would also have to take the review reports seriously – not just put them in a draw because nobody knows about them anyway.

We welcome Kerslake’s comments but hope that he and his colleagues plan to publish more than the RAG (Red/Amber/Green) status of projects. Otherwise they will be missing an opportunity.  Gateway reports and other assurance reviews are expensive. Reviewers can earn up to £1,000 a day. This money  could be well spent if the reviews are to be published; but it will add to public waste if the reports are kept secret and continue to be deemed pointless or unimportant by departments.

It is ironic, incidentally, that the Ministry of Justice, which introduced the FOI Act, gives advice to departments to keep the RAG status of Gateway reviews confidential. In its advice on Gateway reviews and the FOI, the MoJ tells departments that the “working assumption” is that the substance of the Gateway reports should be kept confidential until at least two years have elapsed.

It’s time for a culture change. Maybe the Civil Service Reform Plan next month will be worth reading.

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Posted in change management, cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, NHS, npfit, openness and transparency, oversight, Politics, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Healthspace was failing in 2010 – why is it being kept alive?

Posted on 25/05/2012 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

“Too many failing projects are continued for too long” – Ian Watmore, House of Commons, 2009.

HealthSpace, a centrally-run system that has, for years, provided unneeded work for consultants based at Connecting for Health, software developers, civil servants, and IT suppliers,  at a cost of tens of millions of pounds, is to close “from” March 2013.

A report commissioned by the Department of Health and NHS Connecting for Health in 2010 found that the system had never worked satisfactorily. But the Department and CfH has kept the project going, paying consultants and IT suppliers, although it was clear from an early stage that the scheme was doomed.

Will the Department of Health continue paying consultants and IT suppliers for a system that is to be cancelled?

HealthSpace was designed to be a personal health organiser. It was based on a good idea – that some patients could benefit from access to their health records – but the technology was too complicated and never fit for the public to use. It is said that those involved in the project spoke in a technological, managerial and procurement language – and rarely mentioned patients.

The Guardian this week reports Charles Gutteridge, national clinical director for informatics at the Department of Health, as saying that Healthspace is “too difficult to make an account; it is too difficult to log on; it is just too difficult.”

The Department of Health later told The Guardian that Healthspace would be closed down “from” March 2013.

In 2010 a report by Trisha Greenhalgh and her team, The devil’s in the detail, which was commissioned by CfH, found that HealthSpace had involved professional advisers, software developers, security testing contractors, business managers who wrote the benefits realisation cases, lawyers who advised on privacy and regulatory matters and many others.

Yet the system was doomed from the start. Greenhalgh’s report in May 2010 revealed that:

“Project leads from participating NHS organisations repeatedly raised concerns with Connecting for Health in monthly management meetings about the low uptake of advanced HealthSpace accounts, since the benefits predicted, such as lower NHS costs and patient driven improvements to data quality, could not possibly be achieved unless the technology was used.”

Comment:

It’s not known how many millions has been wasted – and continues to be wasted – on Healthspace; and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the continuance of the scheme benefits nobody except those who are paid to work on it, which includes contractors and IT suppliers.

Why is the scheme to be cancelled “from” 2013, when it should have been cancelled when Trisha Greenhalgh and her team produced their report in May 2010?

Shouldn’t ministers have some control – especially given that we are supposed to be in an age of public sector austerity? Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and former Government CIO, has said that failing projects are continued for too long. He said that in 2009. So isn’t it time ministers and particularly civil servants applied the principle of ‘fail early, fail cheaply‘?

Link:

In 2010 ComputerworldUK had an account of how Healthspace was being kept alive unnecessarily.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, e-health, excessive secrecy, Government IT, health, health records, IT projects, IT-related failures, NHS, npfit, supplier relationships

Fire ‘superstations’ without software cost £1m a month – The Times

Posted on 24/05/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Times reports today that taxpayers are paying more than £1m a month on the rent and upkeep of fire control rooms across England that have never been used. The purpose-built control centres look ready for immediate use, with open-plan desks fitted with desktop monitors and keyboards, and huge screens on a wall at the front of the control rooms which are supposed to help fire and rescue crews mobilise appliances and manage incidents.

