Category Archives: Government digital Service

Is DWP’s Universal Credit FOI case a scandalous waste of public money?

Posted on 19/02/2016 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

It’s extraordinary that some of the Department for Work and Pensions’ main arguments against publishing three reports on the Universal Credit programme resemble, in part, those given by the Walpole government of 1738 when the House of Commons passed a  resolution against the publishing of Parliamentary debates.

The DWP argues that the media could misinterpret the three Universal Credit reports or take negative comments in them out of context, which would have a “chilling effect” on the officials who contribute to or write the reports.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, members of the House of Commons and House of Lords were concerned that parliament could be brought into disrepute by the irresponsible reporting of its proceedings, and that MPs could be influenced in what they said in debates by the knowledge that their speeches could be reported .

Sir Robert Walpole, the then prime minister, in winding up an 1738 debate on banning newspaper reporting of Parliament, said press coverage of parliamentary proceedings was a “forgery of the worst kind”.

Neither officials nor ministers had at that time invented the phrase “chilling effect” but they held to its meaning: they expressed concern that if debates were in the public domain members would shape what they said in debates to win influence, or avoid criticism by, newspapers.

Eventually Parliament decided in the 19th century that it was in its own interests to have debates in the public domain partly because important speeches were going unreported.

Today the DWP is a long way from reaching the stage of openness of Parliament in the 18th century.

universal creditAfter hearing the DWP’s evidence in the case of the three Universal Credit reports, an FOI tribunal judge sympathised with the department. He (Judge Edward Jacobs) said, “It is not difficult, looking at the Risk Register (one of the three Universal Credit reports in question), to see how a journalist or blogger with an agenda could select and present parts of the material in a way that would generate attention and attract criticism of the Department (DWP).”

Still referring to the media, he said, “There is no limit to the ways in which seemingly innocuous details can be used as a means of causing trouble.”

The judge’s apparent sympathy for the DWP’s case surprised me, given that Parliament decided centuries ago that the risk of MPs being influenced by the media when making speeches was a minor consideration when weighed against the importance of reporting the proceedings of parliament.

Democracy is far from perfect but it is surely not served by departments such as the DWP keeping secret for as long as they can reports on their performance on high-cost, risky and innovative programmes such as Universal Credit.

The National Audit Office will usually report on programmes as big as Universal Credit, and will usually do so with skill, insight and professionalism.  But it didn’t report on the UC programme until September 2013.

Disclosure of the risk and issues registers and project assessment review  when they were requested under FOI would have given MPs, the public and stakeholders the chance to hold ministers and officials to account in 2012 – at a time when Iain Duncan Smith and senior officials at the DWP were confidently claiming that the UC programme was on time and to budget. IDS said nothing in 2012 about the problems the programme was facing.

“High indignity”

It’s fascinating to look back at debates of the House of Commons in the 17th and 18th centuries to see how closely some of the speeches resemble the arguments the DWP is making in its submissions to next week’s FOI tribunal.

In April 1738 the Commons passed a resolution declaring that it was a “high indignity and a notorious breach of privilege” to report what was said in the Chamber, even when it was in recess.

This was the 1738 resolution:

“That it is an high indignity to, and a notorious breach of privilege of, this House, for any News writer, in letters, or other papers (as Minutes or under any other denomination) or for any printer or publisher of any printed newspaper, of any denomination, to presume to infer in the said letters or papers, or to give therein, any account of the debates, or other proceedings of this House, or any Committee thereof, as well during the recess, as the sitting of Parliament; and that this House will proceed with the utmost severity against such offenders.”

Part of the DWP’s case to the FOI tribunal next week in Leicester is that, if the reports in question are published, they could be misinterpreted by the public, which would involve ministers and civil servants being diverted from the Universal Credit programme to correct the media.

It may be worth noting some of the actions taken by the House of Commons in 1771 against newspaper proprietors who published proceedings of the Commons – and allegedly got it wrong.

The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser on Friday 8 February 8 1771, which was printed for R. Thomson, and also the Middlesex Journal on Tuesday 5 February 5 to Thursday 7 February 1771, which was printed for J Weeble, were accused of “misrepresenting the speeches, and reflecting on several of the members of this House, in contempt of the order, and in breach of the privilege of this House”.

The House issued a proclamation for the apprehension of John Weeble and R Thompson.

Today the DWP seems not to accept that being held to account by journalists, even incompetent and hostile ones, is a price to be paid for democracy.

Accountability

Parliament banned newspaper reports of its debates in the 17th and 18th centuries in part because publication would have meant contemporaneous accountability.

That, it seems to me, is the main reason the DWP opposes disclosure of any independent and authoritative reports on its performance on the UC programme.

Senior officials are understandably concerned about personal and contemporaneous accountability on a big, risky, high-cost IT-enabled programme. Not the IT professionals who, incidentally, are largely in favour of openness.

Middle-ranking managers on the UC programme have a tough time of it.  They rarely get any credit for what they achieve. But there is a notable divide between the cultures of middle and senior management.

Now that the House of Commons allows reporting of its proceedings, and even allows TV cameras, the DWP’s ministers and senior officials look as if they are stuck in a bygone era. They believe that the public can wait for accountability until the National Audit Office decides to publish its reports.

But how well can the public hold the DWP to account if people doesn’t know how hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent – at the time it is spent – on the Universal Credit IT programme?

The high turnover of senior management on big programmes all but ensures that the most senior officials will probably have moved on by the time the National Audit Office reports on their programmes.

No bureaucracy will embrace openness until it is forced to. Nobody should be surprised that the DWP is fighting the publication of the disputed UC reports.

Kicking and screaming

What’s needed, therefore, is a campaigning minister, to bring today’s top officials at the DWP kicking and screaming into the modern world.

