Category Archives: Government IT

Judge refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports

Posted on 30/04/2014 | 28 comments

By Tony Collins

An information tribunal judge has unexpectedly refused consent for the Department of Work and Pensions to appeal his ruling that four reports on the Universal Credit programme be published.

The ruling undermines the DWP’s claim that there would be “chilling effect” if the reports were published.

The judge’s decision, which is dated 25 April 2014, means the DWP will have to publish the reports under the FOI Act  – or it has 28 days to appeal the judge’s refusal to grant consent for an appeal.  The DWP is certain to appeal again. It has shown that money is no object when it comes to funding appeals to keep the four reports secret.

In 2012 John Slater, who has 25 years experience working in IT and programme and project management, had requested the UC Issues Register, Milestone Schedule and Risk Register. Also in 2012 I requested a UC project assessment review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

Last month the “first-tier” information tribunal ruled that all four reports should be published. It rejected the DWP’s claim that disclosure would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to the reports – the so-called chilling effect.

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

It claimed the misunderstanding and the 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.

Now Judge David Farrer QC says his tribunal has understood the chilling effect but found no evidence that it was relevant to the four reports in question. Indeed the judge implies that if the chilling effect existed there would be evidence of it.

“The so-called chilling effect implies Government departments and other public authorities have by now extensive experience of decisions requiring them to disclose information which they sought to withhold for the reasons advanced by DWP here,” says the judge in dismissing the DWP’s request for permission to appeal.

“If the chilling effect is a widespread and damaging result of the fear of disclosure, there is every reason for central government to investigate the matter, enabling a government department to present a case based on its research.

“Quite apart from that, those receiving reports, conducting discussions and reading advice might be expected to observe, over a period, any trend in changing style and content of their colleagues` written work, so as to be able to present examples and relate them to the perceived threat of disclosure.

“Obviously the form of document will remain the same but it is hard to believe that the experienced observer could not spot and demonstrate a general loss of trenchancy, of innovation or of boldness in the content over a period if that were indeed the effect of possible public exposure.

“Such changes would constitute ‘concrete and specific effects’, adopting DWP`s wording.”

Although the reports requested under the FOI Act are now old – they date back to 2011 – their publication could throw light on how much DWP ministers and civil servants knew about the many problems with Universal Credit IT at a time when the department was issuing unswervingly positive press releases about the UC programme.

Judge Farrer hinted that DWP ministers and civil servants could have misled the public about the real state of UC programme.

Having read the four reports in question, the judge said in his ruling that the Tribunal was “struck by the sharp contrast with the unfailing confidence and optimism of a series of press releases by the DWP or ministerial statements as to the progress of the Universal Credit Programme during the relevant period”.

At the information tribunal in January 2014 a senior civil servant Sarah Cox, on behalf of the DWP, spoke on the supposed effects of disclosure on the candour and boldness of reviewers.

But the Tribunal noted that a Starting Gate review of Universal Credit was published [in 2011] which the DWP had refused to release under FOI. The Information Tribunal noted that Ms Cox did not suggest that the revelation of this document had inhibited frank discussion within the Universal Credit programme.

The Tribunal said reports such as the risk register and project assessment review are important indicators of the state of a project. Their disclosure can give the public a chance to test whether ministers and civil servants are giving out correct information on the state of a project.

This week the judge says that the Tribunal “read and heard the evidence of Ms. Cox, considered the subject matter and the withheld material, took account of her experience, applied its own experience of these cases and its commonsense and, on this issue, found her testimony unpersuasive, as it was entitled to do.”

In conclusion the judge says the Tribunal “rejects the claim that its handling of the ‘chilling effect’ issue involved an error of law.”

Comment:

The DWP was claiming in 2012 that all was well with the UC programme when in reality they knew there wasn’t even an agreed project plan.

That is a good reason for the DWP to want to keep the reports secret – but the main reason its senior civil servants want to stop publication is tradition. The DWP does not publish any of its reports on the state of big IT-enabled projects and programmes.

It’s perhaps because the DWP has always buried itself under the covers of secrecy that it is so imperious – to the point of arrogance – in its handling of FOI requests and appeals. It acts like an institution that is not used to having outsiders, including the information tribunal and National Audit Office – peep into its affairs.

Perhaps this is why the NAO found that the UC programme was being managed so badly. When complex institutions operate in secrecy and without effective day to day scrutiny standards can continue to fall to a point when even the best leaders are powerless to intervene.