Only there’s no working software.  The Department for Communities and Local Government negotiated the end of a contract with the main contractor EADS for software to run the regional control centres in December 2010. Officials concluded that the software could not be delivered within an acceptable timeframe. The regional control centres were completed before the IT project was cancelled.

The cost of the centres has been uncovered after a request under the FOI Act. The Times devotes much of its page three to a story under the headline:

Revealed: scandal of the £1m-a-month fire service ‘superstations’ lying empty.

Only one of nine regional centres is in use. The other eight incur rent, electricity, water and repair costs at £1,134,566 a month. Costs will be incurred for years because there are no break clauses in the agreements to lease the buildings. Two leases come to an end in 2027, one in 2028, two in 2032, three in 2033 and one in 2035.

A spokesman for the Department said that agreement has been reached for a further two of the buildings to be used by local fire authorities. Officials are searching for public or private sector tenants to occupy the other regional centres.

Lord Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister, who authorised the start of the technology project in 2004,  said he had been kept in the dark by civil servants on the rising costs of the scheme. He said it had been on budget when he left the department in 2007.

Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, said the failure of Firecontrol was an “expensive reminder of why you can’t trust Labour to run anything”. But the Coalition’s coming to power has not stopped central government IT-related failures.

Why Firecontrol failed

Firecontrol  followed the same tracks to a cliff edge that have caught out civil servants, ministers and suppliers on other government  computer-related projects.

The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee found that  the Firecontrol project was rushed, had little support from those who would use it, costs and complexity were underestimated, there was an over-reliance on consultants and a lack of accountability for decisions made  – or not made.

The idea was to replace 46 local control rooms with nine, linked regional centres, which would be equipped with new standardised computer systems to handle calls, mobilise equipment and manage incidents.

But the project was cancelled in December 2010 with ministers unsure the technology would ever work. The NAO estimates that £469m will be wasted on the project.

The NAO found that the scheme was “flawed from the outset”, largely because local fire and rescue officers did not want regional centres or major changes in the way they worked.  Introducing any large new system is difficult but with enthusiastic support serious problems can sometimes be overcome; but introducing a complex new system without support from those who would use it means staff will have little incentive to find ways around problems.

The NPfIT [National Programme for IT in the NHS] failed in part because it lacked support among GPs and NHS staff; and the complexity of introducing standardised technology in semi-autonomous hospitals – each one with different ways of working – was underestimated. It was the same with Firecontrol.

The complexity of introducing standardised systems in regional centres with no goodwill among staff – was underestimated.  From the start many local fire and rescue officers criticised the lack of clarity on how a regional approach would increase efficiency. “Early on, the Department’s inconsistent messages about the regionalisation of the Fire and Rescue Service led to mistrust and some antagonism,” said the NAO.

The technology project was rushed while local fire crews were excluded from project discussions. “The project progressed too fast without essential checks being completed. For example Departmental and Treasury approval was given without proper scrutiny of the project’s feasibility or validation of the estimated costs and savings,” said the Public Accounts Committee. The project went ahead before the full business case was written.

A review of the project as early as April 2004 found that the scheme was already in poor condition overall and at significant risk of failing to deliver. But the “Gateway” review report was kept secret for seven years.

Is the stage set for IT disasters in government to continue? So far the Coalition has decided, like Labour, to keep secret all internal reports on the progress or otherwise of its mega projects, including Universal Credit, though the policy on secrecy may be about to change, which Campaign4Change will report on separately.

Firecontrol – same mistakes repeated on other projects.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, consultants, culture, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, local government, managing change, npfit, openness and transparency, Politics, project management, public sector, public services

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Whitehall defies NAO and Cameron on publishing status of big projects

Posted on 02/05/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Government action to cut the number of failures of big projects including those with a major ICT component has made a difference, the National Audit Office reports today.

In its report “Assurance for major projects”  the NAO is largely supportive of actions by the Government, , the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority and the Treasury in setting up reviews of major high-risk projects, including ICT-based programmes, to ensure that if they are failing they are put back on track or cancelled.

