Category Archives: excessive secrecy

DWP fraud and mistakes cost an estimated £3.2bn – despite new HMRC data links

Posted on 16/07/2015 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions’ auditors have qualified the department’s latest accounts for the 26th year in a row because of “unacceptably high” fraud and mistakes.

The high level of fraud and error is despite the DWP’s now being able to check every claimant’s benefit entitlements – particularly inconsistencies in earnings – through HMRC’s real-time information [RTI] tax system.

In 2014-15, the DWP carried out a bulk exercise to match RTI data against the DWP’s benefits information. The DWP uses RTI data to provide information on earnings as part of the calculation of claimants’ Universal Credit entitlement.

The National Audit Office, in today’s report on the DWP’s 2014-15 accounts, says that misreporting and incorrect processing of income and are responsible for estimated losses in 2014-15 of £1.12bn

A further £340m is lost through undisclosed and incorrect processing of data on living arrangements.

The DWP is the same department that’s pouring money into a protracted FOI legal battle to stop four reports on Universal Credit being published on the basis that their disclosure could affect the DWP’s “effective management of public affairs”.

The DWP publishes none of the reports on the progress or otherwise of its major projects and programmes.

One question is, in the light of the DWP’s repeatedly qualified accounts, whether the department’s officials are better or worse off running their affairs in an atmosphere of great secrecy.

Would the DWP’s senior management be able to manage the business better – and particularly the Universal Credit IT programme – if they had to publish their commissioned reports on major projects?

The added external scrutiny of business partners – including local authorities – plus MPs, journalists and the public could give extra force to attempts within the department to manage affairs more professionally.

Such is the DWP’s detachment from external scrutiny that its managers are legitimately able to decide to avoid measuring the Personal Independence Payment for fraud and error until 2016-17.

Some may wonder how any major organisation can delay measuring a major part of its business for fraud and error.

Says Amyas Morse, head of the NAO:

“We believe that the absence of up-to-date information on error rates in such a large benefit stream creates a risk that the Department is making decisions based on out-of-date measurements.”

He adds:

“Furthermore, some smaller value benefits have never undergone a (fraud and error) measurement exercise.”

Morse says the accounts DWP’s have been qualified because of the “unacceptably high level of fraud and error in benefit expenditure, other than State Pension where the level of fraud and error is lower”.

He says the accounts of the DWP and those of predecessor departments administering welfare spending, have been similarly qualified each year since 1988-89.

The DWP estimates total overpayments due to fraud and error in 2014-15 to be £3.2bn, which is 1.9%  of the total forecast benefit spending of £168.1bn.

The Department estimates the total underpayments in 2014-15 to be £1.4bn.

Morse says the DWP is not on track to achieve its target to reduce fraud and internal mistakes.

“Furthermore, the Department has reduced the pace of the roll out of Universal Credit. As a result, Universal Credit has not yet realized the £200m annual fraud and error savings originally expected by March 2015…”

This failure to meet savings targets on Universal Credit highlights the speculative nature of central government’s business case estimates of programme and project savings.

Morse said: “Issuing an audit qualification is a serious matter, and the fact that similar qualifications have been in place for such a long period of time does not lessen that seriousness.”

Fraud and error is defined as

– Official error, which arises when a benefit is paid incorrectly due to inaction, delay or a mistaken assessment by the Department, a local authority or HM Revenue and Customs;

– Claimant error, which occurs when claimants make inadvertent mistakes with no fraudulent intent; and

– Fraud, which arises when claimants deliberately seek to mislead the DWP or local authorities which administer benefits on the department’s behalf to claim money to which they are not entitled.

The DWP’s managers say the largest proportion of error enters the benefits system due to changes in claimants’ circumstances after a correct initial award.

 

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

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FOI hearing today on DWP’s refusal to publish Universal Credit reports

Posted on 15/07/2015 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

External lawyers acting for the Department for Work and Pensions are due to appear before an FOI Upper Tribunal judge in London today to argue why four reports on Universal Credit should not be published.

It’s the latest step in a costly legal battle that has lasted two years so far.

A first-tier FOI tribunal judge in 2014 ordered the four reports to be published. The DWP asked for permission to appeal that decision and lost its case.  The DWP then asked an Upper Tribunal for permission to appeal and lost that case as well.

Then it asked a different Upper Tribunal judge for permission to appeal .  As a result, a 1 day hearing is taking place today.

The case takes in evidence from the DWP, the Information Commissioner, John Slater who requested 3 of the reports in question and me. Slater requested in 2012 a Universal Credit risks register, milestone schedule and issues register (which set out problems that had materialised with the Universal Credit programme).  I requested a project assessment review carried out in 2011 on the Universal Credit programme by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

The DWP has refused to publish the four reports – and millions of pounds worth of other similar reports.

Today the DWP will argue that the judge in an earlier Upper FOI Tribunal did not fully consider the “chilling effect” that disclosure of the reports would have on the behaviours of civil servants or consultants who helped to write the reports in question.

In essence the DWP’s lawyers are asking the judge to accept the arguments put forward against disclosure by Sarah Cox, the DWP’s main witness in the case. Cox is a former programme assurance director for Universal Credit.

