Category Archives: Government IT

Universal Credit – the ace up Duncan Smith’s sleeve?

Posted on 24/01/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Some people, including those in the know, suspect  Universal Credit will be a failed IT-based project, among them Francis Maude. As Cabinet Office minister Maude is ultimately responsible for the Major Projects Authority which has the job, among other things, of averting major project failures.

But Iain Duncan Smith, the DWP secretary of state, has an ace up his sleeve: the initial go-live of Universal Credit is so limited in scope that claims could be managed by hand, at least in part.

The DWP’s FAQs suggest that Universal Credit will handle, in its first phase due to start in October 2013, only new claims  – and only those from the unemployed.  Under such a light load the system is unlikely to fail, as any particularly complicated claims could managed clerically. 

The second phase of Universal Credit, which is due to begin in April 2014, is the important one, in terms of number of claimants. But this phase may be delayed with a general election approaching, according to Government Computing, which quotes the FT.

This is from the DWP’s website:

“Universal Credit will start to take new claims from unemployed people in October 2013.”

It continues:

“For people in work this process will begin in April 2014. The remainder of current claims will be moved to Universal Credit from 2014, with the process being complete by 2017.”

Comment: 

The projected costs of real-time information, an HMRC project on which the success of Universal Credit depends, have increased by tens of millions from an initial estimate of £108m, according to Ruth Owen, Director General, Personal Tax, HMRC.  At least HMRC is being open about RTI – relative to the DWP which continues to deny FOI requests for the risk register or independent assessments of the progress or otherwise of the Universal Credit IT project.

Auditors at the National Audit Office found that the Rural Payment Agency’s Single Payment Scheme for farmers dealt with so few claims that it could have been handled manually for a fraction of the cost of an IT system that went awry. Perhaps Iain Duncan Smith has learnt from that episode.

As Universal Credit phase one will handle only new claims from the unemployed, there may be no need initially for complicated monthly interactions with HMRC’s Real-time information [PAYE] systems. 

There may be further restrictions on go-live UC candidates. The DWP may insist that unemployed new claimants are single, childless, between certain ages and not receiving certain benefits or tax credits. They may have to have a valid bank account.

So the numbers of claimants and simplified processing will maximise the chances of a go-live success.

This may explain why the Major Projects Authority has not intervened (yet) to delay the October 2013 go-live date.   

It makes sense to minimise complications when going live. But the Passport Agency found that although the go-live of new systems in 1999 went well, extra IT-related security checks slowed down the issuing of passports, such that backlogs built up, people lost their holidays and queues built up at passport offices. It was a project disaster. 

The real test of the agile-based Universal Credit project will be when existing benefit claimants move onto the new systems in large numbers. This will not happen before the next general election. The plan is for the roll-out to be completed by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile does Iain Duncan Smith plan to claim a victory for the go-live of Universal Credit when the initial transactions are so simple, and the numbers involved  so insignificant, they could be managed clerically if necessary?

 As long as Universal Credit does not reduce payments to the genuinely disabled and the most needy, it is generally regarded as a good idea. It should cut fraud and administrative costs. 

It’s a pity though that no central department can be open about the progress of its major  IT-related projects; and on forcing these progress reports out of dark departmental corners the coalition has made no difference at all.

Will GDS delay Universal Credit by a year? – David Moss’s blog

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, managing change, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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A paperless NHS by 2018? Could it ever happen?

Posted on 16/01/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The NHS should go paperless by 2018 to save billions, improve services and help meet the challenges of an ageing population, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt will say today.

In a speech to the Policy Exchange this evening, the Health Secretary will say that patients should have compatible digital records so their health information can follow them around the health and social care system.

This would mean, says the DH, that in most cases, whether patients needs a GP, hospital or a care home, the professionals involved in their care could see patient histories “at the touch of a button”.

Hunt’s speech comes as two reports are also published which – says the DH – demonstrate the potential benefits of making better use of technology.

The DH says a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the potential benefits of better use of IT “found that measures such as more use of text messages for negative test results, electronic prescribing and electronic patient records could improve care, allow health professionals to spend more time with patients and save billions”.

But the DH press release – and coverage of it by the BBC – does not mention the reservations in Pwc’s report.

Pwc says it could take 10 years or more for the NHS to derive the full benefits from some of the priority actions and further actions mentioned in its report.

Pwc also says that “significant further work is required to further substantiate some of the evaluations of potential benefit, and especially the evaluations of potential financial benefit. This work should be completed before the broad implementation of the recommended actions commences…”

A National Mobile Health Worker report, also published today, was a pilot study on introducing laptops at 11 NHS sites.

On the way towards the 2018 goal, Hunt will say that he wants to see:

– By March 2015 – everyone who wishes will be able to get online access to their own health records held by their GP.

– Adoption of paperless referrals – instead of sending a letter to the hospital when referring a patient to hospital, the GP can send an email instead.

– Clear plans in place to enable secure linking of these electronic health and care records wherever they are held, so there is as complete a record as possible of the care someone receives.