The NAO says the Government’s decision to “dismantle” the NPfIT was taken after the project was assessed by the Major Projects Authority.

But the report also shows how civil servants have managed to defy a mandate from the Prime Minister, and a separate NAO recommendation in 2010, for information on the status of big ICT and other high-risk projects to be published.

Says the NAO report

“The ambition to publish project information, as part of the government’s transparency agenda, has not been met.

“Our 2010 report recommended that the government should publicly report project status. We consider that public reporting of project information is key to providing greater accountability for projects and improving project outcomes… Regular transparent reporting of performance which highlights successes and non-compliance would also help to build an enduring assurance system.”

Separately in the report the NAO says

“There has been a lack of progress on transparency.  The [Cabinet Office’s Major Projects] Authority has not yet met its commitment to publish project information in line with government’s transparency agenda. The Authority cannot deliver this objective on its own. Senior level discussions are ongoing, between Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and departments, on the arrangements for public reporting.”

Should ministers intevene to force publication?

But the NAO report does not raise the question of why ministers have not intervened to force civil servants to publish the status information on high-risk projects.

Campaign4Changehas argued that publishing status reports on big ICT projects and programmes would be the most effective single action any government could take to reduce the number of failures. (see “Comment” below)

Prime Minister’s 2011 mandate

The NAO’s 2010 recommendation for status information on major projects to be published was backed by a mandate from the Prime Minister in January 2011 which included the undertaking to “require publication of project information consistent with the Coalition’s transparency agenda”.

The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has recommended that departments publish information on the state of their major IT-based projects and programmes; and the Information Commissioner has rejected civil service arguments for not publishing such information.

In addition Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said, when in opposition, that the Conservatives, if they gained power,  would publish “Gateway” review reports soon after they are completed.  Gateway reports are similar to the assurance reviews carried out for the Major Projects Authority.

Yet none of this has happened.

The “rebel” civil servants

How is it that a group of civil servants who are opposed to publishing information on the status of large risky projects can defy the Prime Minister, Francis Maude, the National Audit Office, and the all-party Public Accounts Committee? Those recalcitrant civil servants argue that assurance reviewers would not tell the whole truth if they knew their assessments would be made public.

But how do we know they tell the whole truth when the reports are kept confidential? The Information Commissioner has pointed out in the past that civil servants have a public duty to be candid and honest. If they are not because their reports are to be published, they are failing in their public duty.

Today’s NAO report says there are differences of opinion among civil servants over whether to publish status information on projects.

Says the NAO

“There has been some support for greater transparency from departments who believe that tracking and publishing major milestones could create helpful tension in the system.

“However, concerns have been raised that increased transparency could limit the value of assurance, as it could inhibit assurance reviewers and project staff holding full and frank discussions.

“Some senior project staff also have concerns that public reporting could have a negative commercial impact, and would prefer delayed rather than real-time public reporting.”

The Cabinet Office told Campaign4Change in 2010 and 2011 that instead of publishing status reports on each major project, it will publish an annual report on the state of its programmes.

But that hasn’t happened either.

Says the NAO:

“As well as the objective to publish project information, the [Major Projects] Authority has not yet met its objective to publish an annual report on government’s major projects.

“The Authority initially expected to publish an annual report in December 2011 but is now expecting the report to be published in May or June 2012. The format of the annual report, and the information it will contain, has yet to be decided.”

Comment:

Many times over the last 20 years I have said that publishing status reports on major IT-based projects and programmes would be the most effective single action any government could take to deter departments from going ahead with overly ambitious schemes that are doomed to fail. If, against good sense, impractical schemes are approved, publishing status information will make all the difference.

Permanent secretaries will not lose sleep over a failing project, but they will not want information on it published – which is why that information should be published.

Publishing status information would give civil servants a good reason to tackle weaknesses as they developed.  Permanent secretaries may not mind losing public money on a failing project or programme. They will always fear embarrassment, however.

Who is really in control of Whitehall – civil servants or No 10? David Cameron’s office has issued a mandate that requires status information on projects to be published. The NAO has issued a similar recommendation. How long can the civil service hold out against the political will?