Cox submitted 49 pages of evidence – plus secret evidence during a closed hearing – on why the UC reports should not be published.  She said that civil servants must be able to think the unthinkable and record the outcome of these thoughts without hesitation or fear of disclosure.

If contributors feared the reports would be routinely disclosed the documents could become “bland records” prepared with half an eye to how they would be received in the public domain.

She said the danger of damage to the public interest cannot be overstated.

Disclosure could adversely affect management of the Universal Credit programme – and “failure of proper programme management may be catastrophic”.

Emphasising the importance of effective management of risk, she referred to the banking system prior to the credit crunch and the stability of the Bank of England in that period.

“Inappropriate or premature disclosure of the information in the risk registers or the issues registers could lead to those failures occurring in government risk management with broader parallels for other project management tools.”

She then referred to “disaster myopia” – a phenomenon she said was well established in cognitive psychology.  It referred to “an underestimation of the likelihood of low frequency but high risk damage risks”.

She added: “This can result in a lack of appropriate mitigating actions, increasing the likelihood of the risk becoming an issue. In this case fear of disclosure and misinterpretation can exacerbate this myopia, leading to the toning down of the direct and forceful language used to describe risks, or worse, risks not being identified at all”.

If civil servants or consultants writing reports on projects were to downplay the risks because of a fear of disclosure, problems may be overlooked, solutions not found, or not found promptly. “Such an outcome would be seriously detrimental to the delivery of major projects.”

Cox’s evidence could appear to some to suggest the DWP was preoccupied with its image, and the image of the Universal Credit programme, in the media, and among MPs and the public. She said routine disclosure of such reports as those in question “will distract civil servants from their tasks at a crucial point in the process of programme management.

“Instead of concentrating on implementing the changes, they will be required to address stakeholder, press or wider public concerns which have been provoked by the premature disclosure of material.”

It would be unhelpful if “attention is focused on clarifying positions with stakeholders and addressing the concerns of media, opposition and interest groups in order to correct the often misleading impression created by premature disclosure”.

This issue is “magnified in a programme with as many delivery partners as Universal Credit, covering both central and local government, with implications for all territories in the UK”.

That is because of the “implications of issues for different partners are often slightly different, so that each partner may need to be given a slightly different, and tailored, response”.

This concern should not be understated, she said.

“From my experience of high profile matters which emerge with little warning, I can say that ministers and senior officials are likely to be forced to clear their diaries, cancelling planned meetings, events and other important engagements, to attend rapidly-convened meetings to discuss the handling of the premature disclosure.

“Officials in the relevant policy areas (and lawyers as appropriate) would need to set aside other essential and pressing work to prepare briefings on the likely impact of disclosure and options for next steps. ‘Lines to take’ and a stakeholder and media-handling strategy would need to be discussed, agreed and signed off by ministers.

“Ministers could also be called to respond to urgent questions tabled in Parliament, especially where the disclosure  is made in respect of a high-profile policy area. The media might press for interviews with ministers and/or senior officials, which require careful preparation…”

But, as the Information Commissioner has pointed out, disclosure of the documents under FOI is not the same as a leak to the media.

And the reports in question are now four years old and so massive media interest is unlikely. Any media interest could be managed by DWP press officers without distracting project managers.

Cox said disclosure could harm rather than assist public debate.

“Material that requires civil servants to think the unthinkable, or to consider unusual or highly unlikely events, using intentionally vivid and forceful language, at a single point in time, potentially pre-dating attempts to mitigate the position could easily distort the public perception of the real or likely situation and encourage sensationalist rather than responsible and balanced reporting.”

She said that officials may have to release further information to counteract any misunderstandings (from a misreading of the disclosed reports). But the “world of media” may ignore this further information.

Lawyers for the Information Commissioner, in their submission to today’s hearing, will argue that an earlier tribunal had not found any existence of a “chilling effect” in this case. The tribunal had not been persuaded by what the DWP had said.

The earlier tribunal had not dismissed all of the DWP’s concerns as entirely without merit. It accepted that disclosure of the documents in question “may not be a painless process for the DWP” and that there “may be some prejudice to the conduct of government of one or more of the kinds asserted by the DWP”. The tribunal was simply unpersuaded by the extent of those prejudices.

The Commissioner’s lawyers will say the earlier tribunal gave due weight to the evidence of Ms Cox but it was not obliged to agree with her.

There was no observable chilling effect from disclosures in the past where a chilling effect had been envisaged. The DWP had not provided any evidence that a chilling effect existed.

Indeed a Starting Gate Review on the Universal Credit project had been published (by Campaign4Change) after the DWP refused to release the document under FOI. The DWP had refused to publish the Starting Gate Review because of the chilling effect it would have on the contributors to such reports.

But there was no chilling effect in consequence of publication of the Starting Gate review, say the Information Commissioner’s lawyers.

The incident “illustrates that it is perfectly within the bounds of reason to be sceptical about the DWP’s assertions about the chilling effect and the like,” says the Information Commissioner’s submission to today’s hearing.