– Clear plans in place for those records to be able to follow individuals, with their consent, to any part of the NHS or social care system.

– By April 2018 – digital information to be fully available across NHS and social care services, barring any individual opt outs.

The NHS Commissioning Board is leading implementation and it has set a clear expectation that hospitals should plan to make information digitally and securely available by 2014/15.

This means that different professionals involved in one person’s care can start to safely share information on their treatment. This is set out in the NHS Commissioning Board’s recent publication ‘Everyone Counts: planning for patients in 2013/14′.

Hunt says:

“The NHS cannot be the last man standing as the rest of the economy embraces the technology revolution.

“It is crazy that ambulance drivers cannot access a full medical history of someone they are picking up in an emergency – and that GPs and hospitals still struggle to share digital records.

“Previous attempts to crack this became a top down project akin to building an aircraft carrier. We need to learn those lessons – and in particular avoid the pitfalls of a hugely complex, centrally specified approach.

“Only with world class information systems will the NHS deliver world class care.”

The Government recently announced it would be making £100 million available to NHS nurses and midwives to spend on new technology.

Challenges

The Pwc report is not an analysis of the costs of introducing shared electronic records across the NHS. But it does mention some of the challenges. It says:

“There are delivery risks to be addressed before the potential benefits can be realised.”

This is Pwc’s list of challenges of introducing better IT in the NHS, especially a shared electronic patient record:

– “The realisation of the potential benefits will depend on the concerted action and commitment of bodies from across the health and social care system.”

– “… the maximum possible benefits presented by this review will not be realised unless key supporting elements are put in place and unless appropriate and timely investments are made.”

–  “The availability of funds to cover one-off investment costs in technologies, information gathering or reworked organisational processes.”

– “The willingness of system bodies to adopt the technologies or commit to information gathering and use.”

–  “The clear and concise documentation of the benefits achieved and challenges faced by pilot programmes or early adopters of technologies or information protocols, to support other organisations in implementing actions in a cost-effective and efficient way.”

– “Strong and positive leadership to promote use of information and technology, and prioritise the commitment of resources and time to it and commitment of bodies from across the health and social care system.

– “The incentivisation of the adoption of the proposed actions, particularly when coordinated system-wide action is required.”

– “Measures to make contracting for the provision of systems and services as easy, quick and cost-effective as possible; and

– “The development of new or revised robust governance processes to not only support programme delivery but scrutinise the delivery of benefits.”

Comment:

On the face of it Hunt’s good intentions and the DH’s press release on his speech are little more than political rhetoric.

Indeed it appears that Hunt commissioned the Pwc report to give an independent voice to a political announcement. Pwc concedes in its report that it was commissioned to highlight the “potential benefits that could be achievable through the more efficient and effective use of information and technology in the NHS and social care before any action is taken”.

It is inconceivable that the NHS will be paperless or have shared electronic patient records by 2018. Each ward in every major hospital has a range of paper forms. These will take an unknown number of years to standardise for the purposes of electronic records; and shared electronic records will not take place across the NHS without enormous changes in culture and practice, and initial investments.

Nearly every secretary of state for health, shortly after coming to the post, is given a draft speech by his officials about the NHS’s having shared electronic patient records by a distant date.  A new government will be in power by 2018 and Hunt’s promise in January 2013 will have long been forgotten.

Yet Hunt’s announcement is still welcome because it will continue to add energy to the very slow move to shared electronic records.

It is astonishing in a technological age that patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes, or have complex health problems, can be treated at different specialist centres in various parts of the UK without their records being shared. A patient can be seen within a week in two different hospitals without each hospital sharing the patient’s most recent notes and diagrams.   This problem has to be grabbed by the throat – but not with a centralised system or database as proposed in the NPfIT.

Hunt recognises this. He talks of the need for records to be linked – from where the data currently resides. But Hunt needs to say how it will happen, and provide some limited investment for it to happen – tens and not hundreds of millions of pounds.

The political will is there – but without the means to achieve a shared electronic record it may never happen.

Pwc report

Jeremy Hunt challenges the NHS to go paperless by 2018 – DH press release

Going paperless would save the NHS billions – BBC online

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Posted in Campaign4Change, e-health, ERP, Government IT, health, health records, NHS, npfit, operational issues

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Frustrated with the system – Govt CIOs, executive directors, change agents

Posted on 14/01/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Today The Times reports, in a series of articles, of tensions in Whitehall between ministers and an “unwilling civil service” over the pace of change.

It says a “permanent cold war” is being conducted with the utmost courtesy. It refers to Downing Street’s lack of control.

In one of the Times articles, Sir Antony Jay, co-creator of the “Yes Minister” TV series, writes that the civil service is more prepared to cut corners than in the 1970s  but hasn’t really changed. “If a civil servant from the 1970s came back today they would probably slot in pretty easily,” says Jay.