There is a serious consequence to the DWP’s antiquated approach to openness: the mounting legal costs of the FOI case it keeps appealing.

Officials and ministers at the DWP are launching FOI appeals as if money were no object. Bundles of documents have been produced by barristers and other lawyers who have been working on behalf of the DWP.

I don’t believe senior officials care particularly what is in the reports.

They are really fighting, perhaps subconsciously, to continue their control of official information on the UC programme.

For that privilege they will continue to dig deeply into the public purse for the legal costs of this case. That’s a scandalous waste of money, especially in a supposed era of open government.

 

2 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government digital Service, Institute for Government, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Universal Credit

Tagged , , ,

DWP “evasive” and “selective” with information on Universal Credit programme

Posted on 03/02/2016 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Has the Department for Work and Pensions put itself, to some extent, beyond the scrutiny  of Parliament on the Universal Credit IT programme?

Today’s report of the Public Accounts Committee Universal Credit progress update was drafted by the National Audit Office. All of the committee’s reports are effectively more strongly-worded NAO reports.

If the Department for Work and Pensions cannot be open with its own auditors – the National Audit Office audits the department’s annual accounts – are the DWP’s most senior officials in the happy position of being accountable to nobody on the Universal Credit IT programme?

The National Audit Office and the committee found the Department for Work and Pensions “selective or even inaccurate” when giving some information to the committee.

In answering some questions, the committee found officials “evasive”.

Today’s PAC report says:

“We remain disappointed by the persistent lack of clarity and evasive responses by the Department to our inquiries, particularly about the extent and impact of delays. The Department’s response to the previous Committee’s recommendations in the February 2015 report Universal Credit: progress update do not convince us that it is committed to improving transparency about the programme’s progress.”

On the basis of the limited information supplied by the DWP to Parliament the committee’s MPs believe that the Universal Credit has stabilised and made progress since the committee first reported on the programme in 2013, but there “remains a long way to go”.

So far the roll-out has largely involved the simplest of cases, and the ineligibility list for potential UC claimants is long.  By 10 December 2015, fewer than 200,000 people were on the DWP’s UC “caseload” list.

The actual number could be far fewer because the exact number recorded by the DWP by 10 December 2015 (175, 505)  does not include people whose claims have terminated because they have become ineligible by for example having capital more than £16,000 or earning more so that their benefits are reduced to zero.

The plan is to have more than seven million on the benefit, and the timetable for completion of the roll-out has stretched from 2017 originally to 2021,  although some independent experts believe the roll-out will not complete before 2023.

Meanwhile the DWP appears to be controlling carefully the information it gives to Parliament on progress. The committee accuses the DWP in today’s report of making it difficult for Parliament and taxpayers to hold the department to account. Says the report,

“The programme’s lack of clear and specific milestones creates uncertainty for claimants, advisers, and local authorities, and makes it difficult for Parliament and taxpayers to hold the Department to account.”

These are more excerpts from the report:

“In February 2015 the previous Committee of Public Accounts published Universal Credit: progress update … The Department accepted the Committee’s recommendations.

“However, we felt that the Department’s responses were rather weak and lacked specifics, and we were not convinced that it is committed to ensuring there is real clarity on this important programme’s progress.

“As a result, we recalled both the Department and HM Treasury to discuss a number of issues that concerned us, particularly around the business case, the continuing risks of delay, and the lack of transparency and clear milestones.

“Recommendation: The Department should set out clearly how it is tracking the costs of continuing delays, and who is responsible for ensuring benefits are maximised.

“The Department does not publish accessible information about plans and milestones and we are concerned by the lack of detail in the public domain about its expected progress.

“For proper accountability, this information should be published so that the Committee, the National Audit Office and the general public can be clear about progress…

“… the Department did not acknowledge that the slower roll-out affects two other milestones, because it delays the date when existing claimants start to be moved onto Universal Credit and reduces the number of Universal Credit claimants at the end of 2019.

“The flexible adaptation of milestones to circumstances is sensible, but the Department should be open about when this occurs and what the effects are. Instead, the Department’s continued lack of transparency makes it very difficult for us and the public to understand precisely how its plans are shifting.

“Claimants need to know more than just their benefits will change ‘soon’; local authorities need time to prepare additional support; and advisers need to be able to help people that come to them with concerns…

“Recommendation: By May 2016, the Department should set out and report publicly against a wider set of clearly stated milestones, based on ones it currently uses as internal measures, including plans for different claimant groups, local authority areas and for the development and use of new systems. We have set out the areas we expect these milestones to cover in an appendix to this report…

“The Department was selective or even inaccurate when highlighting the findings of its evaluation to us.”

The DWP has two IT projects to deliver UC, one based on its existing major suppliers delivering systems that integrate the simplest of new claims with legacy IT.

The other and more promising solution is a far cheaper “digital service” that is based on agile principles and is, in effect, entirely new IT that could eventually replace legacy systems. It is on trial in a small number of jobcentres.

The DWP’s slowly slowly approach to roll-out means it is reluctant to publish milestones, and it has reached only an early stage of the business case. The final business case is not expected before 2017 and could be later.

The committee has asked the DWP to be more transparent over the business case. It wants detail on:

  • Projected spending, including both investment and running costs for:
  • Live service (split between ‘staff and non staff costs’ and ‘external supplier costs’)
  • Digital service (split between ‘staff and non staff costs’ and ‘external supplier costs’)
  • Rest of programme (split between ‘staff and non staff costs’ and ‘External supplier costs’)
  • Net benefits realised versus forecasts.

Meanwhile the DWP’s response to those who criticise the slow roll-out is to give impressive statistics on the number of jobcentres now processing UC claims, without acknowledging that nearly all of them are processing only the simplest of claims.