On Ms Cox’s point that disclosure of the reports in question would change behaviours of civil servants and consultants compiling the documents, the earlier tribunal had concluded that the public was entitled to expect from senior officials – and no doubt generally gets – a large measure of courage, frankness and independence in their assessments of risk and provision of advice.

The Information  Commissioner’s lawyers will today ask the judge to dismiss the DWP’s appeal.

Comment

The DWP’s evidence suggests that the reports in question today are critical to the effective delivery of Universal Credit. The reality is that excessive secrecy can make bureaucracies complacent and, in the the DWP’s case, somewhat chaotic.

When Campaign4Change asked the DWP under FOI for two Universal Credit reports – an end to end technical review carried out by IBM at a cost of £49,240 and a “delivery model assessment phases one and two” carried by McKinsey and Partners at a cost of £350,000 – the DWP mistakenly denied that the reports existed.

When we provided evidence the reports did exist the DWP said eventually that it had found them.  The DWP said in essence that the documents had been held so securely nobody knew until searching for them that they existed.

So much for the DWP’s argument that such reports are critical to the effective management of major projects.

And when Campaign4Change asked the DWP, under FOI, to supply a project assessment review report on the Universal Credit programme, officials mistakenly supplied an incorrect version of the report (a draft) to an FOI tribunal.  Officials later apologised for their mistake.

National Audit Office reports on Universal Credit do little to portray the DWP as a professional, competent and well-managed organisation.

Which all suggests that excessive secrecy within the DWP has made officials complacent and disorganised.

Continued excessive secrecy within the department could reinforce a suspicion, justified or not, that the department may not be in a strong position to run a programme as large and complex as Universal Credit.

 

 

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Posted in change management, consultants, contractors, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, procurement, project management, public sector, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Are councillors in Somerset ignoring the wisdom of their auditors?

Posted on 14/07/2015 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

It’s good to see auditors in local government doing their job well  – not accepting verbal assurances and seeking proof that all is well with an outsourced system .

But what if councillors apply a lower standard – and accept verbal assurances without checking them?

A  strong report by the South West Audit Partnership [SWAP] went to councillors at Somerset County Council’s Audit Committee on 2 July 2015. The report was about problems with an outsourced system, the Adults Integrated Solution [AIS].

Although not the original supplier, IBM has provided AIS to Somerset County Council under a 10-year outsourcing contract/joint venture – Southwest One –  that was signed in 2007.

The SWAP report said limited progress has been made in implementing the AIS-related recommendations from its 2012-2013 audit report. It added that:

– AIS performance and response times could be “less than adequate for users’ needs”.

– Southwest One was unwilling to develop a service level agreement specifically for the AIS application.

– “Poor response time has led to the disabling of enhanced audit trails/logs that would make it possible to trace and attribute user activity in the system.” SWAP added that this was “worrying” given that the data involved was “sensitive and personal”.

– SWAP had been refused access to the contract between IBM and Northgate, the original supplier of AIS.

Are verbal assurances worth anything?

Having studied AIS from time to time over 2 years, and spoken to its users, SWAP’s auditors have been reluctant, on some of their concerns, to accept verbal assurances that all is well.

When they have sought documentary evidence to support assurances it hasn’t always been forthcoming.

SWAP said in its latest report:

“Verbal assurances were provided that the ToR for AIS Programme Board had been reviewed and that roles and responsibilities in relation to system ownership had been clarified. However, no evidence was provided to support these assurances.”

Now Somerset’s audit committee has done what its auditors wouldn’t do and has accepted verbal assurances that all is well with AIS.

SWAP’s auditors had expressed a multitude of concerns about AIS. But Somerset’s officers verbally assured audit committee councillors that a single upgrade had solved all the problems.

One officer, in a statement, told Dave Orr, a Somerset resident who campaigns for openness over IBM’s relationship with the council:

“I can confirm that all of the fundamental issues raised through the [SWAP] Audit Report [on AIS] have now been addressed…

“The AIS application is one of the top systems used by local authorities for social care services in the UK. The performance issues referred to in the Audit Report were resolved by a system upgrade.”

Comment:

It’s difficult if not impossible to see how a single upgrade could address all the points SWAP made – such as the lack of a service level agreement to cover AIS or the refusal by IBM to supply a copy of its contract with Northgate.

Whenever auditors produce a hard-hitting report there will be 2 opposing sides: defenders of what’s being criticised and the auditors.

It is up to the auditors to cut through any dissimulation, obfuscation and prevarication to identify what’s going well, what isn’t, and what the uncertainties and risks are.

Auditors would not be doing their job if they always accepted verbal assurances at face value.

But what if auditors are undermined by councillors who readily accept verbal assurances from their officers who wish to defend the suppliers?

A supplier that doesn’t have to provide documentary evidence can say anything in defence of its systems and the quality of service.

Somerset’s councillors are lucky to have auditors as independently-minded as SWAP.

It’s unlikely that SWAP would accept at face value the Somerset officer’s suggestion that because AIS is widely used it’s unlikely to be a poor system.

This would be like Ford saying a particular Mondeo is unlikely to be at fault because thousands of people happily own one.