Politicians want “eye-catching” change while civil servants “don’t want to be blamed for cock-ups”, he says.

Separately, Mike Bracken, Executive Director of Digital in the Cabinet Office, has suggested that a frustration with the system extends to CIOs, executive directors to corporate change agents.

Bracken created the Government Digital Service which is an exemplar of digital services.  His philosophy is it’s cheaper and better to build, rent or pull together a new product, or at least a minimum feasible product, than go through the “twin horrors of an elongated policy process followed by a long procurement”.

Bracken has the eye of an outsider looking in. Before joining the Cabinet Office in July 2011 he was Director of Digital Development at the Guardian.

Bracken’s blog gives an account of his 18 months in office and why it is so hard to effect change within departments. I’ve summarised his blog in the following bullet points, at the risk of oversimplifying his messages:

Collective frustration

–  After joining the Cabinet Office in 2011 Bracken made a point of meeting senior officials who’d had exalted job titles, from CIOs and executive directors to corporate change agents. “While many of them banked some high-profile achievements, the collective reflection was frustration with and at the system,” says Bracken.

Civil service versus citizen’s needs

–  “I’ve lost count of the times when, in attempting to explain a poorly performing transaction or service, an explanation comes back along the lines of ‘Well, the department needs are different…’ How the needs of a department or an agency can so often trump the needs of the users of public services is beyond me,” says Bracken.

– Policy-making takes priority over delivery, which makes the civil service proficient at making policy and poor at delivery. “Delivery is too often the poor relation to policy,” says Bracken. Nearly 20,000 civil servants were employed in ‘policy delivery’ in 2009. Each government department produces around 171 policy or strategy documents on average each year. Bracken quotes one civil servant as saying: “The strategy was flawless but I couldn’t get anything done.”

Are citizen needs poisonous to existing suppliers?

– Departmental needs take priority over what the public wants. Bracken suggests that user needs – the needs of the citizen – are poison to the interests of policymakers and existing suppliers. “Delivery based on user need is like kryptonite to policy makers and existing suppliers, as it creates rapid feedback loops and mitigates against vendor lock-in,” says Bracken.

– “When it comes to digital, the voices of security and the voices of procurement dominate policy recommendations. The voice of the user [citizen] barely gets a look-in. ( Which also explains much of the poor internal IT, but that really is another story.)”

A vicious circle

Bracken says that new IT often mirrors clunky paper-based processes. [It should usually reflect new, simplified and standardised processes.] “For digital services, we usually start with a detailed policy. Often far too detailed, based not just on Ministerial input, but on substantial input from our existing suppliers of non-digital services. We then look to embed that in current process, or put simply, look for a digital version of how services are delivered in different channels. This is why so many of our digital services look like clunky, hard-to-use versions of our paper forms: because the process behind the paper version dictates the digital thinking.”

Then things take a turn for the worse, says Bracken. “The policy and process are put out to tender, and the search for the elusive ‘system’ starts. Due to a combination of European procurement law and a reliance on existing large IT contracts, a ‘system’ is usually procured, at great time and expense.

“After a long number of months, sometimes years, the service is unveiled. Years after ‘requirements’ were gathered, and paying little attention to the lightning-quick changes in user expectation and the digital marketplace, the service is unveiled to all users as the finished product.

“We then get the user feedback we should have had at the start. Sadly it’s too late to react. Because these services have been hard-wired, like the IT contract which supplied them, our services simply can’t react to the most valuable input: what users think and how they behave.

“As we have found in extreme examples, to change six words the web site of one of these services can take months and cost a huge amount, as, like IT contracts, they are seen as examples of ‘change control’ rather than a response to user need.

“If this 5-step process looks all too familiar that’s because you will have seen it with much of how Government approaches IT. It’s a process which is defined by having most delivery outsourced, and re-inforced by having a small number of large suppliers adept at long-term procurement cycles.

“It is, in short, the opposite of how leading digital services are created, from Amazon to British Airways, from Apple to Zipcar, there is a relentless focus on, and reaction to, user need…”

GOV.UK the civil service exemplar?

Bracken says: “In the first 10 days after we released the full version of GOV.UK in October 2012, we made over 100 changes to the service based on user feedback, at negligible cost. And the final result of this of this approach is a living system, which is reactive to all user needs, including that of policy colleagues with whom we work closely to design each release.”

Bracken says long procurements can be avoided.  “When we created GOV.UK, we created an alpha of the service in 12 weeks … We made it quickly, based on the user needs we knew about… As we move towards a Beta version, where the service is becoming more comprehensive, we capture thousands of pieces of feedback, from user surveys, A/B testing and summative tests and social media input.

“This goes a long way to inform our systems thinking, allowing us to use the appropriate tools for the job, and then replace them as the market provides better products or as our needs change. This of course precludes lengthy procurements and accelerates the time taken for feedback to result in changes to live services.”

Comment:

More big government projects could follow GOV.UK’s example, though some officials in their change-resistant departments would say their systems are too complex for easy-to-reach solutions. But a love of complexity is the hiding place of the dull-minded.