Comment

To whom is the DWP accountable on the Universal Credit IT programme? To judge from today’s report it is not the all-party Public Accounts Committee or its own auditors the National Audit Office.

No government has been willing to force Whitehall departments to be properly accountable for their major IT-enabled projects or programmes. Sir Humphrey remains in control.

The last government with Francis Maude at the helm at the Cabinet Office came close to introducing real reforms (his campaign began too forcefully but settled into a good strategy of pragmatic compromise) but his departure has meant that open government and greater accountability for central departments have drifted into the shadows.

The DWP is not only beyond the ability of Parliament to hold it accountable it is spending undisclosed of public money sums on an FOI case to stop three ageing reports on the Universal Credit IT programme being published. The reports are nearly four years old.

Would that senior officials at the DWP could begin to understand a connection between openness and Lincoln’s famous phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

Public Accounts Committee report Universal Credit, progress update

DWP gives out “selective” information on welfare reform even to its auditors (a similar story in 2015)

Department for Work and Pensions “evasive” – Civil Service World (This article is aimed at its readers who are mostly civil servants. It is likely it will find favour with senior DWP IT staff who will probably mostly agree with the Public Accounts Committee’s view that the DWP hierarchy is, perhaps because of culture, evasive and selective with the information it gives to Parliament and the public.)

 

2 Comments

Posted in Accenture, Agile, Campaign4Change, consultants, contractors, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Fujitsu, Gateway reviews, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, Institute for Government, IT projects, Legacy ICT, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Universal Credit

Tagged , , ,

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

Posted on 28/04/2015 | 14 comments

By Tony Collins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lamentable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ministers powerless?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucrative

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

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

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

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

Why disclosure is important

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

14 Comments

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

Universal Credit: some highlights of today’s NAO report

Posted on 26/11/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Excerpts from today’s National Audit Office report “Universal Credit: progress update” …

Not complete by 2020 

“Not all legacy benefit claimants will have moved to Universal Credit by the end of 2019.”

 Assumptions are changing massively

“Universal Credit impacts depend on policy assumptions. For example, there was a £30 billion movement between 2011 and 2012 in the Department’s estimate of benefit spending, which went from a £19.7 billion cost to a £10.8 billion saving. The Department changed its methodology over this time but the size of this movement was largely due to changes in benefit entitlement and conditionality.”

Spending on existing UC systems questionable?

“HM Treasury has expressed concerns about the value for money of further investment in live service systems.”

What if the digital system fails?

“ Following the Major Projects Authority’s review, HM Treasury requested, in April 2014, the Department provide it with contingency plans should the digital service be delayed or fail. The Department is due to update HM Treasury at the end of November 2014 on its progress in developing such plans.”

The small print

You can claim Universal Credit if you:

– fall into one of the accepted groups

– do not own or part own your home;

– have a bank or building society account;

– do not live in temporary accommodation;

– are not pregnant or given birth within the last 15 weeks;

– are not a carer;

– are not self-employed;

– are unemployed or have household earnings of less than £330 per month if over 25 or £270 if under 25;

– are not challenging or awaiting a decision on Jobseekers Allowance, Housing Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support or tax credits;

– are not staying away from your main home;

– are not responsible for a child or young person who is: adopted, fostered, being looked after, registered blind or have a disability benefit.

UC security

“In June 2012, CESG [the IT security arm of GCHQ) found that security had not been properly considered from the start. The [UC] systems were developed by multiple suppliers without an overarching plan for how it would work as a whole.

“A Red Team review concluded that the programme lacked appropriate detail around the security measures it needed because of: ineffective links between design and security teams; invalid assumptions being made by technical teams about what was acceptable to the business; a lack of balance between usability and security; poor understanding of dependencies between components; and little consideration of the technical implications of business design activities. The Department was unable to address these concerns prior to the reset in February 2013.”

A good approach to agile

“Since the reset (in 2013), the Department has concentrated its use of agile on developing digital service using a co-located, mixed-skill team. In June 2014, consultants commissioned by the programme board reported that a good agile approach is in place, and that a strong agile culture and organisation has been found inside the digital service.

“The consultants also found that a focus on long-term planning and effective communication of progress is required to drive scale and delivery, and that adjustments to the team structure will be required to ensure scalability…

“To remain on track, the Department will have 18 months to increase functionality to create a fully integrated service eventually capable of handling up to 10 million claimants. It will use an agile approach to do this. The Department plans to trial new systems in spring 2015, when it intends to start testing efficiencies and delivery against policy intent. It then plans to test increased capacity from November 2015.”

Not so agile

“…The Department will continue to use traditional approaches for buying and maintaining systems supplied commercially, such as existing Department‑wide systems and cloud hosting…”

Inaccurate payments

In April 2014, a software update [from a major supplier] created new problems for [UC] calculations and inaccuracy increased again. Between April and June 2014, over 10% of payments made to claimants were incorrect. This damaged staff and stakeholder confidence in the system and the Department had to reintroduce 100% manual checking of payments in June 2014 …

“… At present the Department is undertaking 100% checking of all payments before they go out.”

Better leadership

Confidence in the leadership team has improved despite continuing difficulties and the heavy demands on the programme director through 2014 caused by the limited availability of the senior responsible owner. A follow-up survey found a large increase in the number of staff expressing confidence in the actions of senior leadership (from 30% in 2013 to 75% in 2014) and an increase in the number of staff who feel that senior management encourages challenge and welcomes their suggestions (from 30% in 2013 to 70% in 2014).

Do major suppliers have too much control of DWP IT?

“The Department’s management of suppliers has been tested by the problems that emerged following an IT update in April 2014 designed to enhance live service. A supplier made significant changes in addition to the work that had been commissioned by the Department. It did not fully inform the Department of this, therefore the update was not adequately tested before it went live.