Links:

NAO report – Assurance for major projects

Firecontrol – same mistakes repeated on other projects

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Posted in cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, operational issues, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public sector

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Is DWP stance on Universal Credit reports mocking FOI?

Posted on 27/04/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions, which has remained as secretive over the progress or otherwise of its IT-based projects as before the 2005 Freedom of Information Act, has, as expected, rejected our FOI request for reports on the state of the Universal Credit project.

We have appealed and the DWP has, as is customary, delayed its response. It appears that the Department works on the principle that the longer it delays FOI responses the more out of date will be its reports when the Information Commissioner eventually rules they must be published.

In its reply to us, the DWP gave reasons for hiding a report it has already put in the public domain: a “Starting Gate Review” of Universal Credit.

Hiding reports under its jumper

The review was carried out in February 2011. That the DWP is keeping under its jumper a public report suggests that its responses to the FOI Act owe more to instinct than proper consideration.

The DWP also refused to publish, under the FOI Act, a Universal Credit “Project Assessment Review in November 2011” by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

These are the reasons Ethna Harnett, Universal Credit Division, DWP,  gave for refusing our FOI request for Universal Credit project progress reports:

– “Further reviews, by the Major Project Authority and by the National Audit Office are planned.”

– “Elements of the information you requested is being withheld as it falls under the exemption in Section 36 (2) (b) and (c) of the Freedom of Information Act. This exemption requires the public interest for and against disclosure to be balanced.”

– “The information you have requested includes details of a sensitive nature whose publication would prejudice effective conduct of public affairs. There is a strong public interest in the Department maintaining an efficient and effective risk management and assurance process and in ensuring that this process is not undermined by premature disclosure particularly where risks are not yet fully mitigated.”

– “There is also a strong public interest in the Department being able to carry out and use frank assessments, including unrestrained and candid contributions from business areas. ”

– “The assurance reports produced by the Major Project Authority are not shared beyond the Senior Responsible Owner and interested parties within Government.”

– “DWP Ministers have, however, committed to update Parliament on the Universal Credit programme through written ministerial statements. These statements are available on the Parliamentary website – www.parliament.uk.”

– “The Major Projects Authority will publish information on the progress of the Government’s high-risk and high-value projects, referred to collectively as the government major projects portfolio, alongside the first annual report at the end of this financial year.”

Comment:

The DWP has never met any of our FOI requests and has, in every case, delayed its responses to our requests for internal appeals. The result of the appeals is always the same – the upholding of the original decision. We are in awe of the DWP’s ability to detach its IT operations from the FOI Act.

The DWP considers it is acting in the public interest: that assessments of its IT-based projects such as Universal Credit would not be candid if they were put in the public domain.

But if the DWP had got this right and that its assurance reports would be less effective if published, we’d expect to see successes with major DWP IT-based projects. We don’t see the evidence.

Indeed the signs are that Universal Credit, the DWP’s biggest project, is in trouble; and after 20 years the Department is still having trouble combining its various benefit systems.

The National Audit Office has qualified the DWP’s accounts every year for the last 23 years, largely because of the level of official error and fraud.

Is this a department that is getting IT right?  There is no evidence it is; and some evidence suggests it isn’t.

The DWP needs to change. It needs to see openness as an opportunity not a threat. Openness would show that officials are prepared to be measured publicly against the findings of their assessment reports. That needs self-confidence.

On the other hand secrecy permits an uneasy introspection, allows weaknesses to take hold, and gives officials comfort in not changing.

Somerset Maugham put it well in his excellent book Of human Bondage. He said: “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”

Time for truth on Universal Credit

Millions of pounds of secret DWP reports

Universal Credit latest

FOI blog

Trying to kill the FOI Act?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, culture, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HMRC, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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Time for truth on Universal Credit IT

Posted on 03/04/2012 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

A normally-reliable contact says that the IT project for Universal Credit is in trouble.

A deadline this month to lock-down features in the scheme will not be met, says the contact. This failure will jeopardise the go-live date of October next year for the start of Universal Credit.

The contact also says that the Government will make an announcement on the scheme in September which may refer to a write-off of at least £150m on the IT project. The suggestion is that although the scheme is in trouble officials may be reluctant to impart the whole truth to ministers.