The Times describes the conflicts between the civil servants and ministers as a “crisis”. But conflicts between civil servants and ministers are a good thing. The best outcomes flow from a state of noble tension.

It’s natural for some senior civil servants to oppose change because it can disrupt the smooth running of government, leading potentially to the wrong, or no payments, to the most vulnerable.  It’s up to ministers like Francis Maude to oppose this argument on the basis that the existing systems of administration are inefficient, partly broken and much too costly.

A lazy dependence on the way things are will continue to enfeeble the civil service. Ministers who push for simplicity will always come into conflict with civil servants who quietly believe that simplicity demeans the important work they do. To effect change some sensible risks are worth taking.

The reports of a covert and courteous war between parts of the civil service and ministers are good news. They are signs that change is afoot. Consensus is far too expensive.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, cost reduction, efficiency savings, EU procurement, G-Cloud, Government digital Service, Government IT, Politics, public sector, public services

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Are HMRC’s IT costs under firm control?

Posted on 20/11/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

 The costs of IT outsourcing at HMRC have soared despite a well-written contract that promised large savings. When, as Inland Revenue, the department first outsourced IT in 1994, annual IT costs were around £100m.  Now it has emerged that HMRC’s  annual IT spending was running at more than  £1bn between April 2011 and March 2012.  Only some of the 10-fold increase is explained by new work.

Are there lessons for Barnet, Cornwall and other public authorities as they ponder large-scale outsourcing, given that HMRC did almost everything right and still faces a costly contractual lock-in to major IT suppliers until 2017 – a 13-year outsourcing contract?

HMRC has made some extraordinary payments to its outsourcing suppliers since 2011  – more than mid-way through a 13-year contract.

HMRC figures collated by former Inland Revenue IT employee and now payroll specialist Matt Boyle of Research4paye show that HMRC paid its “Aspire” IT partners £964.2m in a single year, between April 2011 and March 2012.

HMRC paid a further £42.6m of invoices from Serco for one year of website development and support. These figures do not include all of HMRC’s IT costs between April 2011 and March 2012, such as invoices from Accenture for maintenance fees and for work relating to Customs.

IT costs soar

1994. £100 annual IT costs. Inland Revenue first outsources its 2,000-strong IT department to EDS. The annual cost of the 10-year contract is about £100m a year according to the National Audit Office.

2004.  £250m annual IT costs. The end of the EDS contract. HMRC’s annual IT costs have risen to about £250m a year (National Audit Office figure).

2004. £280m annual IT costs. Capgemini wins from EDS a new 10-year HMRC outsourcing deal called Aspire (Acquiring Strategic Partners for the Inland Revenue). Capgemini’s main subcontractors are Fujitsu and Accenture. Capgemini’s bid is for £2.8bn, an average of £280m a year.

2005. £539m annual IT cost.  Inland Revenue merges with Customs and Excise to form HMRC which takes on £1bn Fujitsu IT contract from Customs. The first year of the Aspire contract costs £539m, nearly double the expected amount. The NAO blames most of the increase on new work.

2007. In return for promised savings of £70m a year from 2010/11, HMRC extends Capgemini’s contract by three years to 2017. There’s an option to extend for a further five years.

2010. £700m annual IT costs. Under FOI, HMRC releases a statement saying that the Aspire annual contract costs are running at about £700m.

2011/12. £964.2m annual IT cost. HMRC’s list of invoices from its Aspire suppliers for one year between April 2011 and March 2012 add up to £964.2m. A further £42.6m is invoiced by Serco for website development and support.  This puts HMRC’s IT annual outsourcing costs at 10 times higher than they were when Inland Revenue let its first outsourcing deal in 1994. Some of today’s HMRC systems pre-date 1994 [BROCS/CODA].

Aspire – a good contract?

It appears that HMRC did everything right in its Aspire contract. Indeed the National Audit Office has found little to criticise. Aspire is committed to “open book”, so Capgemini, Fujitsu and Accenture must account for their costs and profit margins.

The contract has some innovations. The suppliers’ margin is retained by HMRC until trials are successfully passed. Even then 50% of the margin is retained until the final Post Implementation Trial about six months after implementation.

Charges under Aspire are split into two categories: “S” and “P”.  The former is mainly a commodity pricing arrangement with unit prices being charged for all service elements at a commodity level (e.g. per Workstation, volumes of printed output etc). The charge to HMRC will vary by volume of demand for each service line.

The ‘’P’’ series charge lines are charged on a man-day basis. Application development and delivery is charged mainly on what HMRC calls an “output basis utilising function points“.

Where IT spending goes

There are more than 800 invoices from Aspire covering the year from April 2011 to March 2012. Some of the invoices are, individually, for tens of millions of pounds and cover a single month’s work.

The invoices cover services such as data centre output, data centre operations, systems software maintenance, software coding changes, licences, IT hardware and data storage.