Every IT installation is different, even if the main software package is widely used. The hardware, network configuration, load on the network, facilities and interfaces installed will render every IT installation unique.

It’s conceivable that every council client of AIS could have a trouble-free service except Somerset.

Are the council’s audit committee councillors gullible to accept verbal assurances about the problems with AIS being solved without requiring proof?

Where does this leave the 775 users of Somerset’s AIS, many of whom may be having to do difficult work in managing vulnerable adults while trying to cope with what may be one of the UK’s worst outsourced systems?

Thank you to Dave Orr for providing information that made this post possible.

Pity the 775 users who use this outsourced council system?

SWAP report on AIS for Somerset County Council’s Audit Committee 2 July 2015

SWAP 2012-2013 audit report on AIS

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, data protection, excessive secrecy, IBM, IT-related failures, local democracy, local government, operational issues, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships

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Pity the 775 users who use this outsourced council system?

Posted on 02/07/2015 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Adult care systems are a cinderella IT service for councils.

It’s rare for journalists to write about them, for good or ill, perhaps because they help council staff deal with vulnerable adults. Such systems help with payments to care home and hospice providers. They help staff organise facilities for adults with learning disabilities or dementia, and respite care for adults at risk of abuse.

One such system has 775 users in Somerset. It’s a “critical” application according to the county council there.  The Adults Integrated Solution was originally supplied by Northgate. The system became IBM’s responsibility under a 10-year outsourcing and joint venture, Southwest One.

The latest in a series of excellent reports on the system’s enduring problems by auditors the South West Audit Partnership goes to Somerset County Council’s Audit Committee today (2 July 2015).

How bad is bad?

The report says the system’s response times have been so poor  that audit trails and logs have been disabled. So how can IBM and the council trace and attribute user activity in the system – particularly one handling sensitive and personal data?

The report says this disabling of the audit trial and logs is “worrying”.

Auditors reported on the system’s weaknesses in their 2012/2013 audit report.  Since then there has been only “limited progress” in implementing recommendations, says today’s report.

On some of their priority recommendations, auditors say they have been unable to obtain documentary evidence to support implementation. They have received verbal assurances – but they remain concerned.

The report says that AIS performance and response times “can still be less than adequate for users’ needs” and IBM is unwilling to develop a service level agreement specifically for the AIS application.

Indeed IBM has refused to give the county council a copy of the AIS contract with Northgate and it was not made available to the South West Audit Partnership for its audit of the system.

This may prompt councillors to ask how the council can properly manage a critical application if it has no control over the system or the outsourcer.

Repeated audit reports on the problems appear to have left matters unresolved.

Below are some of the concerns of the South West Audit Partnership as mentioned in its 2012/2013 audit report. It reports today that it has received only “partial” assurances that these problems have been solved.

Applications could be unavailable a month or more

Said the South West Audit Partnership: “We have identified in previous audit reports that there is no tested IT disaster recovery strategy. This is a strategy that would be put into effect in the event the Somerset County Council data centre was unavailable for any reason. Although a contract has been signed with Adam Continuity, applications could still be unavailable for a month or even more.”

No formally-named business system owner

“As of November 2014, Helen Wakeling (AIS System Owner) has left Somerset County Council. The responsibility of AIS system ownership needs to be reassigned and formalised.”

Payments to care providers not properly checked?

“… there does not appear to be a process to ensure payments are authorised, appropriate, complete and accurate…

 

IBM has no contractual duty to provide a good system

“There is no contractual requirement or service level for Southwest One [IBM] to provide a platform that delivers performance and response time that is acceptable to ASC [Adult Social Care] Operations.”

Data validation?

“Data quality in AIS data is undermined by the lack of robust input validation within the AIS application.

“Client records can be created with a minimum of information. Key personal identifiers such as data of birth, NI number and NHS number do not need to be entered and this both increases the risk of duplicate records and provides less data with which to identify those that have been created…”

Is IBM hiding AIS contract from the council?

“Southwest One currently owns the contract with Northgate and would not provide SWAP with a copy. As a result SWAP [South West Audit Partnership] was not able to evaluate Northgate’s compliance with the terms of the contract including licensing requirements…”

Personal data at risk?

“It was noted that developers have access to the production environment, unmasked live production data is used by developers and vendors for testing purposes and desktops are not locked down.”

Potential for fraud?

“In addition the authorise function, a security feature available in AIS has not been implemented resulting in all authorisations occurring outside of AIS. As a result data loss, potential corruption of data, incorrect and potentially fraudulent use of the application, missed, inappropriate or additional payments, will not be identified and acted upon.”

Corrupt data?

“In spite of a recent security incident that appeared to result in some data corruption, there is no reporting in place or review of user, super user or generic user access for appropriateness.”

Can former staff still log on?

“Terminated users were identified with valid AIS access credentials. Just less than 10% of managers with access were found to be no longer employed. In addition user ids are not disabled after not being used for a period of time.”

Unattended screens?

“The time-out for the application is 1 hour. Although users typically leave the application on and lock the screen when they go out to lunch, this process is inefficient, leaving sessions unavailable for others and insecure, since the user could forget to lock their screen and allow bypass of all security.”