“The release caused an increase in payment errors described in Part Three. The supplier agreed to rectify the coding at its own expense. This delayed the next release by 2 weeks because of constraints on departmental and supplier resources, and the need to implement further controls recommended in a review commissioned by the Department after the April release.

“In November 2014, the Department’s internal audit reported that the programme has built technical capability to challenge, monitor and review supplier performance, including challenge of the management information provided.”

Manual interventions

“As planned, many processes in live service and digital service areas currently remain dependent on manual interventions.”

Universal Credit: progress update

Universal Credit full business case “a long way from Treasury approval”

2 Comments

Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Cloud, Cloud Computing, DWP, G-Cloud, GDS, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Universal Credit

Universal Credit full business case “a long way from Treasury approval”

Posted on 26/11/2014 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Yesterday in Parliament Iain Duncan Smith gave a statement on Universal Credit – then MPs asked him questions.  Conservative MP Nigel Mills asked IDS a straightforward question:

“Can the secretary of state confirm that the Treasury has now signed off the whole business case and laid to rest that fear that they were not going to do that?”

IDS gave a clear reply: “That is exactly what was being asked before the summer break and the answer is they have …”

But the UC programme has not received Treasury approval for the full business case, nor even the outline business case. Today’s National Audit Office report “Universal Credit: progress update” says that the UC programme received approval in September 2014 for the “strategic outline business case” only.

An NAO official says this is a “long way from Treasury approval” of the full business case.

Until the full business case is approved, UC has no formal funding beyond the current spending review. Meanwhile the Treasury has been funding UC in “small increments” according to the NAO.

The Department of Work and Pensions is due to produce the outline business case next summer, before the next government’s spending review.

The “outline” business case is supposed to set out how the programme is affordable and will be successfully delivered. It summarises the results so far and sets out the case for proceeding to a formal procurement phase.

The “full” business case documents the contractual arrangements,
confirms funding and affordability and sets out the detailed management
arrangements and plans for successful delivery and post evaluation.

The absence of approval for the outline or full business case underlines the uncertainties still in the UC programme. Indeed the latest NAO report says it’s too early to tell whether UC will prove value for money.

But the DWP has reduced risks by extending the roll-out. The programme is now not expected to be completed before 2020. The original completion date was 2017.

The DWP has a twin-track approach to the UC IT programme. It is paying its existing main IT suppliers to support the introduction of UC – the so-called “live” service – while an agile team develops a fully-automated “digital” service that is designed to do all that the “live” service cannot do without manual intervention.

The agile system has yet to be tested – but it has cost only about £8m compared with more than £90m spent on the “live service”.

Porkies?

Labour MP Glenda Jackson, who is a member of the Work and Pensions committee, suggested to IDS yesterday that his promises to MPs on Universal Credit’s roll-out have all been broken and that he has told the House of Commons “porky pies”.

IDS replied that his intention is to ensure that UC is rolled out in a safe and secure way.

Comment:

You’d never know from IDS’s replies to MPs yesterday that the Universal Credit programme doesn’t yet have either outline business case approval or full business case approval.

In other words, the Treasury has yet to be convinced the UC programme is feasible or affordable. It is paying for the programme in increments.

IDS told MPs the programme has business case approval. He did not make it  clear that the programme has the early-stage strategic outline business case approval.

His comments reinforce the need for the National Audit Office to scrutinise the Universal Credit programme. Left to the Department for Work and Pensions, the facts about the programme’s progress, problems and challenges would probably not emerge, not in the House of Commons at least.

Some MPs have said for years that Parliament is the last place to look for the truth.

IDS also said yesterday that the original deadline for completion of UC by 2017 was “artificial” – though he has quoted the 2017 date to MPs on several occasions.

Will UC succeed?

UC as an IT-based programme is not doing too badly, to judge from today’s NAO report.

Indeed it seems that the Department for Work and Pensions, when under intense scrutiny, can start to get things right.

Though existing systems from major suppliers look increasingly unlikely to be able to handle the predicted volumes without a large and expensive amount of manual intervention, the agile digital system, though delayed by 6 months, looks promising, at a fraction of the cost of the conventional “live” system.

Scrutiny

The NAO is scrutinising the programme. The DWP’s own auditors seem to be doing a good job. The Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority is making useful recommendations. And the programme has an independently-chaired board. [The NAO says the programme board has been hampered by limited information and suggests this is because the DWP gives the board “good news” statements rather than facts.]

All this scrutiny is powering the programme in the right direction, though the uncertainties remain massive. As Campaign4Change predicted, the programme will not be complete before 2020. But who cares, if it works well in the end and losses are minimised?

DWP officials are learning lessons – and UC could end up as a template for big government IT-enabled programmes  The twin-track approach of using existing suppliers to deliver support for major business changes that yield problems and lessons  that then feed into an entirely new agile-based system is not a cheap way to develop government IT –  but it may work.

What DWP officials have yet to learn is how to be open and truthful to Parliament, the media – and even its own programme board.

Universal Credit: progress update

Some highlights of today’s NAO report

NAO warns over costs of further Universal Credit digital delay

Universal Credit: watchdog warns of costs of further delays

Government may have to write off more than £200m invested in IT on Universal Credit

3 Comments

Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, Cloud, DWP, excessive secrecy, G-Cloud, Government digital Service, HMRC, HP, IBM, Legacy ICT, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

Tagged , , , ,

Some of the strengths and weaknesses in GovIT – Phil Pavitt

Posted on 19/11/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Phil Pavitt was CIO at HM Revenue & Customs. He left two years ago and arrived at Specsavers via Aviva where he was global director of IT transformation.

At HMRC he was a main board member, responsible for all technology across the estate, delivering the change agenda, and managing a total annual IT budget of more than £1bn.