For some of the Aspire invoices HMRC gives a brief explanation such as £57.6m – “June monthly payment for development and support”. But some of the biggest invoices have little explanation:

May 2011:  invoice for £24.7m – IT Software. A further invoice of £61.7m – “data output prod”.

June 2011: invoice for £55.8m – “data output prod”. A further invoice £56.8m – “data output prod”.

On top of these payments HMRC paid about 24 invoices of management fees in the year. Typical monthly invoice amounts for Aspire management fees ranged from about £390,000 to £2.9m.

There are dozens of Aspire invoices in the year for IT software changes to support day-to-day HMRC’s business. Quite a few of those invoices for software changes are each for tens of thousands of pounds but more than 30 invoices for IT changes in the year 2011/12 each bill more than £100,000. The biggest single invoice in the same year for software changes to support day-to-day HMRC business is  £469, 964 in December 2011.

Transparency

Matt Boyle collated the figures on HMRC’s IT spending from spreadsheets published by HMRC . All credit to Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, for making government departments publish details of their invoices over £25,000.

And credit is due to Matt Boyle for collating and totalling HMRC’s IT-related invoices. Boyle says he is surprised at the high costs of Aspire. He is also surprised that the contract excludes web development and support.

Comment:

HMRC appears to have done nearly everything right and still its IT outsourcing costs are soaring, apparently uncontrollably.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the department and taxpayers would have been much better off if Inland Revenue had not outsourced and instead spent the millions it pays annually on, say,  management fees, to building up an in-house IT force and expertise.

Central government seems now to shun big outsourcing deals but local authorities including Barnet and Cornwall are at the stage Inland Revenue was in 1994: they are considering saving money by outsourcing major IT and other services to one main supplier.

If they learn from HMRC’s experiences – and the sums it has had to pay to outsourcing partners – it may take a little of the sting out of HMRC’s enforced prodigality.

[It may also be worth mentioning that some including Boyle ask how it is possible to credibly justify a spend of £46m in one year on a website.]

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Fujitsu, governance, Government IT, HMRC, managing change, outsourcing, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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We spend more on IT per capita than any other government – Maude

Posted on 08/11/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, in a speech at the FT Innovate Conference on 6 November 2012, said:

“In the last decade our IT costs have gone up – while our services remained patchy. According to some estimates, we spend more on IT per capita than any other government.” Estimated annual IT spend in the public sector is between £14bn and £20bn.

And is the spend worthwhile?

“The same people who do their shopping, banking and social networking online are still interacting with Government on the phone, in person or on paper at less convenience to them and more cost to us…

“Government provides more than 650 transactional services, used about 1 billion times every year – but presently there are only a handful where a large majority of people who could use the online option do so.

“Half don’t offer a digital option at all – and apart from a handful of services, if there is a digital option few people use it because it’s not a sufficiently fast or convenient option.

Car tax online – under-used

“In some cases users try online and then have to revert back to other channels – in 2011 around 150 million calls coming into government were self-reported as avoidable.

This leaves us with a situation where, for example, three-quarters of people use the internet for car insurance, but only half buy car tax online.

“This is simply not good enough …”

GOV.UK

He praised the agile-based GOV.UK government website as easier to use and faster than Directgov and Businesslink which it replaces.

Mosquitoes

The Cabinet Office is also reducing the “incomprehensibly large number of Government websites”  – down from 424 to 350 in the last year.

“We closed a site dedicated to British mosquitoes – no doubt mosquitoes is a serious issue. We just didn’t feel it warranted a whole website.”

£15,000 to change a line of web code

“Departments can be asked to pay £15,000 to change a single word on a website because they are locked into legacy contracts negotiated at a time when the digital capacity lay almost entirely outside government.

“This is changing. We are moving away from legacy IT and our reliance on a few large System integrators. And introducing smaller contracts; shorter terms; a more diverse supplier community that is welcoming to SMEs; open standards; open source; more use of commodity. These are the new parameters.”

Francis Maude’s speech in full.

 

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Posted in change, change management, cost reduction, Government IT, managing change, private sector lessons for the public sector

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Lessons from a government agile success

Posted on 29/10/2012 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Some central government departments spend a great deal with large suppliers on the development and maintenance of their websites (more on this in a separate post).  They could save millions of pounds if they followed the example of the Government Digital Service (and were not locked into mega-outsourcing contracts that include website development).

Agile teams within the GDS are responsible for GOV.UK, which largely replaces Directgov and offers a one-stop site for government services and information.

Simple, clear, fast

The guiding principles for GDS’s agile teams were “simple, clear, fast”. Lessons from the open-source project are on the GDS website. These are some of them:

“When things get tough and you want to go back to old ways, go more agile, not less”.

Less is more (a rare attribute for a government IT project).

Use independently-verifiable data to track your programme

Agile can work at scale. “We’ve embraced it culturally and organisationally…”

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said:

“In stark contrast to the way IT has been delivered in government in the past, GOV.UK can rapidly accommodate new standards for development and security, catering to emerging technologies and user requirements quickly and effectively. It has been built the way Amazon built Amazon, and in the way that BA transformed their online business, by being agile, iterative and focused on users.

