Category Archives: governance

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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IBM won bid without lowest-price – council gives detail under FOI

Posted on 10/07/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Excessive secrecy has characterised a deal between IBM and Somerset County Council which was signed in 2007.

Indeed I once went to the council’s offices in Taunton, on behalf of Computer Weekly, for a pre-arranged meeting to ask questions about the IBM contract. A council lawyer refused to answer most of my questions because I did not live locally.

Now (five years later) Somerset’s Corporate Information Governance Officer Peter Grogan at County Hall, Taunton, has shown that the council can be surprisingly open.

He has overturned a refusal of the council to give the bid prices. Suppliers sometimes complain that the public sector awards contracts to the lowest-price bidder. But …

Supplier / Bid Total cost over 10 years
BT Standard bid £220.552M
BT Variant Bid £248.055M
Capita Standard Bid £256.671M
Capita Variant Bid £267.687M
IBM Standard Bid £253.820M
IBM Variant Bid £253.820M

The FOI request was made by former council employee Dave Orr who has, more than anyone, sought to hold Somerset and IBM to account for what has turned out to be a questionable deal.

Under the FOI Act, Orr asked Somerset County Council for the bid totals. It refused saying the suppliers had given the information  in confidence. Orr appealed. In granting the appeal Grogan said:

“I would also consider that the passage of time has a significant impact here as the figures included under the exemption are now some 5 years old and their commercial sensitivity is somewhat eroded.

“Whilst, at the time those companies tendering for the contract would justifiably expect the information to be confidential and that they could rely upon confidentiality clauses, I am not able to support the non-disclosure due the fact that the FOI Act creates a significant argument for disclosure that outweighs the confidentiality agreement once the tender exercise is complete and a reasonable amount of time has passed.

“I therefore do not consider this exemption [section 41] to be engaged. Please find the information you requested below…”

[In my FOI experience – making requests to central government departments – the internal review process has always proved pointless. So all credit to Peter Grogan for not taking the easy route, in this case at least.]

MP Ian Liddell-Grainger ‘s website on the “Southwest One” IBM deal.

IBM struggles with SAP two years on – a shared services warning.

Council accepts IBM deal as failing.

Was Audit Commission Somerset and IBM’s unofficial PR agents?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, governance, IBM, IT-related failures, managing change, managing outsourced services, SAP, shared services, software quality, supplier relationships

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How CIOs and IT suppliers view GovIT change

Posted on 25/06/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

CIOs and IT suppliers give their views on Government ICT in an authoritative report published today by the Institute for Government

Inside the wrapper of generally positive words, a report published today on government ICT by the Institute for Government suggests that major change is unlikely to happen, despite the best efforts of  CIOs and the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

The report “System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT strategy”  says progress has been made. But its messages suggest that reforms are unlikely to  amount to more than tweaks.

These are some of the key messages in the report:

If the minister and CIOs cannot direct change who can?

–          “… while the Minister for the Cabinet Office and government CIO are viewed as being responsible for delivering the ICT strategy (for example by the Public Accounts Committee) they currently lack the full authority to direct change.”

Not so agile

–           “While just over half of government departments may be running an agile project, there were concerns that these were often very minor projects running on the fringe of the departments.”

–          “We heard concerns from the supplier community and those inside government that in some areas projects may be being labelled as ‘agile’ without having really changed the way in which they were run.”

–          “CIOs should question whether they are genuinely improving the ways that they are working in areas such as agile, or whether they are just attaching a label to projects to get a tick in the box,” says the Institute for Government.

Savings not real?

–          “There was also an element of challenge to the savings figures provided by government. For example, some from government and the supplier community questioned whether the numbers represented genuine savings or just cuts in the services provided or deferred expenditure. “

–          “Others … cautioned that project scope creep or change requests could reduce actual savings in time. It was pointed out that the NAO [National Audit Office] will scrutinise whether savings have been achieved in future, which was seen as a clear incentive for accuracy – but there were, nonetheless, concerns that pressure to provide large savings figures meant that inadequate attention might be paid to verifying the savings …”

CIOs want faster ICT progress

–          “Among the CIOs we interviewed, there was a clear recognition that government ICT needed to improve.  ‘You expect an Amazon experience from a government department…’ ”

Lack of money good for change

–          “As one ICT lead noted, a lack of money was ‘always helpful’ in driving change as it promoted cross-government solution-sharing and led to more rigour in approving new spend.”