Now he has given an interview to Government Computing in which he talks about his role at Specsavers but also some of the challenges faced by those who are responsible for IT in central government.

He:

–  applauds the Government Digital Service’s (GDS) role in increasing digital traction, but believes the putting down of CIOs has been unnecessary and counter-productive.

– laments a lack of attention to legacy systems. “Name me the departments that have revolutionised themselves and their legacy engines. There’s not many to name. But the front end looks really really good. But who is going to change that legacy because one day that disconnect will be huge? They [GDS] are playing into the hands of the big SIs [systems integrators] who will turn out and say, ‘You’ll have to swap it out, and only we can do it.

“So I think there’s an interesting fundamental dichotomy that will eventually appear where the front of government will look really good and rightly so, and the back of government increasingly becomes expensive, archaic and out of date. And that’s going to be a problem.”

Pavitt also talks about the challenges faced by SMEs when trying to do business with departments, and the role of big suppliers, the so-called systems integrators.

Phil Pavitt’s interview in Government Computing.

1 Comment

Posted in CIO, Government digital Service, Government IT, HMRC

DWP tries again to stop release of Universal Credit reports

Posted on 17/07/2014 | 18 comments

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions has requested another legal hearing in its attempt to stop four ageing reports on the Universal Credit programme being published.

The DWP’s formal application to the Upper Tribunal (below) shows that Whitehall officials and work and pensions  ministers, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud,  are prepared to sink more public money into fighting a judge’s ruling in March 2014 that the DWP publish the four reports

It appears the DWP does not want the reports published on a point of principle: the department does not publish any reports on any of its major IT-based change programmes.

Another reason officials and ministers have for keeping the reports confidential is that they would establish what officials knew of Universal Credit programme’s serious problems in 2012 when departmental press releases were saying the scheme was on time and within budget.

The reports could show, without ambiguity, that the DWP misled Parliament in 2012 and 2013 by saying the UC programme was progressing successfully when officials knew this was not the case.

So far the the DWP’s lawyers have lost every stage of their appeals to stop disclosure of the reports. One judge noted the apparent contradiction between what’s in the hidden reports and optimistic press releases issued by the department about the UC programme.

The reports in question date back to 2011 and 2012. They are:

–  A Project Assessment Review of Universal Credit by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. The Review gave a high-level strategic view of the state of UC, its problems, risks and how well or badly it was being managed.

–  A Risk Register of Universal Credit. It included a description of the risk, the possible impact should it occur, the probability of its occurring, a risk score, a traffic light [Red/Green Amber] status, a summary of the planned response if a risk materialises, and a summary of the risk mitigation.

– An Issues Register for Universal Credit. It contained a short list of problems, the dates when they were identified, the mitigating steps required and the dates for review and resolution.

– A High Level Milestone Schedule for Universal Credit. It is described in the tribunal’s ruling as a “graphic record of progress, measured in milestones, some completed, some missed and others targeted in the future”.

John Slater, who has 25 years experience in IT and programme and project management, requested three of the reports in 2012 under the FOI Act. Separately I requested the Project Assessment Review, also in 2012. The Information Commissioner ruled that the DWP release three of the four reports. He said the Risk Register could stay confidential.

The DWP appealed the ruling and the case came before the first-tier information tribunal earlier this year.  The DWP sent an external legal team to Leicester for the hearing – which the DWP lost.

The tribunal ruled that the DWP publish all four reports. Lawyers for the DWP had claimed that disclosure of the four reports would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to them – the so-called chilling effect.

The DWP’s lawyers sought the first-tier tribunal’s leave to appeal the ruling, describing it as “perverse”. The  lawyers said the tribunal had wholly misunderstood what was meant by a “chilling effect”, how it was manifested and how its existence could be proved.

They claimed that the first-tier tribunal’s misunderstanding of the chilling effect and its perverse decision were “errors of law”. For the first-tier tribunal’s finding to go to appeal to the “upper tribunal”, the DWP would have needed to prove “errors in law” in the findings of the first-tier tribunal.

The judge in that case, David Farrer QC, found that there were no errors in law in his ruling and he refused the DWP leave to appeal. The DWP then asked the upper tribunal to overrule Farrer’s decision – and the DWP lost again.

The judge in the upper tribunal refused permission for the DWP to appeal.

Rather than simply publish the reports – and avoid further legal costs – the DWP has now asked its lawyers to submit another request for an appeal. This time the DWP has asked for an “oral hearing” so that its lawyers can argue for permission to appeal to the upper tribunal in person, rather than on paper.

The upper tribunal has yet to decide on the DWP’s request for an oral hearing.

As long as the DWP sustains its series of appeals it does not have to publish the four reports, although legal costs from the public purse continue to rise.

The DWP’s latest letter to the upper tribunal:

8 July 2014

Dear Sirs

Department For Work And Pensions v ICO

Application to the Upper Tribunal for permission to appeal

We write further to your letter dated 25 June 2014 enclosing Upper Tribunal Judge Wikeley’s refusal of the Secretary of State’s application for permission to appeal and above three appeals.

We apply in accordance with rules 22(4) and (5) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 for the Department for Work and Pensions’ application for permission to appeal against the First-Tier Tribunal’s decision of 19 March 2014 (notified on 24 March 2014) in the above cases to be reconsidered at an oral hearing.

The Department for Work and Pensions contends that each of the three proposed grounds of appeal is arguable in law for the reasons set out in the grounds of appeal accompanying its application for permission to appeal, and applies for reconsideration before a judge at an oral hearing on that basis.

Yours faithfully …

Comment

The DWP is facing Parliamentary and NAO criticism over the poor state of several of its major programmes. So it is odd that its officials have the time, and can spare the public funds, to fight a long campaign to stop four old UC programme reports being published.