“GOV.UK has also been built using open source technology, which means we don’t have to pay expensive software licensing costs.”

Comment:

A good result for the Government Digital Service. Will others in central government follow?

What we’ve learnt about scaling agile – Government Digital Service

Agile can fix failed GovIT says lawyer

 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, Government digital Service, Government IT, innovation, IT projects, managing change, open source, public sector, public services, reducing cost strategically, software licensing

Summary Care Record “unreliable”

Posted on 05/10/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The  central Summary Care Record database (which is run by BT under its NPfIT Spine contract) is proving unreliable, Pulse reports today.

The SCR is supposed to give clinicians , particularly those working in A&E and for out-of-hours services, a view of the patient’s most recent medicines, allergies and bad reactions to drugs.

But one criticism of the scheme has always been the lack of any guarantee that the data in the SCR could be accurate or complete.

Researchers at University College, London, led by Trisha Greenhalgh, found in a confidential draft report that doctors were unable to trust the SCR database as a single source of truth. They found in some cases that  some information on the database was wrong, and what should have been included in the patient’s record was omitted for unknown reasons.

Now Pulse reports that some GP-derived information is going on the patient’s SCR, and some isn’t. One problem is that GPs must use smartcards to update the SCR database and some don’t use them.

The General Practitioners Committee of the British Medical Association has raised the matter with the Department of Health.

Dr Paul Roblin, chief executive of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire local medical committee told Pulse that  smartcards were not often used in Buckinghamshire, because they slowed down the practice IT system for normal use, with one practice reporting that it had interfered with allergy data.

Dr Roblin said that this made the record ‘unreliable’ and said that although most GPs would prefer to take their own history rather than relying on the SCR, and would double check all details with the patient, other health professionals may not realise the record is incomplete, and may not check the data.

He said “Drugs lists might not be complete and recent allergies may not be uploaded. The Summary Care Record is unreliable. Don’t rely on it. It’s an expensive initiative without a lot of benefit.”

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, GPC lead negotiator on IT, said the current arrangements  undermine the benefit and usefulness of summary care records.

“The GPC have suggested workaround systems for practices who do not use smartcards, such as a ‘mop-up’ session where all new data is uploaded on to the national spine once a day. However, the DH decided against this option.”

There may be professionals who believe the SCR database  represents an up to date record said Nagpaul.

A DH spokesperson said that most practices which have created Summary Care Records use smartcards.

[Whether justified or not the SCR  scheme is believed to have cost about £250m so far.]

In 2010 Professor Ross Anderson at Cambridge University argued that the SCR could do more harm than good.

Richard Veryard also wrote on the unreliability of the SCR in 2010.

The Devil’s in the Detail – UCL report on the Summary Care Record.

Summary Care Record – where does the truth lie?

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Posted in BT, BT Health, Campaign4Change, change management, culture, data sharing, e-health, Government IT, health, health records, NHS, npfit, Summary Care Record

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DWP starts media campaign on Universal Credit IT tomorrow

Posted on 19/09/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has told MPs his department is launching a “major exercise” tomorrow to inform the media about Universal Credit, including progress with the IT project.

The public relations push will include a demonstration to journalists of the Univeral Credit front-end, and an explanation of the ability of “agile” to rectify problems as you go along. Duncan Smith said there is a lot of ignorance in the media, and suppositions, that need tackling head on.

His full statement on the PR campaign is at the foot of this article.

Comment

Iain Duncan Smith’s remarks to MPs sound remarkably like the statements that were made in the early part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, when DH ministers and senior officials were anxious to correct ignorance and suppositions in the media – and to show journalists the front end of new electronic patient record systems.

Several times journalists were invited to Richmond house in Whitehall, the HQ of the DH, to hear how well the NPfIT was going. So anxious were the minister and leading officials to give a good impression of the programme that, on one occasion, trade journalists who had an insight into the NPfIT’s progress and could ask some awkward questions in front of the general media were barred from attending.

I would like Universal Credit to succeed. In concept it simplifies the excessively complex and costly benefit system. The worrying thing about the scheme, apart from the DWP’s overly sensitive reactions to scepticism in the media, is the way UC seems to be following the path which led to NPfIT’s downfall.

The Secretary of State attacks the media while trying to show UC in a glowing light and at the same time keeps secret all the DWP’s interview reviews and reports on actual progress. Duncan Smith says that the DWP wants to be open on UC but his department is turning down FOI requests.

There is no doubt that Duncan Smith has a conviction that the programme is on course, on budget, and will deliver successfully. But there still a morass of uncertainty for the DWP to contend with, and lessons to be learnt from pilots, some of which could be important enough to require a fundamental re-think. That’s to say nothing of HMRC’s Real-Time Information project which is part of UC.