System security?

“We also identified in our capacity management audit that desktop lock-down is not in effect and as a result AIS data can be downloaded and copied to USB flash storage. SWAP recommended data security policies be developed and implemented …”

**

Dave Orr who has followed events at Somerset closely since the county council signed the Southwest One contract in 2007 has written to audit committee councillors about the AIS system.

One of his questions is how the council could have transferred a critical application to IBM without its being protected by any specific service level agreement.

Orr says: “I do not believe that an in-house IT service, with a head of IT in the direct employ of this council, would be allowed to leave these serious shortcomings in performance, audit logging and disaster recovery unaddressed.”

Comment

So much for the claims back in 2007, when the council and IBM formed Southwest One, that the services would be “beyond excellence”.

If this is the worst outsourced system in the UK where does that leave the 775 council users who no doubt are trying to do their best for the vulnerable adults in their community?

Thank you to Dave Orr for providing the information on which this article is based.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, IBM, local government, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships

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Universal Credit at “amber/red” says latest DWP report

Posted on 25/06/2015 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

The Major Projects Authority, which is part of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group, has today published its annual report on 188 projects including Universal Credit, about which it makes only positive comments.

But the authority’s annual report is, it appears, economical with the actualité. At the same time as the MPA published the report, the Department for Work and Pensions published a spreadsheet with statistics and its own narrative on the state of its major projects including the Universal Credit programme.

The spreadsheet said that the UC programme had an “amber/red” rating – but neither the MPA nor the Department for Work and Pensions has given the MPA’s reasons for the rating.

At the request of permanent secretaries the MPA has agreed not to publish its comments on the traffic light status of certain projects, including Universal Credit. The MPA and the Cabinet Office have agreed to allow officials in each departmental to give their own narrative to explain the traffic light status of their projects.

So the DWP, on its website, gives a summary of the state of its major projects, but its narrative on Universal Credit says nothing about the programme’s problems. Neither is there any of the MPA’s recommendations which related to the “amber/red” rating.

In a further shrinking from openness, the MPA and Cabinet Office have agreed with permanent secretaries that the traffic light status of major projects will be published only when they are out of date. So the “amber/red” rating on Universal Credit, although published today, is dated September 2014.

Comment

It is odd in a modern democracy that a large central government department – the DWP – can spend £330m on the IT for a major project and get away with publishing such obviously contradictory information on the scheme.

On the one hand the MPA, the Cabinet Office and the DWP publish only positive comments about progress on the Universal Credit programme.

These are some of the MPA’s comments on Universal Credit:

“Delivery remains on track against plans announced in September 2014. Additionally the Programme has brought forward testing of initiatives from which the programme can learn including the:

• Continued trialling of Universal Support in partnership areas to ensure the right integrated local foundations are in place to support UC expansion.

• Extending In work progression trials to help households increase their earnings once they have found work. • Extending the role of UC Work Coaches to engage with households at their work search interview to assess financial capability.”

Similarly the DWP’s comments in its spreadsheet on the status of its major projects reads like a government press release. Why was one of the government’s major projects – the whole life project costs of UC are estimated at £15.8bn – given an amber/red status?

We don’t know. Except we know that the MPA gives an amber/red rating when it regards a programme as not on track – a programme that needs an assurance and action plan to improve confidence in delivery. Why is the programme not on track? What does the assurance and action plan say? What is the rating today?

So much for open government. Indeed the DWP’s external lawyers are going to an FOI tribunal in London next month as part of a long legal battle to stop four old reports on Universal Credit being published.

Any ministerial announcements about open government in future should, perhaps, take this unedifying FOI episode into account.

Major Projects Authority annual report 2014/2015

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Fujitsu, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, IBM, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

Does Barnet know if it’s saving money with Capita?

Posted on 03/06/2015 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Are council outsourcing contracts becoming so unfathomably complex that officials and leading councillors have no real idea whether they’re saving money?

A Somerset County Council report on the lessons learnt from its troubled outsourcing/joint venture deal with IBM emphasized the importance  of “not making  contracts overly complicated”.

The report said:

” Both the provider [IBM] and the Council would agree that the contract is incredibly complicated. A contract with over 3,000 pages was drawn up back in 2007 which was considered necessary at the time given the range of services and the partnership and contractual arrangements created…

“The sheer size and complexity of this contract has proven difficult to manage.”

For years there have been arguments in Somerset over whether the council has saved or spent more as a result of the relationship with IBM.  The absence of audited figures means nobody knows for certain.

It seems to be the same at Barnet. An absence of audited figures – the council does not have to produce them for an outsourcing contract – means that nobody knows for certain if Capita is costing or saving money.

It’s likely that councillors who supported the outsourcing to Capita, and critics of the deal, will never agree on whether local residents are better or worse off.

Now a Barnet resident and respected blogger Mr Reasonable, who studies the accounts of the local council as part of his efforts to be more open and accountable, has offered £250 to charity if the Tory leader Richard Cornelius provides evidence of how Capita is making savings as promised.

