Category Archives: Gateway reviews

Has 2 decades of outsourcing cut costs at HMRC?

Posted on 12/08/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

If HMRC’s experience is anything to go by, outsourcing can, in the long-term, at least triple an organisation’s IT costs.

When Inland Revenue contracted out its 2,000-strong IT department to EDS, now HP, in 1994 it was the first major outsourcing deal in central government.

Costing a projected £1.03bn over 10 years the outsourcing was a success, according to the National Audit Office in a report in March 2000. The deal  enabled Inland Revenue to bring about changes in tax policy to a tight timetable, said the NAO’s Inland Revenue/EDS Strategic Partnership – Award of New Work.

But costs soared for vague reasons. Something called “post-contract verification” added £203m to the £1.03bn projected cost over 10 years. A further increase of £533m was because of “workload increases including new work”. Another increase of £248m was put down to inflation.

By now the deal with HP had risen from £1.03bn to about £2bn.

When the contract expired in 2004, HM Revenue and Customs and HP successfully transferred the IT staff to Capgemini. The new 10-year contract from 2004 to 2014 (which was later extended 2017) had a winning bid price of £2.83bn over 10 years.

So by 2004 the costs of outsourcing had risen from £1.03bn to £2.83bn.

The new contract in 2004 was called ASPIRE – Acquiring Strategic Partners for Inland Revenue. HMRC then added £900m to the ASPIRE contract for Fujitsu’s running of Customs & Excise systems. By now there were about 3,800 staff working on the contract.

The NAO said in its report in July 2006  – ASPIRE, the re-competition of outsourced IT services – that Gateway reviews had identified the need for a range of improvements in the management of the contract and projects.

Now costing £7.7bn over 10 years

The latest outsourcing costs have been obtained by Computing. It found that annual fees paid to Capgemini under ASPIRE were:

  • 2008/09:  £777.1m
  • 2009/10:  £728.9m
  • 2010/11:  £757.8m
  • 2011/12:  £735.5m
  • 2012/13:  £773.5m

So IT outsourcing costs have soared again. The original 10-year costs of outsourcing in 1994 were put at £1.03bn. Then the figure became about £2bn, then £2.83bn, then £3.7bn when Fujitsu’s contract was added to ASPIRE. Now annual IT outsourcing costs are running at about £770m a year – £7.7bn over 10 years.

So the original IT running costs of Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise have, under outsourcing contracts, more than tripled in about two decades.

Comment:

What happened to the prevailing notion that IT costs fall over the long-term, and that outsourcing brings down costs even further?

Shouldn’t HMRC’s IT costs be falling anyway because of reduced reliance on costly Fujitsu VME mainframes, reductions in data centres, modernisation of PAYE, and the clearance of time-consuming unreconciled items on more than 10 million tax files?

HMRC knows how much profit Capgemini makes under “open book” accounting. It’s a margin of about 10-15% says the NAO. Lower margins are for value-added service lines and higher margins for riskier projects. If the overall target profit margin of 12.3% is exceeded, HMRC can obtain an equal share of the extra profits.

There were 10 failures costing £3.25m in the first 15 months. Capgemini refunded £2.67m in service credits in the first year of the contract.

It’s also worth mentioning that Capgemini doesn’t get all the ASPIRE fees. It is the lead supplier in which there are around 300 subcontractors – including Fujitsu and BT.  Capgemini pays 65% of its fees to its subcontractors.

The outsourcing has helped to enable HMRC to bring in self-assessment online and other changes in tax policy. But HMRC’s quality of service generally (and not exclusively IT) is mixed, to put it politely.

The adjudicator for HMRC who intervenes in particularly difficult complaints identifies as particular problems the giving out of inaccurate information and recording information incorrectly.

She says in her 2013 annual report:

“I am disappointed at the number of complaints HMRC customers feel they need to refer to me in order to get resolution. My role should be to consider the difficult exceptions, not handle routine matters that are well within the capability of departmental staff to resolve successfully. At a time of austerity it is also important to note that the cost of dealing with customer dissatisfaction increases exponentially with every additional level of handling.”

RTI

There are complaints among payroll companies and specialists that real-time information  is not working as well as HMRC has claimed. There seems to be growing irritation with, for example, HMRC’s saying that companies owe much more than they do actually owe. And HMRC has been sending out thousands of tax codes that are wrong or change frequently – or both.

HMRC says it has made improvements but the helpline is appalling. It’s not unusual for callers to wait 30 minutes or more for an answer – or to hang on through multifarious automated messages only to be cut off.

That said there are signs HMRC is, in general, improving slowly. Chief executive of HMRC since 2012 Lin Homer is more down-to-earth and slightly more willing to own up to HMRC’s mistakes than her predecessors, and the fact that RTI and the modernisation of PAYE has got as far as it has is creditable.