Duncan Smith says the UC project is not due to be complete until 2017 which gives the DWP ample time to get it right. But ministers and officials in the last administration gave the NPfIT 10 years to complete; and today, nine years later, the scheme is being officially dismantled.

Did NPfIT ministers really know or understand the extent of the project’s true complexities and uncertainties?  Did they fully grasp the limited ability of suppliers to deliver, or the willingness of the NHS to change?  But they were impressed with the patient record front-end system and they organised several Parliamentary events to demonstrate it to MPs.

The NPfIT public relations exercises – which included DH-sponsored DVDs and a board game to market the NPfIT – were all in the end pointless.

Should Duncan Smith be running Universal Credit?

This is another concern. Duncan Smith is much respected and admired in Parliament but he appears too close to UC to be an objective leader. At a hearing of the Work and Pensions this week Duncan Smith took mild criticism of UC as if it were a verbal attack on his child.

It is doubtful anyone working for Duncan Smith would dare give him bad news on UC , though he attends lots of departmental meetings. Doubtless he listens to all those who agree with him, those who are walking press releases on the progress of the UC programme. He’d be a good marketing/PR man on UC. But surely not its leader. Not the one making the most important decisions. For that you would need somebody who’s free from the politics, who is independently minded, and who welcomes informed criticism.

Is there any point in a demo of front-end systems?

Seeing a front-end system means little or nothing. The question is will it work in practice when it is scaled up, when exceptions come to light, and when large numbers of people try to contact the helpdesks because they cannot get to grips with the technology and the interfaces,  or have particular difficulties with their claim.

What will a media campaign achieve?

If the NPfIT experiences are anything to go by, journalists who criticise the UC project will be made to feel stupid or uninformed.

In a totalitarian regime the media could be forced to publish what the government wants people to believe. Will the DWP’s PR campaign be designed to achieve the same end without the slightest attempt at coercion?

Duncan Smith’s comments to MPs

Below is some of what Iain Duncan Smith told Work and Pensions Committee MPs this week. He had been asked by a Committee MP to have a dialogue with the media to ensure that people believe that Universal Credit is a good thing.

Duncan Smith:

“On Thursday we are carrying out a major exercise in informing the median about what we are doing, looking at the system front-end, about budgets and all the elements the committee has been inquiring into.

“We will take them through that, show them that. We are going to open up much more. It is such an important system that I want people to learn what it is all about.  There is a lot of ignorance in the media and suppositions made; things that are important to tackle head on. Everyone says you mustn’t have a big bang; you are not going to be ready in time. The time we deliver this is 2017 when it is complete.  That is over four years…”

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change, change management, culture, DWP, e-health, excessive secrecy, FOI, Government IT, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, NHS, npfit, Politics, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Government Digital Service sets an example on cloud

Posted on 18/09/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Government Digital Service is putting its money where its mouth is. A leading public sector advocate of the cloud, GDS says that the first cloud hosting provider it is working with is Skyscape.

Mark O’Neill, Head of Service Delivery and Innovation at GDS, which is a team of innovators based at the Cabinet Office, writes that GDS is building GOV.UK, currently in beta at http://www.gov.uk.

“In the past, we might have looked at dedicated servers or possibly even our own rack in a datacentre somewhere. We would then have had to decide if we wanted to own the servers or if we should rent them some time to break out amortisation tables and spreadsheets.

“We would have to make sure that we were not locked in if we needed to move servers, so it would be necessary to negotiate break clauses in contracts; we would need to arrange access to server rooms for security accreditation; we would need to… well, the list goes on and on.

“The cloud has transformed all of this. Through the G-Cloud framework we are able to simply and rapidly buy highly reliable, highly cost-effective hosting services.

“Colleagues in GDS put together a statement of our requirements based on the experience we had gained during the alpha and the ongoing beta releases of GOV.UK and experience from the delivery of other major online services, both public and private sector.

“We then tested that statement of requirements against the list of suppliers on the G-Cloud framework. This allowed us to sift the number of potential providers down to four who met the statement of requirements.

“We then invited each of the suppliers in and used a consistent set of questions to explore their ability to meet our needs, their approach to operational service delivery and how they could provide flexible, scalable services through the cloud.

“To meet the needs of GOV.UK, we are planning to work with a number of different Infrastructure as a Service providers. We are happy to announce that the first cloud hosting provider we are working with is Skyscape.

“We have used G-Cloud previously for a number of small projects covering services like hosting and operations. We were very happy to discover that letting a major service contract for our flagship platform, GOV.UK, was equally straightforward and quick.

“Whilst the GOV.UK contract is the largest we have let so far, it is one of an increasing number we are letting through G-Cloud, which is now our standard way of procuring infrastructure services… If you have not used G-Cloud before then take a look, you will be pleasantly surprised. In the words of a song of my youth, ‘It was easy. It was cheap. Go and do it!'”

Introducing a new supplier – Skyscape

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Cloud, cost reduction, efficiency savings, Government IT, IT projects, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, public sector, public services, reducing cost strategically

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HMRC – you can change the people not the culture.