Mr Reasonable made the offer on 24 May 2015 and has heard nothing. His request to Barnet was followed up by Aditya Chakrabortty, senior economics commentator at the Guardian. The council didn’t reply within his deadline. Says Chakrabortty:

“If you want to see the world of outsourcing at its most illogical, spend a bit of time with detail-hunters like Mr Reasonable.

“He tells me about phoning his local library to see if a children’s book was in stock. The call was of course routed to a Capita call centre in Coventry, where staff spent ages unable to help before connecting him back to the librarians just down the road. By his calculations, for that wasted call Capita would charge Barnet £8.

“Outsourcing is full of these invented costs, which is how the privateers make their billions.

“Mr Reasonable can tell you about how Barnet now pays £800 for a day’s training in how to take minutes, or £14,628 for just two months of occupational health assessments. In both cases these are services that would previously have been provided in-house for minimal cost…

“These examples would be comic, if they didn’t cost blameless taxpayers so much money…”

Commercial confidentiality

Mr Reasonable says all the commercially sensitive elements of Barnet’s contracts with Capita are redacted and there are “numerous clauses relating to incentives and penalties which would have made publishing a single payments schedule almost impossible”.

It’s also impossible he says to know what Capita has billed for or not.

“I have asked repeatedly to see the evidence of precisely what we are paying for and a detailed explanation of why the payments are so high. Whilst a few promises of evidence were made when the previous COO was in place, none actually materialised.”

Open day?

He adds:

“If Barnet Council is serious about openness then why not host an open day where they go through the contract in detail so that we can understand exactly what we are paying for?

“I would have thought it would have made sense for Capita to get involved with this, to work through the contract with interested citizens and to demonstrate clearly how much money they are saving.

“So I hereby throw down a challenge to the Chief Executive Mr Travers, to Richard Cornelius and to Capita – host an open day, bring bloggers and critics in and show them what you are doing, how the contract is working in reality what money is being paid to whom and how much is really being saved – evidence is essential.

“Indeed a few Conservative councillors might want to come along as well seeing as they voted for this contract. I know some of them privately had serious concerns about the contract but were worried about making those views public.

“And to put my money where my mouth is, I will donate £250 to a charity of Richard Cornelius’ choice if he makes this contract open day happen.”

Comment 

Outsourcing deals should be signed on the basis of pure pragmatism, never because of an ideology.

Barnet’s deal with Capita (and Somerset’s) was signed for largely ideological reasons. Somerset wanted to “go beyond excellence” and Barnet’s ruling councillors want to be immortalised by establishing a new frontier for local government – a “commissioning council” whereby all services are bought in.

It might have been cheaper for Barnet’s residents if the council had given its ruling councillors immortality by building statutes of them in the council’s grounds.

Will council officers have enough time or understanding of the nuances of the contract, with its maze of incentives and penalties,  to know whether they are saving money or not?

In any case how accurate were the pre-outsourcing baseline figures and assumptions on which to make a comparison between what services were costing then, and what they are costing now?

There is no equivalent in local government of the National Audit Office, no organisation that will audit a local government outsourcing deal and publish the results.

This means councillors can say what they like in public about the success of a deal without fear of authoritative contradiction. Their critics can only speculate on what is really happening while they try to shine a light at the dense fog that is commercial confidentiality.

It appears that more and more councils are seriously considering large-scale outsourcing, perhaps on the basis that they can promise guaranteed savings without anyone being able to hold them to account on whether genuine savings materialise.

The first we’ll know anything is awry is when a council report, years into a contract, reveals some of the difficulties and says a resolution is being discussed with the supplier; and it’s another year or two before the contract is terminated at considerable extra cost to the council – and nobody is in post from the time of the original contract to be held accountable.

Is this really the shape of local government outsourcing to come?

Mr Reas0nable

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, consultants, excessive secrecy, local democracy, local government, openness and transparency, outsourcing, shared services

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DWP gives out “selective” information on welfare reform even to its auditors

Posted on 28/05/2015 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

If the National Audit Office cannot obtain reliable and comprehensive information from the DWP, who can?

The NAO is the department’s auditor. Its head Amyas Morse signs off (or rather qualifies) the DWP’s accounts. His staff also produce regular “value for money” reports on the DWP’s projects and performance.

But an NAO report published today on welfare reform gives more than a hint of the problems its auditors face when trying to verify the information the DWP gives them.

The report “Welfare reform – lessons learned“ says the DWP failed twice to answer the NAO’s questions. Then, when the NAO gave the department its draft report, the DWP provided some information – which the NAO describes as “selective”. It is worth quoting the NAO’s comment in full:

“We have relied largely on our past audit reports to understand the implementation of welfare reform. Past work provides a sufficiently strong and comparable evidence base to identify different approaches and what works well and less well.

“We requested audit evidence from the Department for Work & Pensions (the Department) in August and November 2014.

“This would have allowed us to validate or comment on the Department’s performance more broadly and how they have subsequently addressed issues identified in previous reports. However, the Department failed to send the evidence despite requests.

“Following receipt of a draft report in April 2015, the Department provided some evidence on how it has tried to address issues identified in previous reports and how other welfare reforms have considered these themes.