But is HMRC a shining example of outsourcing at its best, of outsourcing that cuts costs in the long term? No. A decade of HP and a decade of Capgemini has shown that with outsourcing HMRC can cope, just about, with major changes in tax policy to demanding timetables. But the costs of the outsourcing contracts in the two decades since 1994 have more than tripled.

What about G-Cloud? We look forward to a change in direction from the incoming head of IT Mark Dearnley (if he has much say).

**

A Deloitte survey “The trend of bringing IT back in-house” dated February 2013, said that 48% of respondents in its Global Outsourcing and Insourcing survey 2012 reported that they had terminated an outsourcing agreement early, or for cause, or convenience. Those that took IT services back in-house mentioned cost reduction as a factor. Deloitte said factors included:

– the need for additional internal quality control due to poor quality from the outsourcer

– an increase in the price of service delivery through scope creep and excessive change orders.

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, CIO, Fujitsu, G-Cloud, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, IT projects, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, operational issues, outsourcing, oversight, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships

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Is Major Projects annual report truly ground-breaking?

Posted on 29/05/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment

The MPA annual report is a breath of fresh air.

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

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

Congratulations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Large-scale change

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

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

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

The Major Projects Authority Annual Report.

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

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Report on status of big Gov’t projects to be published at last

Posted on 09/05/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Telegraph reports that the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority is about to publish its first annual report – and it will reveal the status of schemes that include Universal Credit, says the article.

The Cabinet Office said in 2011 that the MPA’s annual report would be published by the end of December that year. In 2012 Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, told the Public Accounts Committee’s Conservative MP Richard Bacon that the MPA’s annual report would be published in June 2012.

But senior departmental  civil servants have objected repeatedly to the red-amber-green “traffic light” status of projects being published, which contradicts the wishes of Kerslake and Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister.

One reason for the delay in publishing the MPA annual report is that Maude and Kerslake have been weighing objections to the reporting of the red-amber-green status against the need for departmental cooperation to implement civil service reforms.

From the Telegraph article it appears that Maude has persuaded (or forced) departmental heads to accept the publication of the traffic light status on big and risky projects. The Major Projects Authority reviews IT and other projects costing more than £50m.

The Telegraph says the MPA annual report will reveal Government troubleshooters’ concerns about multi-billion pound projects like the Universal Credit.

The article says the MPA annual report will show that about a third of projects it has reviewed are late or over budget. Says the Telegraph: “Government sources said that the MPA will show that management of big projects has improved significantly since 2010, when two-thirds of programmes were in trouble.

“But the report, expected later this month, will confirm that Whitehall ‘still has a long way to go’ to improve its handling of major projects, a source said.”

The article adds that publication of the annual report “follows a lengthy internal struggle between ministers and civil servants about the disclosure of problems with big Government schemes”.

Some ministers, says the article, are privately concerned that civil servants are bad at managing big, expensive projects but repeatedly cover up their failings and refuse to tell ministers about problems.  Disclosing “candid” assessments about big projects will improve management, ministers believe.

The Telegraph says that a “new publication scheme that will start later this month” will publicly rate each project at red, amber, or green. 

Each central department will be told to publish details of its major projects every six months, including the red-amber-green ratings and the data behind them, says the article.

The Telegraph quotes as a coalition source as saying: “Releasing a candid report about Whitehall’s major projects is a big and brave step for Government…”

Management of big projects better but still generally poor? 

Lord Browne, a lead non-executive in the Cabinet Office and the man appointed to recruit business leaders to Whitehall departmental boards, has criticised the management of major projects as “worryingly poor”.

He said that insufficient attention was given to identifying risks in the planning stage, and that there had been a “consistent failure” to appoint leaders with the right skills and experience.

Browne said the creation of the Major Projects Authority (MPA) in the Cabinet Office in 2011 had improved their delivery, but “nobody ever intervenes in a poor project soon enough” and that warning signs were often ignored or under-reported.

He called for an “ongoing and rigorous review process with real teeth” which would monitor measures of progress and call “time out” on failing projects, allowing them either to be fixed or stopped.

Browne said the government could learn from the private sector, where projects are scrutinised to a “very high standard” before work begins. In line with this, he suggested that the MPA should have a strengthened “stage-gate approval process” to ensure that projects achieve objectives.

He said that projects should not be allowed to begin until a team with the right skills – including a leader who had previously delivered a large, complex project – had been identified.

He also suggested that the MPA nominate leaders and veto unsuitable candidates. He said that expensive projects should “never be seen as a personal development opportunity”.

He advocated using pay, benefits and bonuses to give team members incentives to work on the project “until appropriate milestones are reached”. This, Browne said, had been key to the success of major projects delivered by the private sector.

Departments still sceptical of Maude’s reforms?

Meanwhile the FT has reported that Maude’s attempts to inject commercial acumen into Whitehall by putting leading business figures on departmental boards is failing to live up to its billing, with some departments rarely consulting their external non-executive directors.