Posted on 17/09/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Years ago HMRC embraced openness by publishing minutes of its executive committee meetings.

Members of the monthly meetings of the HMRC “ExCom” [executive committee] include Lin Homer, the Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary, and CIO Phil Pavitt.  ExCom is the decision-making executive of HMRC.

The problem is that Excom minutes have been almost creatively uninformative. This is despite the cost to taxpayers of an ExCom meetings secretariat which provides support to the committee, co-ordinates papers and attends to take minutes.

Over the years the Excom members have changed of course, but the minutes from the start have parodied open government.

In its reporting what is said at Excom meetings, HMRC, it would appear, has rules based on a variation of BBC’s “Just a Minute”.  The title of the discussion can be mentioned as often as participants like but it’s against the rules to mention what HMRC does or decides.

In June Excom members discussed progress on RTI, HMRC’s highest-profile project, Real-Time Information, which is an essential part of Universal Credit.  This was recorded in the minutes under the heading RTI Overview … “The Committee went on to consider a range of elements…”  The minutes made no mention of any element.

This would be the ideal entry in HMRC Excom minutes:

6.2 Staff Survey

Excom members discussed the Staff Survey. The chairman and some members made remarks on the results. The discussion was wide-ranging and informative.  It included matters relating to risk and opportunities.  The results of the Staff Survey having been summarised, conclusions were reached, particularly on matters relating to HMRC, and proposals made for recommendations. A number of recommendations were agreed, some of which would be actioned shortly. Without any further discussion, and by a tacit mutual consent, members moved to the next item on the agenda.

Actual extracts from latest Excom minutes

Below are the first four items, taken from the latest Excomm minutes (the latest being 26 June 2012). I haven’t made these up.

If anyone reading these minutes is any the wiser about HMRC’s operations, and what recommendations have been agreed, please contact the department and let them know that a convention has been breached.

 Executive Committee summary minutes of meeting held on 26 June 2012

 Members:

Simon Bowles (Chair), Lin Homer, Dave Hartnett, Mike Falvey, Mike Eland, Stephen Banyard, Jim Harra, Phil Pavitt, Paul Gerrard (deputising for Craig Pemberton), Anthony Inglese.

 Attending:

Carol Bristow, Richard James, Stephen Hardwick, Will Cavendish (Cabinet Office Implementation Unit), Vicky Ranson (for item 2), Will Meehan (for item 3), Marie-Claire Uhart (for item 5), Janet Alexander (for item 6), John Atkinson (Secretariat).

Apologies: Craig Pemberton

1. Welcome

1.1 Simon Bowles opened the meeting and confirmed that Mike Falvey would be responsible for the meeting review and Stephen Hardwick would be responsible for drafting the key messages. He welcomed Paul Gerrard, who was deputising for Craig Pemberton. He also welcomed Will Cavendish, who was observing the meeting in the hub.

1.2 The minutes of the May 2012 meeting were agreed.

2. Risks to revenue raised

2.1 The Committee received a presentation on work aimed at increasing understanding of our 2011-12 performance and identifying the risks to the sustainability of this level of performance for the remainder of the SR period. They agreed to commission further work and to review the outcomes of this at their September 2012 meeting.

3. Performance hub

3.1 Following an overview of performance by the CFO, the relevant Directors General led a discussion around the hub visualisations on the following key aspects of current  performance – revenue raised, debt, tax credit error and fraud, contact centre performance, attendance management and employee engagement.

3.2 The Committee also discussed current causes for concern and risks related to departmental performance.

4. Causes for Celebration

4.1 The Committee reviewed the Causes for Celebration contained in the performance report.

My comment:

It’s a pity the Excom minutes are so defensive, even obfuscatory;  and it’s almost certainly because of HMRC’s culture and not the wish of members. Phil Pavitt is by any standard open and straightforward. He would probably change HMRC’s culture if he could. But could anybody?

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing (Ralph Emerson). Clearly HMRC is in the business of astonishing nobody.

Self-congratulatory

There is something revealing in the minutes, however. Now and again detail infiltrates them – and it is self-congratulatory.

“The Committee reviewed the Causes for Celebration contained in the performance report.”

And on Real-Time Information …

“Stephen Banyard [An HMRC  Director General] opened the session by giving a summary of progress to date in this area and the positive feedback received from customers, rep bodies and trade press.”

So while HMRC is facing significant levels of fraud and error – the National Audit Office has qualified HMRC’s accounts for the last  12 years – the Excom board appears to be in search of every opportunity to slap itself on the back.

The Excom minutes at least have a dream-like quality to them.  Perhaps, like Christian in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the Excom Board members will overcome all the challenges and monsters and eventually reach the Celestial City. They may then wake up. Maybe.

Excom (and a link to its minutes).

Excom’s June 2012 minutes

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Government IT, HMRC, openness and transparency, operational issues, public sector, Universal Credit