“In the Department’s view it has made progress across programmes since the time of our initial reports. This includes addressing concerns about programme management on Universal Credit and reducing the time taken to process Personal Independence Payment claims.

“Given the selective nature of the evidence provided and the limited time to review a wide range of programmes, we were unable to audit the evidence or consider the additional information in detail…”

Separately, the DWP is in a protracted legal case to prevent the publication under FOI of four old – 2012 – reports on the Universal Credit programme.  A one-day hearing will be held in London on 15 July 2015.

Comment

The DWP is astonishingly thin-skinned. Its officials are probably not hiding anything – they just don’t want anybody knowing how well, or how badly, they are managing projects and programmes such as Universal Credit.

Since Universal Credit went live press officers have been allowed to give out only selective information on Universal Credit. It has  been difficult to establish from them that the programme has had 6 programme directors and 6 senior responsible owners since 2010.

The NAO’s latest report says the DWP needs to “recognise openly” when it has not met expectations. It needs greater internal challenge, says the NAO.

But the DWP seems unable to change its culture of defensiveness and the selective release of information to Parliament, the public and even its own auditors.

Why is it spending so much public money on trying to stop the release of the four UC reports?

Better than anyone else the late Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham has summed up the need for openness:

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

“The business of government is not an activity about which only those professionally engaged are entitled to receive information and express opinions.

“It is, or should be, a participatory process. But there can be no assurance that government is carried out for the people unless the facts are made known, the issues publicly ventilated.

“Sometimes, inevitably, those involved in the conduct of government, as in any other walk of life, are guilty of error, incompetence, misbehaviour, dereliction of duty, even dishonesty and malpractice.

“Those concerned may very strongly wish that the facts relating to such matters are not made public. Publicity may reflect discredit on them or their predecessors. It may embarrass the authorities. It may impede the process of administration. Experience however shows, in this country and elsewhere, that publicity is a powerful disinfectant.

“Where abuses are exposed, they can be remedied. Even where abuses have already been remedied, the public may be entitled to know that they occurred.” R v Shayler(2002) UKHL 11, (2003)1 AC 247.

Thank you to John Slater for providing Lord Bingham’s quote.

Welfare reform – lessons learned

DWP wastes money on another Universal Credit FOI appeal

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

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

Posted on 28/04/2015 | 14 comments

By Tony Collins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lamentable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

universal creditIn an echo of the Work and Pensions Committee’s 2004 report, the Public Accounts Committee said in February 2015, in its report: Universal Credit: progress update:

“… a lack of openness remains within the Department, as does an unwillingness to face up to past failings.

“The Department refused to accept the extent of previous failings, despite the overwhelming evidence we heard last year that the programme’s management had been extraordinarily poor prior to the reset, and the small numbers claiming Universal Credit.

“Furthermore, since early 2012, the Department has been fighting a protracted legal case to prevent the publication of documents relating to the management of Universal Credit…”

Ministers powerless?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucrative

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

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

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

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

Why disclosure is important

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

DWP tells Universal Credit trainees: just keep rebooting

Posted on 10/03/2015 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

IDS says Universal Credit IT is working – but C4 Dispatches asks: is it?

In a documentary broadcast yesterday [9 March 2015] undercover reporter Karl Eriksson got a job working for the Department for Work and Pensions, training as a Universal Credit call centre adviser.

While filming secretly for several weeks he heard several loudspeaker announcements about parts of the main IT systems going down – on one occasion for a whole day. An example:

“The only thing we can suggest at the moment is keep rebooting and try again. There is nothing official out there at all.”

The Dispatches documentary contrasted the statements by Iain Duncan Smith that the IT is working with the reality in a DWP office.

The programme raises the question of whether a national broadcaster should have to film undercover to establish whether UC systems are working well.

When Channel 4 put it to the DWP that its IT is struggling to cope with 35,000 claimants let alone the 2 million the systems are supposed to be handling by now, the spokesman said:

“None of the examples of IT issues [in the Dispatches broadcast] related specifically to Universal Credit and on the rare occasion a problem occurs it is fixed as a matter of urgency.”

Does it matter, though, which systems are failing if the DWP’s IT infrastructure cannot cope with even a low level of Universal Credit claims?

Everyone expects teething problems with a new system, especially as Universal Credit has the enormous challenge of rolling six benefits into one.

But Dispatches raises the question of whether UC will ever be able to handle 7 million claimants which ultimately it will need to do – for such numbers cannot be managed with the amount of manual intervention that is currently needed, according to a National Audit Office report.

More importantly the Dispatches programmme raises a question of how open government can survive when a major government department says, with impunity, one thing  – that its IT is working well – while staff and claimants are apparently experiencing the opposite.

These are some of the announcements and staff comments the uncover reporter recorded while working at the DWP:

– Loudspeaker: “This is an IT announcement. We are currently aware of issues with all FMO icons that go through your published desktop via the cloud. There seem to be issues all down the country about it. The only thing we can suggest at the moment is keep rebooting and try again. There is nothing official out there at all. So if you can just try that and if it doesn’t work we’ll take it further. Thank you.”