The FT says that the Treasury department’s supervisory board met only once in the year to April 2012, according to a report by Insight Public Affairs, a consultancy. The energy department’s board met twice, compared to 15 meetings in the transport department, reflecting the inconsistent involvement of non-executive directors.

John Lehal, managing director of Insight Public Affairs, said the ad hoc manner in which departments held board meetings reflected the need for greater accountability – as underlined by the Treasury’s failure to engage its non-executives.

Comment

At long last the Major Projects Authority, under the straight-talking Australian David  Pitchford, will publish its annual report; and it may contain more detail on major projects than has been published by any government.

As departments fear public embarrassment more than any other sanction, publication of the traffic light status of projects – with the underlying detail – should genuinely discourage the starting of ill-considered projects.

Although the MPA annual report is much delayed Maude has succeeded in getting agreement for it to be published. Provided it contains enough detail to allow the status of projects to be judged by armchair auditors, it should begin to make a real difference.

Telegraph article

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Posted in change management, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Suffocating secrecy culture in public life – ex-DPP

Posted on 13/09/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Francis Maude and the Cabinet Office have made a little progress towards open government but it’s put into perspective by the fact that no progress reports are published on any of the government’s biggest IT projects including Universal Credit.

This morning on the BBC R4 Today programme Lord MacDonald, a Liberal Democrat peer and former Director of Public Prosecutions (2003-2008) – he was also head of the Crown Prosecution Service – spoke of the continuing culture of secrecy in British public life, which he called “absolutely suffocating”.

He was speaking about the wider implications of the Hillsborough Panel report yesterday. He said

 “I was in Whitehall for five years. The culture of secrecy in British political and public life is absolutely suffocating… The [Labour] Government brought in the Freedom of Information Act and that has made some difference but it’s not without interest that the prime minister at the time Mr Blair now describes that as one of his biggest mistakes.

“There still is a great attraction to the idea that only some people need to know about what is going on and others don’t… we have got to get away from this culture which is terribly old-fashioned and cannot co-exist with public confidence.”

He said that one of the lessons from Hillsborough was the inability of the state to be truthful about what had gone wrong.

“We have a tendency on the part of British public authorities to see themselves as apart from the public – a long-standing disease of secrecy in our public life and inadequate coroner’s system and a very deep and long-standing corruption in our police services – I don’t mean taking money – but in terms of a culture of deceit particularly when under attack; a culture of deceit that has been quite breathtaking in this case…”

Comment:

That culture of suffocating, almost tribal secrecy and deceit when things go wrong, flows from the trivial such as IT-based disasters to one of the most serious failures one can imagine – deaths caused at least in part by state incompetence.  What is to be done about that culture?

Lord MacDonald on BBC’s Today programme – 13 September 2012

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Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews

DWP finds hidden Universal Credit reports – after FOI requests

Posted on 21/08/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions has found two reports on Universal Credit reports it commissioned from IBM and McKinsey and did not know existed.

One of the reports was a Universal Credit “end to end technical review” carried out by IBM at a cost of £49,240. Another was a review of the Universal Credit “delivery model assessment phases one and two” carried by McKinsey and Partners at a cost of £350,000.  The assessments were in the first half of 2011.

In March, under the FOI Act, Campaign4Change asked the DWP for a copy of the reports and the Department couldn’t find them.

On 19 July 2012, Julie Kitchin, Senior Business Partner, Operations at the Financial Control Directorate, Risk Management Division, DWP Quarry House, Leeds, said in a letter:

“You asked for a copy of the Universal Credit Delivery Model Assessment Phase 1 and 2, and the Universal Credit End to End Technical Review.

“To ascertain whether the Department holds these documents I requested a thorough search of the Universal Credit Programme document library.

“Universal Credit Colleagues have confirmed that the Department does not hold documents with these titles or under these names…”

I replied that a mistake appeared to have been made. “The reports I asked for are referred to in this Parliamentary reply, which gives the cost of the reports and the consultants whom the DWP commissioned to produce them. How can the DWP now say they have no record of the reports?” I gave a link to the Parliamentary reply.

Kitchin said she would seek clarification.  Now Martin Dillon of the DWP’s Central FOI Team, says his Department has found the reports. Says Dillon in a letter,

“It has taken time to locate the documents as they are sensitive in nature and held securely and separately from the normal programme library of information – accessible only through a secure authority.

“I can however now confirm that the relevant records have been located and retrieved.”

Comment

So will the DWP now release the Universal Credit reports?

Not a chance.   The DWP does not publish any consultancy reports, especially external assessments of Universal Credit. Indeed it appears to be so innately, instinctively and culturally secretive that it hides from its own staff independent  assessments of its projects.

Could it be that the DWP is in part PR-driven, to the extent that it commissions tens of millions of pounds worth of external reviews of projects, which ministers and officials can quote from selectively in case a project such as Universal Credit is criticised in Parliament, but which remain hidden so that anything negative is always kept from public and Parliamentary scrutiny?