–          “Both ICT leaders and suppliers felt that the ICT moratorium had been a helpful stimulus for increased focus on value for money.”

–          “Though some of the larger suppliers felt bruised by the ‘smash and grab’ of initial interactions with the Coalition government, there was a recognition that the moratorium had been about ‘stopping things which were inappropriate’”.

GDS challenges norms

–          “New ways of working in the new Government Digital Service and the opening up of government through the Transparency agenda were also seen as providing a challenge to existing norms.”

–          The new Government Digital Service (GDS) is providing an example of a new way of doing things, and was pointed to by those inside and outside of government as embodying mould-breaking attitudes, using innovative techniques and … delivering results on very short timescales. Several interviews mentioned being invigorated by the positive approach of the GDS and their focus on delivering services to meet end-user needs.

ICT so poor staff circumvent it

–          “Public servants are increasingly frustrated that the ICT they use in their private lives appears to be far more advanced than the tools available to them at work. Indeed, there are already examples of employees circumventing the ICT that government provides them as they attempt to perform their job more effectively: creating what is known as a system of ‘shadow ICT’ that creates significant challenges for maintaining government security, collaborative working and government knowledge management.”

Joined-up Govt impossible?

–          “The possibility that departmental incentives continue to trump corporate contributions is further suggested by our survey results. Individuals do not yet feel that corporate contributions are valued or rewarded … elements of the [ICT] strategy call for departments to give up an element of autonomy and choice for the ‘greater good’. Several CIOs expressed concerns that by adopting elements of the strategy that were being developed or delivered by another department, they would end up having to accept a service that had been designed  around the needs of a different department.”

–          “Similarly, there were concerns that the host department would be at the top priority in the event of any problems or opportunities to develop services further. This speaks to a strongly department-centric culture. Suppliers noted, for example, that certain parts of government were still happy to ‘pay a premium for their autonomy’.”

–          “… the vast majority of those we spoke to suggested that departmental interests would almost always ultimately trump cross-government interests in the current government culture and context.”

–          “CIOs felt that they would be rewarded for delivery of departmental priorities – not pan-government work …”

CIO Council frustrations

“CIOs noted that there could be a discrepancy between what got agreed at the old CIO Council meetings and what people actually went away and did. Larger department CIOs also expressed frustration that – despite holding the largest budgets and carrying the largest delivery risks – their voices could easily be outweighed by the multitude of other people round the table.”

“The delivery board model [which has superseded CIO Council] has been recognised by both big and small departments as pragmatically dealing with both sides of this issue. Larger departments now form part of an inner-leadership circle, but with this recognition of their clout comes additional responsibility to own and drive through parts of the strategy… the challenge will now be to ensure that the ICT strategy doesn’t become a ‘large department-only’ affair and that other ICT leads can be effectively engaged.”

Canny suppliers?

–          The majority of ICT leads …stated that they believed the ICT strategy would benefit their department and government as a whole. This confidence was less apparent in the attitudes of suppliers who were, on the whole, more sceptical of government’s ability to drive change, though again generally supportive of the direction of travel.

A toothless ICT Strategy is of little value?

–          “…There was also a lack of clarity on how different elements of the [ICT] strategy would be enforced. As one ICT leader commented … ‘Is this a mandatable strategy or a reference document?’ ”

–          … “there are risks that the strategy could be delivered in a way that still doesn’t transform ICT performance.”

Francis Maude an asset

–          “Government ICT has also been a priority of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude – giving the [change] agenda unprecedented ministerial impetus. He has been a visible face of ICT to many inside and outside of government, from demanding departmental data on ICT to being heavily involved in negotiations with ICT suppliers. Though few of his ministerial colleagues appear as passionate about improving government ICT, the CIOs we interviewed overwhelmingly expressed confidence that they would receive the support they needed to implement the changes in ICT.”

Smaller-budget CIOs out of the loop?