– Staff comment: “Sometimes the Universal Credit portal just blocks, stops running… it is clogging up for some reason. So somebody centrally now has to try and unclog it all…It can happen when you’re on the phone. You have to tell the customer to phone you back if that happens.” [It can cost up to 40p a minute to dial the UC 0345 helpline and one claimant told C4 he’d spent £25 that month alone on ringing the helpline.]

– Loudspeaker: “This is an IT announcement. Just to let you that there is a major incident out at the moment with Universal Jobmatch and with access issues and it is affecting the Benefits Directorate and the Local Services Directorate. The current update at the moment is that it is affecting the telephony agents and other staff who use UJ at the moment.”

– Staff comment: “I will have to load my screen again. It has crashed again.”

– Loudspeaker: “Attention please. Attention please. Camlite is being taken offline so the system can be rebooted. This will take approximately 50 minutes. Please can all users log out of Camlite and stay out until further notice.” Trainee: “How do you take a call then?” Answer: “You can’t. You have to say phone back in 50 minutes on that one.”

[CAMLite is an enquiry and work management system for Universal Credit which pulls information from other DWP computer systems.]

– Staff comment to a claimant who has received a DWP letter wrongly stopping a Universal Credit claim: “It’s a letter that has been sent out because it has been closed down wrongly and the system has done it. Sometimes they do shut themselves down and we have to rebuild it. In the meantime it is done manually.”

The undercover reporter witnessed 9 separate system failures. Dispatches quoted a PCS union survey which said that 9 out of 10 members questioned had said the IT was not up to the job. The DWP’s reply was that only 13% of the 2,700 people working on UC responded to the union survey.

The DWP spokesman said:

“At the beginning of February 2015 we deployed a planned upgrade which impacted the service for 3 days and has since had no issues. This upgrade resulted in an improved performance, up to 37 times faster.

“None of the examples of IT issues related specifically to UC and on the rare occasion a problem occurs it is fixed as a matter of urgency. We have robust checks in place to ensure payments are made correctly and on time.”

Channel 4 Dispatches

Universal Credit staff say IT systems inadequate

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Universal Credit

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MPs criticise DWP’s refusal to publish Universal Credit reports

Posted on 25/02/2015 | 9 comments

By Tony Collins

As the Department for Work and Pensions continues its long and costly legal battle to stop four Universal Credit reports being published, the all-party Public Accounts Committee says a lack of openness “remains within the Department”.

The PAC says in a report published today “Universal Credit: progress update”

“… a lack of openness remains within the Department, as does an unwillingness to face up to past failings.

“The Department refused to accept the extent of previous failings, despite the overwhelming evidence we heard last year that the programme’s management had been extraordinarily poor prior to the reset, and the small numbers claiming Universal Credit.

“Furthermore, since early 2012, the Department has been fighting a protracted legal case to prevent the publication of documents relating to the management of Universal Credit…”

The DWP is refusing to release  four Universal Credit reports requested under FOI.

Three of the reports from 2012 – the risks register, issues register and milestone schedule – were requested by programme and project management professional John Slater. I requested a project assessment review of the Universal Credit programme, as carried out by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

When questioned by Margaret Hodge, chair of the PAC, Robert Devereux, the DWP’s Permanent Secretary, suggested that his officials did not publish the reports because similar reports in other departments were also unpublished.

Meanwhile the DWP is pouring public money into various legal appeals related to its refusal to publish the reports. The DWP’s lawyers argue that publishing the four reports would have a “chilling effect”. They say officials need continued confidentiality to be candid about risks and problems.

A counter argument – though not yet one made in any of the legal hearings so far – is that civil servants and consultants writing the reports are writing them for other civil servants and consultants and are more deferential in their findings than they would be if the reports were open to public and Parliamentary scrutiny.

The PAC’s latest report on Universal Credit highlights the many uncertainties that surround the programme’s delivery.

After a total spend of about £700m on the Universal Credit programme so far the Committee questions what has really been gained. It says:

“The Department must set out clearly what it has really gained from its spending so far, including from the piloting of the programme, and from the investment in live service IT systems.”

Fewer than one per cent of the potential claimants are currently claiming Universal Credit although the programme has been in live operation since April 2013.

The DWP says it is going slowly and cautiously but the PAC’s report raises questions about whether the programme, as it is being delivered by the DWP’s major suppliers, will ever be affordable or technically feasible given the amount of manual intervention required.

A separate, far cheaper “digital” solution, which is being built on agile principles,  is being trialled in Sutton, South London. It may offer more hope of successful, affordable delivery than the existing “live service” currently being rolled out. The live service from the DWP’s major suppliers mixes new coding, legacy systems and manual calculations. It has cost £344m so far. The digital solution has cost less than £5m so far.

Comment

Who has the final say on whether the four Universal Credit reports are published – the Department for Work and Pensions or the all-party Public Accounts Committee? Clearly it’s the DWP’s civil servants.

MPs are powerless to force publication of the reports.

What does this say about the ability of MPs to make the most senior civil servants more open than they want to be?

Universal Credit: progress update report

Very little progress on Universal Credit say MPs

DWP wastes money on another Universal Credit FOI appeal

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HP, IBM, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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