In defence of the DH’s decision to pay generous sums to BT for Rio and Cerner deployments under the NPfIT, the department quoted selectively from a series of consultancy reports which it refused to publish.

Officially the DWP has not made up its mind on whether to publish the Universal credit reports. In private its officials know there is no way it will publish them.

This is the official DWP response to Campaign4Change on the reports requested under FOI:

“It is occasionally necessary to extend the time limit for issuing a response. In the case of your request, we need to extend the time limit because the information requested must be considered under one of the exemptions to which the public interest test applies.

“This extra time is needed in order to make a determination as to the public interest. Accordingly, we hope to let you have a response by 13 September.”

Universal Credit is one of the government’s biggest IT-related projects. Ministers say that all is going well. But what if the plans are to go live with a tiny proportion of claimants in October next year, with most of the remainder to follow after the next general election, if at all? Is that a PR success or a postponed disaster? It’s certainly a good reason to keep independent assessments of the project secret.

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

Has DWP lost £400,000 worth of Universal Credit studies it commissioned?

DWP hides already published report on Universal Credit

Millions of secret DWP reports.

Time for truth on Universal Credit IT

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Posted in DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, governance, Government IT, openness and transparency

Maude gives up on plan to publish regular reports on major projects

Posted on 09/08/2012 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has given up on publishing regular “Gateway” reports on the progress or otherwise of big IT and construction projects.

Publication of the independent reviews has proved a step too far towards open government.  Were Maude to insist on publishing Major Projects Authority “Gateway” review reports, it would alienate too many influential senior civil servants whose support Maude needs to implement the Civil Service Reform Plan of June 2012.

Gateway reviews are independent reports on medium and high-risk projects at important stages of their lifecycle.  If current and topical the reviews are always kept secret. One copy is given to the project’s senior responsible owner and the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority keeps another. Other copies have limited distribution.

In opposition Maude said he would publish the reviews; and when in power Maude took the necessary steps: the Cabinet Office’s “Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates” included an undertaking to publish Gateway reviews by December 2011 .

When some officials, particularly those who had worked at the Office of Government Commerce, objected strongly to publishing the reports (for reasons set out below), the undertaking  to publish them vanished from further Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates.  When asked why, a spokesman for the Cabinet Office said the plan to publish Gateway reviews had only ever been a “draft” proposal.

The anti-publication officials have thwarted even Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the Home Civil Service, who replaced Sir Gus O’Donnell.  When in May 2012 Conservative MP Richard Bacon asked Kerslake about publishing Gateway reviews, 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.”

Inexplicably there was a change of plan. The Civil Service Reform Plan in fact said nothing about Gateway reports. It made no mention of RAG ratings. What the Plan offered on openness over major projects was an undertaking that “Government will publish an annual report on major projects by July 2012, which will cover the first full year’s operation of the Major Projects Authority.”  (This is a far cry from publishing regular independent Gateway assessments on major projects such as the IT for Universal Credit.)

Even that promise has yet to materialise: no annual report has been published. The Cabinet Office originally promised Parliament an annual report on the Major Projects Authority by December 2011. The Cabinet Office says that the annual MPA report has been delayed because the “team is now clear that it makes sense to include a full financial year’s worth of data and analysis in its first report”.

When eventually published the annual report will, says the Cabinet Office,  “make for a far more informative and comprehensive piece, and will include analysis of data up to 31 March 2012. This will be the first time the UK government has reported on its major projects in such a coherent and transparent way.”

Even so it’s now clear that the Cabinet Office is discarding its plans to publish regular Gateway review reports. Maude wants cooperation with officials, not confrontation.  He made this clear in the reform plan in which he said:

“Some may caricature this action plan as an attack on the Civil Service. It isn’t. It would be just as wrong to caricature the attitude of the Civil Service as one of unyielding resistance to change. Many of the most substantive ideas in this paper have come out of the work led by Permanent Secretaries themselves.”

But Maude is also frustrated at the quiet recalcitrance of some officials.  To a Lords committee that was inquiring into the accountability of civil servants, he said

“The thing for me that is absolutely fundamental in civil servants is that they should feel wholly uninhibited in challenging, advising and pushing back and then when a decision is made they should be wholly clear about implementing it.

“For me the sin against the holy ghost is to not push back and then not do it – that is what really enrages ministers, certainly in talking to ministers in the last government and in the current government. It is by no mean universal, but it is far more widespread than is desirable.”

It’s likely that Maude will keep Gateway reports secret so long as he has the cooperation of officials on civil service reforms.

Why officials oppose publication

The reasons for opposing publication were set out in the OGC’s evidence to an Information Tribunal on the Information Commissioner’s ruling in 2006 that the OGC publish two Gateway reports on the ID Cards scheme.

Below are some of the OGC’s arguments (all of which the Tribunal rejected).  The OGC went to the High Court to stop two early ID Cards Gateway reports being published, at which time OGC lawyers cited the 1689 Bill of Rights. The ID Cards gateway reports were eventually published (and the world didn’t end).