There may come a time – if that time hasn’t been reached already – when the DWP will be held together, and only remain credible in the eyes of the public and Parliament, because of the solid work of its major IT suppliers that have been there for decades, bolstered by a plethora of media announcements and ministerial assurances.

We are certainly getting the media announcements and ministerial statements, but without the publication of reports on UC’s progress, do the official pronouncements mean anything at all?

FOI ruling judge refuses DWP leave to appeal

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, procurement, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Why the DWP wants Universal Credit reports kept secret

Posted on 24/04/2014 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Yesterday the Department for Work and Pensions, via Andrew Robertson, a lawyer in the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, issued the grounds for its appeal against an Information Tribunal ruling that four reports on Universal Credit be released.

The four reports in question are:

– A project assessment review on the state of the project in November 2011, as assessed by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

– A risk register of possible risks to the development or eventual operation of UC as perceived by those involved.

– An issues register of problems that have materialised, why and how they can be minimised or eliminated.

– A milestone schedule of progress and times by which activities should be completed.

The DWP keeps losing appeals to stop the reports being published– but public money being no object when it comes to justifying departmental secrecy, it keeps spending on appeals. The latest appeal is to the “Upper Tribunal”. A decision on whether the appeal can go to the Upper Tribunal will come shortly from the “First-tier” tribunal.

The DWP says its main grounds for appeal is that the Information tribunal “wholly misunderstood the nature and/or manifestation of any ‘chilling effect’. [The chilling effect suggests that public servants will not tell the whole truth in project reviews if they know the reports will be published. The counter argument is that it is the job and duty of public servants to tell the truth, which they are more likely to do if the reports are published and they could be held accountable if it transpires later they had not told the whole truth.]

The DWP said the Tribunal’s misunderstanding about the chilling effect “amounted to an error in law” and was “perverse”.

The DWP’s appeal document is here: Application for Permission to Appeal & Grounds of Appeal 16.04.14 (as fi…

Comment:

The DWP’s appeal document shows the ease with which its lawyers could credibly argue – with an entirely straight face – that day is night, and night is day, on the basis that daylight in one part of the world always signifies darkness in another part of the world.

The DWP’s lawyers could also credibly argue that black is white, and white is black, on the basis that colour is simply a perception based on the light reflected back to our eyes and that if an object can reflect back all the light we see it is white, and black will be perceived only superficially since it is necessary to doubt everything when assessing the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions.

It is in this Orwell-parodying vein that the DWP’s lawyers argue that four Universal Credit reports need to be kept secret. Below are 2 extracts from the DWP’s appeal document. Anyone who understands what either of these paragraphs means deserves a prominent place in the DWP legal team. Here’s a clue. Having read the paragraphs below three times I think they’re saying that it is difficult to prove whether a leaked document has had a chilling effect.

Says the DWP appeal:

“Any argument as to the ‘chilling effect’ of disclosure is necessarily speculative, because it makes assumptions about the future effect of an event that has not yet occurred (i.e. the future effect of disclosure of particular information). Any argument as to the ‘chilling effect’ of disclosure in the past of any ‘chilling effect’ is likely to be the assertion of persons whose experience in particular working environments has enabled them to assess and evaluate how candour and frankness may alter, or may have altered, in the light of premature disclosure of information…”

Here’s another excruciating extract from the DWP’s appeal document:

“The Tribunal’s assumption that it would be ‘quite easy to assemble’ a ‘before’ and ‘after’ documentary comparison itself exemplifies its erroneous understanding of how a ‘chilling effect’ can be proved. Far from being easy, it would in the majority of cases be impossible to demonstrate that a particular type of document had changed fundamentally as a result of disclosure. That is because the likely effect of disclosure will very probably not be a change in the form in which a document (such as a risk register) is produced. It will rather be a change in the substantive content of the register, as a result of a conscious or subconscious decrease in the candour of those contributing to it. But it will equally be impossible to show what those contributors might have said, had it not been for disclosure: because they will not, in fact, have said it.”

Jonathan Swift, in perhaps the best satirical book of all time, Gulliver’s Travels, described lawyers as a society of men “bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid”.

It’s not that the DWP’s lawyers lie. They don’t need to. This latest appeal is a legal nicety, a way of stringing things out, a display of conformance with the FOI game. Nothing will convince the DWP that it should publish the UC reports in question. Nothing will convince the DWP that it should publish any of its reports on any of its major IT-related projects or programmes.