It shows that the DWP cares more about how it is perceived by the outside world than it cares for minimising the public money it spends on this FOI case.

It’s likely that publication of the four reports would slightly embarrass the department but that would soon be forgotten.  Once incurred the legal costs cannot be reclaimed.

The DWP’s claims of a “chilling effect” should the reports be disclosed are entirely understandable. No publicly funded body wants be scrutinised. Officials would rather keep all their internal affairs secret.  But that’s not the way it works in a democracy.

Upper Tribunal ruling Universal Credit appeal

My submission to FOI tribunal on universal credit

Judge [first-tier tribunal] refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports – April 2014

 

 

18 Comments

Posted in DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government digital Service, Government IT, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

Tagged , ,

A welcome boost for agile in government

Posted on 16/04/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

David Wilks, Digital Performance Manager at Government Digital Service, which is part of the Cabinet Office, says there has been “incredible” interest in clarified guidance that makes it easier for departments to obtain funding for agile projects.

The guidance applies to major projects.

Wilks says on the GDS blog that the guidance will “cut bureaucracy and encourage innovation, making digital transformation easier across government”.

It means that, in most cases, government organisations can spend up to £750,000 on the first two phases of a government agile project, discovery and alpha, on the basis of Cabinet Office spending controls – without needing an HM Treasury business case.

The guidance means:

  • more use of “light-touch” Programme Business Cases
  • using agile discovery to replace the Strategic Outline Case in most cases
  • avoiding the need for a separate Full Business Case stage where procurement uses a pre-competed arrangement such as the Digital Services Framework

“For agile and finance teams in government departments, this guidance clarification has produced incredible interest,” says Wilks.

Comment

It seems fashionable to criticise the use of agile in government, perhaps because agile requires a mindset and culture that may be alien in parts of the civil service. But done well agile could help to modernise and reform central government administration.  It’s not a cure for all the problems of bloated government IT and it has risks, among them:

–  Zeno’s paradox where a project is perpetually on the point of delivering successfully but never actually does, as with the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative.

–  A so-called agile project that combines waterfall and agile approaches. It’s either waterfall or agile. It’s difficult to see how a project can be both. Those projects where there has been a hybrid agile-waterfall approach have not been successful: Universal Credit, the BBC’s DMI and an Oracle IT-related project disaster in Oregon.

That said, investigators of the “Cover Oregon” failure seem now to advocate a purer form of agile as one solution. A highly critical official report into the failure has some positive comments on agile:

“Since September 2013, CO [Cover Oregon] has been utilizing a home grown development process which is based upon agile methodologies. There are seven functional areas within the process, referred to as tables, with each table having a dedicated table lead (a mini project manager) and a dedicated business analyst. This process appears to be well orchestrated.

“Each morning there are daily “scrum” meetings for the different functional areas. While not rigidly adhering to the formal agile scrum format, these meetings serve a valuable purpose in providing a regular opportunity for various parties from a functional area to provide the latest updates on the progress across the outstanding major defects/issues …”

 

With some reservations the Cabinet Office’s initiative to cut bureaucracy and make it easier for departments to adopt agile is welcome.

 

2 Comments

Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, Government digital Service, Government IT, Legacy ICT, Oracle, software quality, Universal Credit, US Government

Tagged ,

BBC World at One’s focus on Government IT

Posted on 28/01/2014 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

The lead item on BBC R4’s World at One on Friday was about Government IT contracts.

On the programme were the government’s Chief Procurement Officer Bill Crothers, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Margaret Hodge, the UK IT Association, and me.

Some of the points made:

–  Bill Crothers gave an example of what he called “abuse” by some big IT suppliers. He said a young man who works for him lost his power cable. The supplier quoted £65 for a replacement. The price should have been £5 or £6.  When Crothers queried it, the supplier justified its price on grounds of security. Crothers could not believe that a power lead had security implications so he questioned the price again and received several pages of explanation from the supplier, which he did not read. Eventually the supplier “was good enough to reduce the price to £37”.

– HMRC was charged £30,000 for changing some text on its website.

– Francis Maude said a DWP team and a further 12 people from the Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service had built – in only three months – a prototype of a digital solution to support the introduction of Universal Credit. The system cost just over £1m, he said. [Separately big IT suppliers at DWP have been paid £303m up to March 2013 for Universal Credit work.] Maude declined to predict the outcome of the “twin-track” work on the UC project.

– Some big legacy systems may soon need replacing – those that pay about £60bn a year in state pensions and collect nearly £100bn a year in VAT. “Those are going to be big projects,” said Margaret Hodge. “I don’t think we have seen the end of big projects, or the end of disasters.”

World at One in detail

Presenter Shaun Ley and BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins focused on government IT because of an announcement by the Cabinet Office that it is drawing the line on “bloated and wasteful IT contracts”. The Cabinet Office was pitching its announcement as marking a “massive change,” said Hawkins.

Ley said Francis Maude announced the safeguards  in an attempt to ensure that IT contracts don’t become multi-billion pound failures. He said that the abandoned NPfIT had cost close to £10bn.

Hawkins quoted the UK IT Association as saying that  government did not know how to do deals with smaller suppliers. On the government’s relationship with big suppliers UKITA said the government was like a “battered wife or husband who doesn’t seem to know how to leave.”

Appalling

Hawkins said Crothers has the air of a man going to war. Crothers’ conclusion on the way things are at the moment:

“This is about the oligopoly, the cluster of big suppliers that have had it took good for too long. It’s reflective of monopolistic or oligopolistic behaviour.  It is not acting as if they are in hungry and in a competitive market.  That’s appalling.”

Universal Credit

Hawkins asked Francis Maude how confident he was that what was being put in place on Universal Credit would work.