The OGC had argued that publishing Gateway reports would mean that:

–  Interviewees in Gateway reviews gave their time voluntarily and may refuse to cooperate.  (The Information Commissioner did not accept that officials would cease to perform their duties on the grounds the information may be disclosed.)

– Interviewees would be guarded in what they said;  reviewers would be less inclined to cooperate; and disclosure would result in anodyne reports. These three arguments were given in evidence by Sir Peter Gershon, the first Chief Executive of the OGC.

– Civil servants would be reluctant to take on the role of senior responsible owner of a project.

– Critics of a project would have ammunition which could discourage other departments and agencies from participating in the scheme.

– Cabinet collective responsibility could be undermined if Ministers were interviewed for a review.

– Criticisms in the reviews could be “in the newspapers within a very short time”, and the media could misrepresent the review’s findings. (The Tribunal discovered that those involved in the reviews were generally more concerned with their programme than possible adverse publicity.)

– Reports would take longer to write.

– The public would not understand the complexities in the reports.

Why Gateway reports should be published

The Tribunal found that OGC fears about publishing were speculative and that disclosure would contribute to a public debate about the merits of ID Cards, and provide some insight into the decision-making which underlay the scheme. Disclosure would ensure that a complex and sensitive scheme was “properly scrutinised and implemented”, said the Tribunal.

Was OGC evidence to Tribunal fixed?

The Tribunal was also suspicious that the OGC had submitted several witness statements that used identical wording. The Tribunal said the witnesses should have expressed views in their own words.

It found that disclosure could make Gateway reviewers more candid because they would know that their recommendations and findings would be subject to public scrutiny; and criticisms in the reports, if made public, could strengthen the assurance process.

Importantly, the Tribunal said the disclosure would help people judge whether the Gateway process itself works.

Comment

Hundreds of Gateway reports are carried out by former civil servants who can earn more than £1,000 a day for doing a review (although note Peter Smith’s comment below). As the reports are to remain secret how will the reviewers be held properly accountable for their assessments? No wonder officials don’t want the reports published.

Any idea how many projects we have and what they’ll cost? – Cabinet Office.

Whitehall cost cutting saves £5.5bn

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Posted in excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, governance, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, project management, public sector, Universal Credit

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Lessons from an IT disaster

Posted on 23/07/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Only rarely is an independent report on an IT-related disaster published.  So North Bristol NHS Trust deserves credit for publishing a report  by Pricewaterhousecoopers into the problematic go-live of Cerner Millennium in December 2011.  PwC calls the Cerner system a “business-critical patient record system”.

The implementation, says PwC,  resulted in significant continuing  operational difficulty. PwC was asked to review the implementation, identify what went wrong and make recommendations.

What is clear from PWC’s report is that North Bristol NHS Trust repeated the known mistakes of other trusts that had gone live with Cerner Millennium:

–          A lack of independent challenge

–          Not enough testing of the system and new business processes

–          Inadequate contingency arrangements

–          Not enough time for data migration

–          Training systems not the same as those to be used

–          Preparations treated as an IT project, not a change programme.

–          Differences between legacy and Cerner systems not fully understood before go live

–          Staff did not always understand new or changed business processes

In 2007 the National Audit Office reported in detail on the lessons from the go-live of Cerner Millennium at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford in December 2005.

One of those lessons was that the Trust did not learn lessons from earlier NPfIT Cerner Millennium go-lives. This happened again at North Bristol, suggests the PwC report:

“There were not dissimilar Cerner implementations within the Greenfield [other ex-Fujitsu and now BT-managed Cerner Millennium implementations under the NPfIT] systems running a few months before NBT’s [North Bristol Trust] implementation. Similar difficulties were experienced there, but they were more successfully addressed.”

Below are extracts from PwC’s report “Independent review of Cerner Millennium implementation North Bristol NHS Trust”.

“The success of an implementation of this scale, complexity and timing depends on substantial, robust and enduring programme management focusing on:

–          The IT implementation. Incorporating configuration of Cerner Millennium, infrastructure, security, interfaces and testing;

–          The migration of data from the two legacy PAS systems into Cerner Millennium;

–          Change management to engage and train stakeholders, embed change in the organisation and ensure that processes and procedures are aligned to the new system;

–          Continuous communication with users about changes to business processes as a result of the implementation; and

–          Quality control criteria and the association governance to ensure that go-live went ahead in a safe and sustainable manner.

–          The Trust needed stringent programme management with programme and project managers of the highest quality, to ensure that effective governance and project planning procedures were followed.

–          The go-live decision and assurances needed to pass strict criteria with sufficient evidence to provide assurance to the board that all necessary activities were completed prior to go-live.