If they need to, Iain Duncan Smith or Lord Freud, his minister, will simply sign a ministerial veto preventing publication of the UC reports under the FOI Act. If there is a legal challenge to the veto, as with the veto on the release of Prince Charles’ letters, IDS will be pleased to have the matter kicked into touch; and while the legalities stretch out over years the UC reports will continue to moulder in locked DWP cupboards.. Eventually they may be released – when they are so old nobody will care what they say. Or they will have disintegrated ( and no, the DWP doesn’t always keep its most secret reports electronically).

That’s what open government means to the DWP… precisely nothing.

Millions of pounds of secret DWP reports

Judge rules that key Universal Credit reports should be published

DWP throws money at keeping Universal Credit reports secret

Too much dishonesty and secrecy over Universal Credit project?

DWP criticised for “worrying” secrecy

DWP refused to release Universal Credit report to MPs

“Outrageous” secrecy at DWP (2005) 

MPs criticise secrecy in DWP IT probe (2004)

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Universal Credit

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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.

 

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

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Does RTI go-slow have implications for Universal Credit?

Posted on 14/04/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

HM Revenue and Customs’ “Real Time Information” project appears to work fairly well much of the time but delays and problems over the last few days have created extra work and angered some payroll specialists.

One payroll specialist said the problems have been “a nightmare” and another said: “I could cry”.

Submissions under RTI are generating, on occasions, hundreds of unexpected emails, clogging corporate inboxes. Payroll specialists have been left unsure if PAYE submissions have been validated or not.

In February HMRC stood accused of acting on inaccurate information in harassing some employers, and issuing misleading guidance on RTI.

Employers and their payroll specialists have until the 22nd of each month to submit their end of month PAYE submissions and cleared electronic payments. This month’s submissions may put an extra burden on HMRC’s systems because they will usually include end-of-year declarations for the 2013/14 year.

One angry payroll specialist emailed Ruth Owen, Director General Personal Tax at HM Revenue and Customs. Owen replied:

“As you say, this is being worked on by the IT team. And let me apologise again for the frustration caused by our delays. We are trying to get it sorted as quickly as we can.

“In answer to your question about the deadline, we will obviously not be applying penalties if customers have missed the deadline due to technical problems in our systems but hopefully we can resolve the problems well in advance of the deadline.”

A separate HMRC statement to software developers said: “

“We are aware that some customers making submissions to the live Government Gateway are experiencing delays before receiving a validation response advising whether or not the submission passed full validation. This is currently being investigated by our IT partners and your customers should not attempt to re-submit their returns until the result of the original submission is known.”

Comment

RTI generally works well but the year-end is always a big test for HMRC’s systems. If RTI is already struggling to cope – while there is only a trickle of Universal Credit claims – will it cope when millions are claiming UC?

It’s yet another uncertainty for UC, and another good reason for the Department for Work and Pensions to publish its UC risk and progress reports. Some chance.

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capgemini, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

G4S is off the naughty step

Posted on 11/04/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The BBC says that G4S is again being considered for government business after being barred from bidding for new contracts in a row about overcharging.

In 2012 the Cabinet Office issued a notice to all departments, agencies and other public organisations saying that they should take into account a bidder’s past performance when considering a new contract.

The notice said that officials should satisfy themselves:

– that the principal contracts of those who would provide the goods and/or services have been satisfactorily performed in accordance with their terms

– where there is evidence that this has not occurred in any case, that the reasons for any such failure will not recur if that bidder were to be awarded the relevant contract.

If the Departmental Body remains unsatisfied that the principal contracts of those who would provide the goods and/or services have been satisfactorily performed, it should “exclude that bidder on the grounds that it has failed to meet the minimum standards of reliability set”, said the notice.

It appears that G4S was excluded from bidding on these grounds.

But the company agreed to repay £109m after an audit found it charged too much for providing electronic prisoner tags. The Serious Fraud Office is examining G4S and Serco over the contracts.

The firm has not bid for any government work since the Ministry of Justice started an investigation a year ago into its supply of electronic monitoring tags for prisoners in England and Wales since 2005.

After an audit by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, it emerged that G4S – which insisted it had asked for the review itself – and Serco had overcharged the government by “tens of millions of pounds”.

Now the Cabinet Office has nothing but good to say about G4S. The CO’s statement says that the payments made by G4S to reimburse the taxpayer are a “positive step”.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude says:

“Following the material concerns that emerged last year, relating to overcharging on Ministry of Justice electronic monitoring contracts, G4S has engaged constructively with the government…

“Throughout, the government has engaged closely with G4S to understand their plans for corporate renewal. These discussions have been constructive; and following scrutiny by officials, review by the Oversight Group and reports from our independent advisors (Grant Thornton), the government has now accepted that the corporate renewal plan represents the right direction of travel to meet our expectations as a customer.