“I hope it will work,” said Maude. “The digital solution was created by a team within DWP with a dozen or so GDS [Government Digital Service] staff assisting.

“They created a working prototype for a digital solution within 3 months at a cost of only a bit over £1m. That certainly can be basis of a successful long-term solution.”

Hawkins [to Maude] “I asked you whether you were confident the approach with DWP would work and you said you hoped it would. That suggests to me that maybe you are not (confident).”

Maude: “N0-one knows with these things. Anyone who says you are certain everything is going to succeed … the way we do things now is build something quickly, test it, prove it, test it with users, and so you can’t have certainty about any of these outcomes.”

Outsourcing failures

Hawkins said “We have had story after embarrassing story about outsourcing failures [such as the] government being charged for tagging dead people … now ministers  have an interest in coming out on the front foot and just for once being on the attack and having a whack at the IT companies.

“You don’t need to be a political genius to work out why they would like to do that rather than be endlessly explaining themselves after embarrassing stories in the papers.”

Ley (to me): “Is this the best way to deal with the problems government has experienced? The journalist Tony Collins has written widely  about project failures in IT in both the public and private sectors.”

I replied that big companies have sometimes charged a lot to make small software changes.  The Cabinet Office’s “red lines” were a good idea though they were a formalising of restrictions that had been in place some time.

The Cabinet Office doesn’t have the power to make changes happen because departments are accountable to Parliament for their spend and so don’t want much interference from the Cabinet Office. But the Cabinet Office is right to try and reduce the amounts spent on big projects.

Ley: “What will be the effect of breaking up contracts?”

I said I hoped the Cabinet Office’s restrictions would bring about a change in culture in departments against the assumption that big is beautiful. Big projects should be split into components which would give SMEs a greater involvement and could reduce the risks of projects failing.

More project disasters?

Hodge gave her reaction to the Cabinet Office’s restrictions in the context of the Universal Credit project.

“Francis Maude and Cabinet Office have been trying really hard to get some sense into the way that project has developed. But sadly the news we have had lately suggests to me that they have failed. It is about £400m so far on IT.

“What went wrong there was that the department [DWP] thought it [UC] was a big IT project instead of thinking:  we are going to be changing our business; we are going to get 6 benefits rolled into one. They [the DWP] have not written off that money [£303m] which is what my committee thinks they should have done, because they want to save face. Down the line I think we’ll see some disasters there.

“There are a lot of projects around  government, what are called legacy projects, where old systems need to be replaced . They are big projects – pensions in DWP where £60bn is given out a year;  VAT receipts  in HMRC where nearly £100bn is collected. Those are going to be big projects. I don’t think we have seen the end of big projects, or the end of disasters.”

Ley: “What about breaking them up into smaller projects? Won’t that reduce potential risks?”

Hodge: “The important thing is what Tony Collins was saying to you. What we find is that the skills don’t exist within departments, either to commission the IT properly or to manage the suppliers once they have the IT in place.

“We are about to examine the army recruitment contract – I think that is what we’ll find.  The MoD hasn’t got the skills to manage it.

Ley: “Do you welcome the ending of automatic contract extensions?”

“I warmly welcome that. This is a small step in the right direction. Having an expert as we have in Bill Crothers in the Cabinet Office is really important. What we haven’t got are skills in the departments. It is not like a business. If it was, Bill Crothers would probably run IT across the whole of government. Our departments run in silos. They haven’t got the skills. They have this demand for big, big programmes in the future and I don’t think we have seen, sadly, the end of IT disasters.”

Update

Thank you to Dave Orr for drawing my attention to an excellent piece on the World at One item by procurement expert Peter Smith who concludes:

“… There is a big issue – large suppliers have not covered themselves in glory, but small suppliers just can’t develop huge systems for DWP or MOD.

“The large suppliers must have a role, but we have to manage these contracts better. And the answer can’t just be a small hit squad in Cabinet Office. This needs real capability development across government, which we haven’t really seen as yet in a coordinated fashion.”

BBC World at One – Government IT contracts

Bill Crothers on BBC Radio 4 – suppliers get another good kicking

5 Comments

Posted in DWP, Government digital Service, Government IT, HMRC, IT projects, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, MoD, npfit, outsourcing, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, reducing cost strategically, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Tagged , ,

Are Govt IT-based project disasters over? Ask the Army

Posted on 16/01/2014 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

When senior civil servants know an IT-based project is in trouble and they’re unsure how bad things are, they sometimes offer their minister an all-encompassing euphemism to publicly describe the status of the scheme – teething.

Which may be why the defence secretary Philip Hammond told the House of Commons in November 2013 that the IT project to support army recruiting was having “teething” problems.

Now Hammond knows more, he says the problems are “big”. He no longer uses the “t” word. Speaking about the £440m 10-year Recruitment Partnering Project in the House of Commons this week Hammond said:

“Yes, there are big problems with the IT and I have told the House on repeated occasions that we have IT challenges…”

Only a few days ago Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude suggested that Government IT was no longer a byword for disaster, though he accepted there were still challenges.

In a speech on how he expected the UK to become the G8’s most digital government by next year (whatever that means) Maude said: “… it’s great news that DVLA is about to launch online driving records which can be used by anyone with a driving licence as well as by the insurance industry.

“Back in 2010 our digital offering was limited at best and government IT was a by-word for disaster … There are still challenges but with the help of the Government Digital Service I am determined that the UK will be the G8’s most digital government by next year.”

A few days later The Times reported on a leaked Gartner report on the army Recruitment Partnering Project. The report expressed concerns about the entire plan, including a poor project management team and delays that were allowed to spiral out of control.

It claimed that the Army’s recruitment division had failed to challenge MoD policy in 2011 that had apparently favoured the less suitable of the two competing bidders chasing the contract.