The implementation in both the wards and the Emergency Department (ED) went well. Staff in ED were well engaged in the project and as a result were fully aware of the changes to their business processes at go live. There were some minor system issues initially but these were resolved quickly and ED was fully operational with Cerner Millennium soon after go live. One of the underlying factors in the success of the deployment to ED was that there was no data migration required as the historical data remains in the old system.

The launch in the wards went as expected; the functionality was tested well and the data was loaded manually, although there now appear to be issues with staff engaging and using the system as intended.

The majority of problems encountered at go live related to the theatre and outpatient clinic builds.

Outpatients had the most disruption immediately after go live. The Trust’s back office team had not finished building the outpatient clinics in Cerner Millennium, so the new and old systems did not mirror each other and data could not successfully migrate. Changes continued to be made to clinics in the old PAS systems, and these were not all reflected in Cerner Millennium.

Ad hoc clinics were used in the old PAS system to allow overbooking to maximise activity. These were not separated from real clinics at go live and migrated to Cerner Millennium as real clinics. The ad hoc clinics in PAS had deliberately abnormal timings so they could be excluded from time-based reports, for example 12:30am and 5:30am. The system generated letters for these ad hoc out- of-hours clinics, and many were sent to patients.

In the old system, clinics for a number of consultants could be pooled to facilitate patients seeing the next available consultant.  All clinics in Cerner Millennium are specific to a consultant and this caused significant confusion to administration staff using the new system.

PAS [the legacy patient administration system] treats “weeks” differently to Cerner Millennium. On migration, weeks were misaligned and the dates for clinics and theatres was incorrect. This created huge confusion as patient notes did not agree with Cerner Millennium , despite exhaustive work before go live to ensure that all patient notes were ready for the clinics that should have been on the system.  This also affected information in letters, with patients advised to attend their appointment on the wrong date.

There was a further issue in theatres relating to theatre procedure codes. The Trust did not map the old procedure codes to the new to ensure that all the required procedures would be available in Cerner Millennium for the data to migrate successfully. The Trust identified this issue soon after go live and has run a parallel manual process to ensure patients received the correct procedures.

The training provided to staff by the Trust did not equip them to be able to use Cerner Millennium at go live. The training environment did not mirror the system the Trust implemented as certain elements of the system were not complete when the training domain was created. Theatre staff and outpatient appointments could not train on a system with theatre schedules and outpatient clinics built in.

The Trust is now beginning to move out of the crisis and return to normal operations.

Lack of effective quality controls

There was insufficient rigour over the controls criteria and sign off of the gateway reviews.

There was inadequate operational control over the go live process, such as clinic freeze and updates pre-, during, and post go-live. Evidence from the interviews suggests that:

  • There was little challenge to confirm that the gateway criteria had in fact been met.
  • There was no evidence presented to the Cerner Programme Board or the Trust Board to demonstrate that the gateway criteria had been met.
  • There was not enough focus on or monitoring of risks and issues and their impact on go live.
  • The cleansing of old and out-of-date data from the legacy PAS systems was inadequate; as a result, erroneous data became live data in the Cerner system.
  • Data Migration issues were not all resolved and their impact on go live was not considered.
  • The outpatient and theatre builds were neither complete nor accurate, and there were no controls which could have detected this before go live.
  • There were inadequate controls over clinic freeze and clinic changes prior to go live.

Lack of effective programme planning

Programme plans were not rigorously updated as the programme progressed and planning around training, testing and data migration and build was not robust. The Trust failed to recognise this programme as a change programme and did not effectively manage the engagement and feedback from their stakeholders. Evidence from the interviews suggests that:

  • The Trust did not factor contingency into its programme plan to account for changes to the go live date.
  • The Cerner Programme Management Office was not effective because of inadequate resource and programme tools.
  • The Trust had a lack of sufficiently skilled resources for a project on this scale.
  • The Trust’s operational staff were not fully engaged in the Cerner project.
  • The Cerner project was treated as an IT project and not a business change programme.
  • The training was inadequate and did not provide users with the skills they needed to be able to use the system at go live.
  • The testing focused on the functionality of the system and not end-user testing of the outpatient and theatre builds.
  • There was no end-user testing of the final outpatient clinic and theatre builds prior to go live.
  • There was lack of understanding of roles within the wider programme team.
  • External parties offered NBT help and advice. They felt that the advice was not taken and the help was refused.

Lack of effective programme governance

Programme governance processes were not reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that they were adequate and there was inappropriate accountability for key decision making. During the implementation, the Trust established new overarching change management arrangements for the Building our Future programme. Evidence from the interviews suggests that:

  • The Cerner Project team failed to comply with the Trust’s Building our Future governance processes
  • The information presented to the Cerner Programme Board and the Trust board by the Cerner Project team was inadequate for them to make informed decisions;
  • The Cerner Programme Board was not effective; and
  • Significant issues relating to the theatre and outpatient clinic build were not escalated to the Cerner Programme Board or the Trust board.