“This does not affect any consideration by the Serious Fraud Office, which acts independently of government, in relation to the material concerns previously identified. However, we are reassured that G4S is committed to act swiftly should any new information emerge from ongoing investigations.

“The changes G4S has already made and its commitment to go further over coming months are positive steps that the government welcomes. However, corporate renewal is an ongoing process and the government places a strong emphasis on their full and timely implementation of the agreed corporate renewal plan.

“The Crown Representative together with Grant Thornton will continue to monitor progress as their plan is implemented, reporting to government on a regular basis. I hope this will enable our confidence to grow.”

Comment:

A company has to do something very serious to be excluded from bidding – and it may be thought that G4S has come off the naughty step too quickly. On the other hand the notice on barring poor suppliers from bidding has a requirement that bidders provide a list of their main customers in the previous three years.  Certificates of satisfaction should be obtained from the customers. If necessary suppliers should obtain the certificates.

This is a useful incentive to suppliers to keep their customers happy.  But will departments implement what would be, in essence, a blacklist?

Thank you to openness campaigner Dave Orr for alerting me to G4S developments.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, EU procurement, Government IT, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, supplier relationships

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Survive a Public Accounts Committee hearing – a lesson for ministers and top civil servants?

Posted on 10/04/2014 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Mark Thompson was Director General of the BBC for eight years from 2004 to 2012. He was one of the highest paid in the public sector, earning more than £800,000.  He’s now CEO of the New York Times Company.

When he went before the Public Accounts Committee in February 2014 he faced accusations he had mislead MPs over the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative which was cancelled in 2013. The BBC wrote off £98.4m on the project.

Thompson has emerged from the affair unscathed although he had presided over the project.  Indeed he seems to have impressed the committee’s MPs who are notoriously hard to please.

In today’s PAC report on the failure of DMI, MPs appear to have preferred Thompson’s evidence over that of other witnesses. So how is it possible to come to a PAC to answer accusations of misleading Parliament and end up winning over your accusers?

Today’s PAC report on DMI criticises the BBC for:

–  complacency in taking a “very high-risk” project in-house from Siemens

–  spending years working on a system that did not meet users’ needs

–  not knowing enough about progress which led to Parliament being   misinformed that all was well when it wasn’t

– ending up with a system that costs £3m a year to run, compared to £780,000 a year for the 40 year-old “Infax” system it was designed to replace. And Infax works 10 times faster.

In February 2014 Committee chairman Margaret Hodge began her questioning of Thompson over DMI by pointing out that, three years earlier, in 2011, he had assured the PAC that all was well with the project when it wasn’t.

Thompson told Hodge in February 2011 that DMI was “out in the business” and “there are many programmes that are already being made with DMI”. In reality, the DMI had been used to make only one programme, called ‘Bang Goes the Theory’ – and problems on the project at that time were deepening but, as in many public sector IT-based projects that go wrong, such as Universal Credit, bad news from the project team was not being escalated to top management (or the BBC Trust).

How Thompson won over PAC MPs

At the PAC hearing in February 2014 Hodge asked Thompson if he had misled the Committee when he spoke positively about DMI in 2011.

Thompson’s reply was so free of reserve that it appears to have taken the wind out of Hodge.

Thompson replied: “I don’t believe that I have misled you on any other matter, and I do not believe that I knowingly misled you on this one.

“I will answer your question directly, but can I just make one broad point about DMI before then? In my time at the BBC, we had very many successful technology projects—very large projects, some of them much larger than DMI. I believe that the team, including John Linwood [then the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer], who were in the middle of DMI, had many successes—for example, digital switchover, West One, Salford and BBC iPlayer.

“I just wanted to say … everything I have heard and seen makes me feel that DMI was not a success. It failed as a project. It failed in a way that also meant the loss of a lot of public money. As the director-general who was at the helm when DMI was created and developed and who, in the end, oversaw much of the governance system that, as we will no doubt discuss, did not perform perfectly in this project, I just want to say sorry.

“I want to apologise to you and to the public for the failure of this project. That is the broad point.”

Hodge (who would normally, at a point such as this, launch her main offensive) said simply:

“Thank you.”

Usually civil servants will deny that a big IT-based project has actually failed. Many times the archetypal civil servant Sir David Nicholson, when Chief Executive of the NHS, defended the failed NPfIT at PAC hearings.