Hammond is said to be mulling over a £50m payout for Capita to build a new infrastructure for the recruiting system instead of trying to integrate it with systems supplied by the “Atlas” consortium under the Defence Information Infrastructure project. Hammond told the House of Commons this week:

“… there have been initial difficulties with that recruiting process as we transition to the new recruiting arrangements with Capita.

“In particular, we have encountered difficulties with the IT systems supporting the application and enlistment process. The decision to use the legacy Atlas IT platform was deemed at the time to be the quickest and most cost-effective way of delivering the new recruitment programme.

“An option to revert to a Capita hosting solution was included in the contracts as a back-up solution.

“I was made aware in the summer of last year that the Army was encountering problems with the integration of the Capita system into the Atlas platform. Since then we have put in place a number of workarounds and mitigation measures for the old IT platform to simplify the application process, and we have reintroduced military personnel to provide manual intervention to support the process.

“Having visited the Army’s recruitment centre in Upavon [Wiltshire] on 30 October, it became clear to me that, despite the Army putting in place measures to mitigate those problems in the near term, further long-term action was needed to fix the situation.

“It was agreed in principle at that point that the Atlas system was not capable of timely delivery of the Capita-run programme and that we would need to take up the option of reverting to Capita building a new IT platform specifically to run its system, which will be ready early next year.

“… we have already taken action to bring in a range of new initiatives that will make it progressively easier and quicker for applicants … the introduction this month of a new front-end web application for Army recruitment; a simplified online application form; more streamlined medical clearance processes …

“With an improved Army recruitment website, streamlined medicals and an increase in the number of recruiting staff, recruits should see a much-improved experience by the end of this month.

“.. we are looking at further ways of improving the management of the recruiting process in the intervening period before the introduction of the advanced IT system now being developed in partnership with Capita, which is expected to be deployed in February 2015…”

Vernon Croaker, Labour’s defence spokesman, said the recruitment project was an IT fiasco. He wondered why Hammond had initially described the problems as teething.

“Today we have learned [from newspapers] that the problems are even worse than anyone thought and still have not been fixed.

“Will the Defence Secretary tell the House which Minister signed off the deal and who has been responsible for monitoring it?

“… Will the Secretary of State also confirm that £15.5m has been spent building the existing flawed computer system behind the project? Finally, is it correct that this continuing disaster is costing taxpayers £1 million every month?…”

Croaker quoted a minister Andrew Robathan as telling MPs on 10 April 2013 that the “Recruiting Partnering Project with Capita…will lead to a significant increase in recruiting performance”.

Croaker said: “Is there any Member of this House, any member of our armed forces or, indeed, any member of the British public who still believes that?”

In March 2012 Capita announced that the Recruitment Partnering Project was valued at about £44m a year for 10 years and was expected to deliver benefits in excess of £300m to the armed forces. It would “release military recruiters back to the front line” said Capita.

Comment. Francis Maude is probably right: there don’t seem to be as many big IT-based project failures as in previous decades. But then the truth isn’t known because progress reports on big IT-related schemes are not published.

Indeed little would be known about the Capita Recruitment Partnering Project is not for the leaked report to The Times. Without the leak, public information on the state of the project would be confined to Hammond’s “teething problems” comment to MPs last November.

Internal and external reports on the state of the Universal Credit IT project continue to be kept secret.  It’s not even clear whether ministers are properly briefed on their big IT projects. Hammond almost certainly wasn’t last year. IDS was left to commission his own “red team” review of Universal Credit IT.

Perhaps the “good news” reporting culture in Whitehall explains why the NHS IT scheme, the NPfIT, continued to die painfully slowly for 7 years before senior officials and ministers started to question whether all was well.

Hammond is still getting wrong information. He described “Atlas” systems in the House of Commons as the “legacy IT platform”.

The Atlas contract for the Defence Information Infrastructure was awarded in 2005 for 10 years. It doesn’t even expire until next year. It may be convenient for officials to suggest that the reason Capita has been unable to link new recruitment systems into the DII network is because DII is old – legacy IT.  But the multi-billion pound Atlas DII project cannot be accurately described as “legacy” yet.

If ministers don’t get the truth about their big IT projects until serous problems are so obvious they can no longer be denied, how can Parliament and taxpayers expect to get the truth?

Lessons from NASA?

NASA put in place processes, procedures and rules to ensure engineers were open and deliberately adversarial in challenging assumptions. Even so it has had difficulties getting engineers to express  their views freely.

Diane Vaughan in her excellent book “The Challenger Launch Decision” referred to large organisations that proceeded as if nothing was wrong “in the face of evidence that something was wrong”.  She said NASA made a series of seemingly harmless decisions that “incrementally moved the space agency towards a catastrophic outcome”.

After the loss of Challenger NASA made many changes. But an investigation into the subsequent tragedy of the Columbia space shuttle indicated that little had actually changed – even though few of the top people who had been exposed to the lessons of Challenger were still in position.

If NASA couldn’t change when lives depended on it, is it likely the UK civil service will ever change?  A political heavyweight,  Francis Maude has tried and failed to get departments to be more open about progress or otherwise on their big IT-based projects.  Permanent secretaries now allow the out-of-date “traffic light” status of some projects to be published in the annual report of the Major Projects Authority. That is not openness.

The failure so far of the Recruitment Partnering Project, the routine suppression of information on technology-based scheme such as this, and the circumscribed “good news” briefings to ministers, suggest that government IT-based project failures are here to stay, despite the best intentions of the Cabinet Office, GDS and the Major Projects Authority.

Thank you to campaigner Dave Orr for his email on the recruitment project

3 Comments

Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, Capita, change management, Defence, DWP, excessive secrecy, GDS, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, MoD, npfit, openness and transparency, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

Tagged , ,