PwC’s Conclusions

For a programme of this scale and complexity, the management arrangements were not sufficiently extensive or robust. There were many issues with the software and data migration, the training of users and operational go live planning. The Trust Board and the Cerner Programme Board did not plan to have, and did not receive, independent assurance that the state of the programme supported a decision to go-live.

Complex IT implementations are never without risks and issues that need to be managed, even at the point of go live. The scale of the issues in this implementation was not properly understood by those with responsibility, and as a result they were not in a position to make sound decisions.

Many of the problems are associated with poor data and process migration. Staff found that a significant proportion of migrated data was incorrect in the new system, and this had rapid and substantial operational impact which has taken a considerable time to rectify with manual processes. Staff needed to be more directly involved in migration and process testing.

The implementation was manifestly a complex change programme. But IT took the lead, and there was no intelligent customer with sufficient distance from IT to ensure products and progress were properly challenged.

There were not dissimilar Cerner implementations within the Greenfield running a few months before NBT implementation. Similar difficulties were experienced there, but they were more successfully addressed.”

PwC recommends that:

–  the Trust “stop and take stock”. It says  “The Trust needs to take stock of its position and develop a coherent and detailed plan for the remainder of the recovery stage. The Trust then needs to ensure that effective cross programme planning and governance arrangements are enforced for all current projects, especially those under the Building Our Future programme.”

PwC also recommends that the Trust carry out a:

–  Governance review

– Capability/capacity review

– Cross programme plan review

– Operational assessment

– Review of process and controls

– Review of information requirement

– Technical resilience/infrastructure review

– Review of access controls

Comment:

To me the PwC report throws up at least six points:

1) Are NPfIT go-lives more political than pragmatic?

In the 1990s Barclays Bank went live with new systems for all its branches. During the night (I was invited to watch the go-live at head office) the most striking element was a check list that asked questions on progress so far. The answers determined whether the go-live would happen. The check-list was completed repeatedly – seemingly endlessly – during the night.

Many  different types of mishaps could have stopped the go-live.  None did.  Go-lives of Cerner Millennium are different. They seem unstoppable, whatever the circumstances, whatever the problems.  There was nothing political about the Barclays go-live. But NPfIT go-lives are intensely political.

Would North Bristol’s board have accepted with equanimity a last-minute cancellation, especially after go-lives had been postponed at least twice before?

2)  Are NHS boards too focused on “good news” to oversee an NPfIT go live?

North Bristol NHS Trust deserves praise for publishing the PwC report.  But it’s not the whole story.  The report says little about any potentially serious impact on patients. Also it mentions (almost in passing) that the Trust board discussed in November 2011 the readiness of Cerner Millennium to go live. That discussion was probably positive because Millennium went live a month later. But there is no mention of that discussion in the Trust’s board papers for November 2011.

Why did the Trust discuss its readiness to go live in secret? And why did it keep secret its November 2011 report on its readiness to go live?

If North Bristol, like so many NHS trusts, is congenitally beset with a good news culture at board level, can the full truth ever be properly discussed?

3) Isn’t it time Cerner lessons were learnt?

After seven years of Cerner implementations in the NHS, several of them notorious failures, isn’t it time Trusts learnt the lessons?

4)  What’s the current position?

PwC’s report is succinct and professional. It’s also diplomatically-worded. There is little in the report that points to how the Trust is coping with the operational difficulties. Indeed it suggests the Trust is returning to normal. “The Trust is now beginning to move out of the crisis and return to normal operations,” says the PwC report. But that is, in essence, what the Trust has been saying publicly since January 2012.  PwC says nothing about whether the safety of patients has been jeopardized by the go-live.

5) Where were the Trust’s Audit Committee – and internal auditors?

Every NHS Trust has an audit committee and internal auditors to warn about things that are going wrong, or may go wrong. It appears that they were out to lunch when it came to North Bristol’s Cerner Millennium project and its consequences.  The Audit Committee seems hardly to have mentioned the project. Should North Bristol’s board hold the Audit Committee and internal auditors to account?

6) Is the Trust board to blame?

Perhaps rightly PwC does not seek to apportion blame. But did the Trust board ask the right questions often enough?  The tacit criticism in the PwC report is of the IT department and layers of management below board level. But is that criticism misdirected? If the board’s culture of encouraging good news – of “bring me solutions not problems” –  has not changed, perhaps little or nothing will have been learned from North Bristol’s IT-related disaster.

PWC report Independent review of Cerner Millennium implementation North Bristol NHS Trust.

Lessons from Nuffield Orthopaedic’s Cerner Millennium implementation in 2005.

North Bristol apologises over Cerner go-live.

New hospital system caused chaos.

MP asks why two Cerner systems cost vastly different prices.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, culture, e-health, Gateway reviews, governance, Government IT, health, health records, IT projects, IT-related failures, NHS, npfit, openness and transparency, operational issues, project management, public sector, public services

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Gateway reports on major projects to remain secret?