We wonder about the difficulties of agreeing system features when there are so many parties involved in the IT project: HMRC, DWP, local authorities, banks and private sector employers. The contact also says Oracle is having trouble handling functionality.

Officially all is well. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan-Smith, spoke with confidence about the future of the scheme in the House of Commons last week.

That said, he told Parliament on 5 March about the “issues and problems” related to HMRC’s Real-Time Information project which is an essential part of the Universal Credit IT project. He said: 

“HMRC, which is now responsible for this measure, meets me and others in the Department regularly. We have embedded some DWP employees in the HMRC programme; they are locked together. They are, as I understand it, on time, and they are having constant discussions with large and small employers about the issues and the problems, and assessing what needs to be done to make this happen and to make all the changes.

“We must remember that all those firms collect those data anyway; the only question is how they report it back within the monthly cycle. We are on top of that but, obviously, we want to keep our eye on the matter.”

Problems with the IT for Universal Credit – the Government’s leading “agile” software project – may bring a smirk to the faces of those who believe that departments cannot manage agile-based schemes. But agile proponents have long said that Universal Credit is only partially agile – and they have argued that agile should not be mixed with traditional software-writing approaches.

Suppliers on Universal Credit, which include HP, Accenture, IBM,Capgemini and Oracle, are not particularly well known for their love of agile on Government IT projects.

Time for the truth  

The Department for Work and Pensions is refusing to publish any of its reports and assessments on the IT for Universal Credit. The secret reports include:

–   A Project Assessment Review in November 2011

– Universal Credit Delivery Model Assessment Two (McKinsey and Partners)

– Universal Credit end-to-end Technical Review (IBM).

Comment

Officials and ministers speak publicly about the solid progress on Universal Credit IT while refusing to publish their internal reports on progress or otherwise of the scheme.

Past NAO reports have shown that ministers and sometimes senior officials are sometimes kept in the dark when major IT-related projects go wrong. Project steering groups are told what they want to hear. The Programme Board on the NPfIT discussed successes with enthusiasm and hardly mentioned serious problems, judging by minutes of its meetings.

We hope that all is well with Universal Credit IT. The project is, after all,  an advert for innovation in the public sector. If it’s in trouble the truth should come out. Keeping it quiet until September means that suppliers will continue to be paid for several months unnecessarily – perhaps to keep them supportive?

Labour was overly defensive and secretive about its many IT-related failures whereas “openness” is the coalition’s much-favoured word. It’s a pity it has yet to be applied to the Universal Credit IT project.

Secret DWP reports.

Who’ll be responsible if Universal Credit goes wrong?

Banks “unlikely to deliver” Universal Credit

Universal Credit IT plans too optimistic warn MPs.

Universal Credit latest

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Posted in excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, innovation, managing change, managing outsourced services, npfit, openness and transparency, operational issues, Real-Time Information, software development, Universal Credit

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Millions of pounds of secret DWP reports

Posted on 29/03/2012 | 10 comments

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions is keeping secret – as a matter of course – millions of pounds worth of reports it has commissioned on a wide range of IT and other projects including Universal Credit.

A DWP spokesperson, confirming that all the reports (below) are not published, told Campaign4Change that the reports have limited distribution after commitments and assurances were given to their “authors”.

These authors include Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Capgemini, KPMG, Gartner, McKinsey, Atkins, Tribal, Compass and IBM.

In the past, when the DWP has told the Information Commissioner that reports needed to be kept confidential because of commitments to suppliers, the Commissioner has found that the suppliers were content to have the reports published.

A spokesman for the DWP told us: “Consultants’ reports provide additional, often expert, information for the DWP to consider and have a limited distribution following commitments and assurances on disclosure with the authors.”

Lack of accountability

While the reports remain hidden the companies producing them will remain unaccountable for their contents. In our view the excessive and automatic secrecy brings a risk that taxpayers will end up paying millions of pounds for consultancy reports that tell the DWP what it wants to hear.

Would a consultancy be re-hired if its reports were sharply critical of the DWP and its projects?