–          “With the CIO Council in hiatus for most of the last year, the CIOs of smaller departments felt out of the loop …”

Most ICT spending is outside SW1

–          “Suppliers and other ICT leaders pointed out, rightly, that the vast majority of ICT expenditure happens outside SW1 – with agencies, local government and organisations like primary care trusts and police forces still determining much of the citizen and workforce experience of ICT.”

SMEs still left out?

–          “Smaller suppliers … were generally encouraged that government was trying to use more contractual vehicles which would be open to them – but noted that it was ‘still extremely difficult to get close to government as an SME’.”

Who knows if use of ICT is improving?

–          “Government still lacks the information it needs to judge whether use of ICT across government is improving.”

System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT Strategy.

Too early to claim success on GovIT – Institute for Government

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, CIO, cost reduction, culture, efficiency savings, governance, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, procurement, reducing cost strategically

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Farewell to Ian Watmore – the antithesis of Sir Humphrey

Posted on 17/05/2012 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

A good insight into the departure of Ian Watmore comes from Peter Smith of Spend Matters who says:

 “He (Watmore) lives in Cheshire still (and does a weekly commute to London) and this seems to be driven by personal factors – he wants to do more non-executive stuff,  work with charities, education bodies, and support his wife who is being ordained as a vicar shortly.

“There will be a competition to replace him but Melanie Dawes (?) will be the interim Perm Sec.”

Watmore leaves in June at the height of his civil service career. It would be too easy to cite his background as UK Managing Director of Accenture to say that he came to the civil service with a sympathy for big suppliers and not upsetting the smooth-running of the government IT machine.

Indeed he will not go down in civil service history as a heavy-handed enforcer of central government reforms: he respects too much the work of senior civil servants and particularly CIO colleagues to be seen as an opponent whose will cannot be overcome.

Rather he has been an authoritative go-between, a pragmatist who has sought to implement the radical cost-saving measures demanded by the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude without giving departments any excuse to cite central diktats as the reason for disruption to frontline services.

Watmore gave an insight into his relationship with Maude at a Parliamentary committee hearing earlier this year. His comments also exploded the myth that the private and public sectors can be run on comparable lines.

“I have been on both sides of the divide on private and public,” said Watmore. “The thing that is different about  the public sector is the combination of leadership from the ministerial class and the civil service class. There is no corporate analogue for it. People talk about the way it analogises to the business world—I don’t think it does; it is different…

“I work on a daily basis with Francis Maude. I am not going to make any political comments about Francis, but as a man I feel that he cares about what he is doing;  he knows his stuff and he drives us very hard. In response, I give, shall we say, robust advice in return. Mostly, he listens and sometimes I defer to him and we come back to the same place we started, but more often than not we flesh out the differences behind closed doors and then we come out on a united front. I think that is the best way to get civil service and ministerial leadership. If you have a weakness in one part or the other, the whole thing breaks down.”

At Campaign4Change we will remember Watmore’s career in the civil service for his openness, honesty and lack of ego.

When answering questions before Parliamentary committees, some permanent secretaries seem to see MPs as adversaries. These civil servants’ replies are characterised by clever, evasive or adversarial comments.  They apologise if the mistakes were before their time but usually they’re protective of their departments, as if defending their children against criticism by outsiders.

Watmore is the antithesis of the archetypal civil servant.  Whereas, for example, most civil servants want to keep confidential internal “Gateway” reports on the progress or otherwise of high-risk IT and construction projects, Watmore is on record as saying he would like them published (though they haven’t been).

And he has earned respect among MPs for his straightforwardness. He’ll speak lucidly on his department’s achievements, but not his own.

How much effect he has had on other departments is hard to gauge. It’s difficult to see how the most ruthless enforcer in the Cabinet Office could ever have much influence in other departments.

For though the Cabinet Office has powers from David Cameron to enforce cost-savings,  departmental heads remain accountable for their own decisions. Watmore has spoken of the tensions between the Cabinet Office and departments.  He told MPs earlier this year:

“There are lots of examples where we and Departments have common cause. There will be times when we challenge what they want to do and it can be a tense relationship. Sometimes we agree with what they were going to do anyway, and other times they agree with us, but it means that we are engaging with them.”

Chair: How well is it working on a scale of one to 10 … on the cross-departmental working?

Watmore: “On the whole cross-departmental working, I would say it is somewhere around the six or seven mark. There is more to do.”