Posted on 20/06/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Comment

The civil service reform plan, which was published yesterday, is disappointing. It is so consensual that it has nothing particularly punchy to offer. It reads like the report of a tennis club match in which the finalists were such good friends that neither wanted to win; and each surrendered alternate points until those watching drifted into the bar.

The reform plan has been approved by senior civil servants and even former Labour ministers. In the House of Commons yesterday Labour’s spokesmen reacted with indifference and unions too have said little.

One reason, perhaps, is that the plan is full of good intentions that promise further documents and consultations that are full of good intentions. In short there’s nothing for potential opponents to worry about.

On improving the delivery of major projects, the reform plan is vague to the point of being self-mocking. It proposes:

– Requiring greater testing and scrutiny of major projects by departmental boards and the [Cabinet Office’s] Major Projects Authority before they move to full implementation;

– Regular publication of project progress and the production of an annual report on progress, scrutinised by the Departmental Board;

–  Commencing training of all leaders of major projects through the Major Projects Leadership Academy by the end of 2014; and

– Significantly reducing the turnover of Senior Responsible Officers.

The phrase “significantly reducing” means nothing in practice; and does the promise of “regular publication of project progress reports” mean anything in practice, other than, perhaps, the publication of press releases on project progress written by the PR departments of HMRC, the DWP and the MoJ?.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude could have confronted permanent secretaries with an important policy change that required the civil service to publish independent Gateway review reports on the progress or otherwise of major IT and construction projects. Perhaps Maude has not done so because he wanted consensus. But he has probably ended up with a reform plan that nobody believes in and to which nobody objects.

The Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority will do its best to stop IT-related project failures but it has limited control and civil service secrecy working against it. The reform plan changes none of this.

Doubtless the disasters will continue.

Civil Service Reform Plan

Useful critique of Civil Service Reform Plan by Institute for Government.

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Posted in change management, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures

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Cabinet Office promises unprecedented openness on risky projects

Posted on 13/06/2012 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office has defended its decision not to publish “Gateway” review reports on the progress or otherwise of large and risky IT and construction projects.

Gateway reviews are regular, short and independent audits on the state of medium and high-risk projects. Their publication would allow  MPs and the public to have an early warning of a major project in trouble – rather than know of a project failure only after it has happened.

Campaigners have sought for a decade to have the review reports published; and the  Information Commissioner, in requiring the publishing of ID Card gateway reviews under FOI,  dismissed the generalised arguments put forward by officials for Gateway reviews to remain confidential.

The Conservatives, when in opposition, promised to publish Gateway review reports if they came to power. But departmental heads and senior officials have stopped this happening.

Now the Cabinet Office, in a statement to The Guardian, has suggested that the first annual report of the Major Projects Authority will more than compensate for the non-publication of Gateway review reports.

The statement says that the Authority’s ( delayed)  first annual report will “bring unprecedented scrutiny and transparency to our most expensive and highest risk programmes, changing forever the culture of secrecy that has allowed failure to be swept under the carpet”.

The statement continues:

“Historically, fewer than a third of government major projects have delivered to original estimates of time, cost and quality. Since April 2011 the Major Projects Authority has enforced a tough new assurance regime and begun raising leadership standards within the Civil Service.”

The Guardian asked the Cabinet Office whether the traffic light red/amber/green status of Gateway reviews will be published.  The spokesman replied:

“The annual report will contain details of the status of major projects.“

Comment:

We applaud the Major Projects Authority in scrutinising, and in rare cases helping to stop,  departmental projects that don’t have adequate business cases. The Authority’s work is vital in pre-empting ridiculous schemes such as the NPfIT.

But project  disasters that rely on  IT continue, at the Ministry of Justice for example.  Like the National Audit Office, the  Major Projects Authority has limited resources and cannot scrutinise everything. Even if it could, the system of government is not set up in such a way as to allow the Authority to have final say over whether a project is stopped, curbed or re-negotiated.

Preventing failure

Gateway review reports are a critical component in preventing IT-related project failures. If officials know the whistle is going to be authoritatively blown on their failing schemes they are likely to do all they can to avoid failure in the first place. If they know that nobody will be aware of doomed schemes until those involved have left or moved, they will have less incentive to make projects a success.

An annual report is no substitute for the contemporaneous publishing of Gateway review reports. Each Gateway review is several pages and puts into context the traffic light red/amber/green status of the project. An annual report will not contain every Gateway review report. If just the traffic light status is published that will be a start, but without the context of the report what will it mean?

[And it’s worth bearing in mind that the first annual report of the Major Projects Authority is already six months late.]

The non-publication of Gateway review reports is  a victory by senior officials over ministerial promises.  How can we believe that the coalition is committed to unprecedented openness when the final say remains with Sir Humphrey?

Cabinet Office promises to challenge culture of secrecy on IT projects.

Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects?

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Posted in change, change management, cost avoidance, cost reduction, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, government, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, openness and transparency, operational issues, Politics, reducing cost strategically

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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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