And is the DWP’s instinctive secrecy appropriate in an era of so-called open government? The reports are not about Britain’s nuclear secrets. In the case of Universal Credit, reports on the progress or otherwise of the programme could be of interest to thousands of people whose benefits will be affected by the scheme.

We believe the DWP should be open by default, but will that ever happen? Epsom MP Chris Grayling is the current DWP minister responsible for the secret reports.

The reports

Below is a list of some of the unpublished consultancy reports produced for the DWP in 2010 and 2011:

Contract title Supplier Value (£)
Resource Management IT Healthcheck NSG 90,000
Jobcentre Plus Financial Information System Capability Review Capgemini 25,000
Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Plan Atkins 25,000
Undertake a Review of Data Centre Migration Approach PricewaterhouseCoopers 20,000
Organisational Design Project Deloitte 543,000
Developing a Business Intelligence Operating Model Deloitte 185,672
CIT Software Project Discovery Phase Deloitte 195,528
Support to CIT Improvement Programmes Tribal 760,000
Information Security Assurance Project Atkins 49,950
Assistance with Resource Management System Improvement Plan   Programme Phase 2 Atkins 72,690
Office for Disability Issues TrailBlazer Support—Housing Sitra 51,300
Office for Disability Issues—Trailblazer Resource Allocation for   Work Choice In-Control 11,750
Call Off Framework Agreement for Right to Control TrailBlazers PricewaterhouseCoopers 97,902
Commercial Assurance—Automated Delivery Service—Jobseekers   Allowance Atkins 47,300
Corporate Services Division Cost Optimisation Programme Network   and Telephony Xantus 94,370
National Registration Authority Audit (tScheme Audit) KPMG 10,727
Shingo Prize Pilot The Manufacturing   Institute—TMI Pract. Services 11,000
Business Control Strategic Improvements PricewaterhouseCoopers 750,000
A review of DWP Vendor Management Activities Procurement   Excellence 52,250
Assistance with Resource Management System Improvement Plan   Programme Phase 3 Atkins 94,050
Pension Reform Delivery Programme Closure Activity PricewaterhouseCoopers 100,000
Benchmarking Hosting Services Gartner 23,456
Application Delivery Centre (ADC) Validation Services Requests Atkins 97,500
Additional Modelling Support for Dynamic Benefits Oliver Wyman 19,500
Strategic Financial Consultancy Support to Help deliver Work   Programme KPMG 362,000
Shared Services Resource   Management Contract (RMOC) Benchmarking Compass 15,000
Final   assurance of DWP IT Strategy Capgemini 20,000
Research   into the Capacity of the Health Care Professional Market Deloitte 48,678
Commercial   support to the Work Programme Richard   Aitken-Davies 45,000
Support   to DWP Finance and Commercial Function (Organisation Design Review) PricewaterhouseCoopers 20,000
Support   to DWP CJT Cost Reduction Programme Bramble 1,065,000
DWP   Shared Services Delivery Model Options appraisal Deloitte 225,000
Benchmarking   of DWP Shared Services PricewaterhouseCoopers 19,000
Universal   Credit Delivery Model Assessment Phase 2 McKinsey and Partners 350,000
Universal   Credit Strategic Support Capgemini 505,000
Review   of Transforming Letters Project Deloitte 19,550
Application   Delivery Project Independent Market Assessment Compass 19,000
Universal   Credit End to End Technical Review IBM 49,240
Digital   Customer Total Experience Design Requirement Deloitte 16,667
Universal   Credit Supplier Workshop-Facilitation Xantus 11,399
Consultancy   Support to develop Flexible New Deal Exit Strategy KPMG 12,000
Support   of CIT Improvement Initiatives KPMG 250,000
Risk   Assurance Division Strategic Partner PricewaterhouseCoopers 1,000,000
Benchmarking   of the HPES Hosting Contract Compass 172,105
Compensating   People with Occupational Mesothelioma Deloitte 25,616
Specialist   tScheme Annual Audit of DWPs National Registration Authority KPMG 33,000

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Deloitte, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, IBM, openness and transparency, Politics, Universal Credit

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