Watmore shuns the trappings of high office.  He doesn’t even have an office. “I refuse to have one,” he told MPs this year. “I don’t believe in physical offices for managers. I hot-desk wherever I happen to feel it is appropriate to work that week…

“What I tend to do is I move around and I sit with a different group in the Cabinet Office for a week. Initially people think it is a bit odd having the Permanent Secretary sitting next to them but once you carry on as normal they realise you are just another person working there.

“You actually get to find out quite a lot about how the operation works by being there with the staff for a week as well as hearing from them in a more formal setting…

“It is how I operated when I was in business so it is a long-term way of working. But when I came into Government I discovered it by accident; when I wanted to move the staff from two different bits of Government into a new building and introduce flexible working, hot-desking and all the rest of it, I said, ‘If it is good enough for the rest of the staff, it should be good enough for me…’

Will Maude find someone authoritative and influential but without a big ego to replace Watmore at the top of the Cabinet Office? A difficult assignment.

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Posted in capacity building, efficiency savings, governance, Government IT, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, procurement, public sector, supplier relationships

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The story behind India’s struggling Aakash IT project

Posted on 07/05/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

The New York Times has carried a couple of excellent blog posts reporting on India’s struggling “Aakash” IT project.

The India Ink posts detail the story behind a plan to introduce a cheap computer built for Indian students. As the blog explains, last October, the Indian Ministry of Human Resources Development unveiled the new, $35 computer.

Now, more than six months later, with thousands of university students still waiting for the laptop, “the tale of the Aakash looks a bit like an Indian soap opera, complete with a convoluted storyline, multiple characters, and massive personality clashes.”

As India Ink says, the Aakash project, if successfully completed, could enable millions of students to connect with the larger digital world, and is being closely watched outside India as the national government tries to attract foreign investment in public-private partnerships for everything from infrastructure to vocational training.

“The original idea behind the Aakash seemed pleasantly simple. A cheap computer would benefit Indian university students by enabling them to watch lectures or get lecture notes and other class information online. In 2009, a team of government researchers developed the basic design for the low cost device.

“The job of putting the project out to bid fell to I.I.T. Rajasthan, which by spring of 2011 had received 477 million rupees — about $9.2 million — in government funds to pay for procuring and testing 100,000 low-cost tablets. In writing the tender, I.I.T. Rajasthan detailed the technical specifications for the tablet but did not specify the criteria for testing and approving the devices, according to a government source involved in the project. That omission was to prove disastrous.

Here is Part One of the tangled tale of the project, which involves issues with procurement, outsourcing, testing and governance.

And here is Part Two.

India’s $35 Aakash tablet comes apart
Aakash Tablet Problems: India’s $35 slate slammed by testers

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, governance, Government IT, India, outsourcing, procurement, project management, public-private partnerships

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Auditor criticises agency over IT contracts and oversight for California high speed rail project

Posted on 31/01/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Let’s hope that when the HS2 high speed rail link gets underway – assuming it gets the final go-ahead in 2014 – it doesn’t have the same problems over IT contracts and oversight that have recently come to light over a high speed rail project in California.

A new report by the California State Auditor on a planned high speed system between San Francisco and Los Angeles found that the $98.5bn project has suffered from a number of critical, ongoing oversight problems.

In particular, the auditor found that the High Speed Rail Authority responsible for the project has struggled to provide an appropriate level of contract oversight, because it is significantly understaffed.

As Palo Alto Online reports, “The audit paints a picture of a severely understaffed state agency that is struggling to keep track of its contractors, who outnumber the rail authority’s staff by a factor of about 25 to 1. As of last August, the authority had only 21.5 filled positions and more than 500 contractors.”

The State Auditor also found that the Authority poorly managed its IT contracts and engaged in ‘inappropriate contracting practices involving IT services.’

In addition to the initial contract, the audit report says, the Authority used 13 individual contracts for IT services over a 15-month period that ranged from $105,655 to $249,999.99 for similar services with one vendor.

Instead of multiple contracts generally having aggregate values of just under $250,000 with one vendor for similar services, the Auditor said, the Authority should have combined the services into one contract and solicited competitive bids or obtained approval to noncompetitively bid the contract.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, governance, Government IT, IT projects, oversight, project management

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