But Thompson told PAC MPs:  “Here we are in the beginning of 2014—I am not going to debate with you whether or not this project [DMI] failed. I am sure we can talk about how, why, where and so forth, but it definitely failed.

“When I came to see you in February 2011, I believed that the project was in very good shape indeed. Why did I believe that? I had seen a number of programmes myself—I had been and seen parts of DMI working on ‘Bang Goes the Theory’; I knew that ‘The One Show’ had started to use elements of DMI a few weeks earlier; and I knew that a kind of prototype version of the technology had been used in the very, very successful ‘Frozen Planet’ natural history series.

“I have gone back and asked the BBC to look at all the briefing materials—I had a voluminous amount of briefing from the BBC—and there is a real consistency between the briefing I got – .”

Richard Bacon: Sorry, a real inconsistency?

Thompson: No, a real consistency between the briefing I got and the evidence that I gave. To be honest, some of this is going to go very much to the point Mr Bacon was making earlier on (about what is or is not a deployment).

Stephen Barclay: Just a second…So it was consistent, but consistently wrong, wasn’t it, because just the following month, after the consistent briefing, you were then aware that it was going to miss the key milestone? From March 2011 you knew it [DMI] was not going to hit the deadline.

Thompson: If I may say so, what I am trying to focus on at the moment is the question—I understand, given subsequent events, the perfectly reasonable question—about whether the testimony I gave in February 2011 misled you or not… My belief is that my testimony gave a faithful and accurate account of my understanding of the project at this point.

Hodge: But were you misled, then?

Thompson: Let me give you just a sense of my briefing. To be honest, there were echoes of this in John Linwood’s testimony a few minutes ago, and Mr Bacon has helped me to understand this by putting his finger on the use of one word in particular, which is ‘deployment’. This is the timeline …”

Thompson then did something civil servants rarely do, if ever, when they appear before the committee. He read from the internal briefings he had received on the project in 2010 and 2011 . Those briefings indicated all was well.

He was not even shown a draft Accenture report in December 2010 that said the elements of the DMI examined (by Accenture) were not robust enough for programme-making and that significant remedial work was required.

Thompson said that the day before he gave evidence to the PAC in February 2011 he was given an internal note which said:

“Our next release [of DMI], Enhanced Production Tools, entered into user acceptance testing this week. This release builds on the production tool we previously delivered in 2010, Fabric Workspace, and desktop editing and logging.

“We will deploy its release to pilot users in Bristol, the ‘Blue Peter’ production team, ‘The One Show’ current affairs team, ‘Bang Goes the theory’ — again — ‘Generation Earth’, weather and ‘Pavlopetri’ inside London Factual.”

Thompson had the firm impression that DMI was challenging but that the BBC was starting to deliver the system and users had been positive about the elements delivered.

Thompson said in February 2014, “Mr Bacon is right about the very bullish use of the world “deployed”, meaning, perhaps, elements that have been loaded on to a desktop but not really extensively used: that was the background to the remarks I made to you in February 2011. I am absolutely clear that at the time that was what I knew and believed about the project.”

Hodge: So you were misled?

Thompson replied, in essence, that the BBC’s business users tried to make DMI work but most of them gave up. There were tensions between the project team who were enthusiastic about DMI and the business users who, mostly, weren’t.

These were complicated, difficult issues, said Thompson. “There was a pronounced and, it would appear, growing difference of opinion between the team making DMI and the business users on how effective and how real the technology was.

“You will understand that I have been involved in a lot of projects at the BBC and in other organisations, and I can smell business obstinacy. I can smell when a business is unready, is not prepared to play ball or is constantly moving the goalposts.

“I absolutely understand John Linwood’s particular perspective, given what he was doing. He was a very passionate advocate of the project, and I understand all of that.

“In my time, which ended when I left in September 2012, I saw great efforts being made by the business—in other words, by colleagues inside BBC Vision, BBC North and elsewhere—to get DMI to work. Although there were tensions, I do not believe that those tensions, which frankly were more or less inevitable, were themselves a central and critical part of the project’s failure.”

Richard Bacon: … It sounds to me as if the people getting the business case through the main governance processes were technology and finance people. I want to be clear on what you are saying. It sounds to me as if the technology people were very gung-ho and the experience of the business people on the ground was that it was not necessarily working as well as they had been led to believe, so they probably lost faith in it. Is that a fair summary?

Thompson: “I believe that that was definitely what started to happen, certainly by the end of 2011 and through 2012. It happened for understandable reasons. This has been a troubled project…

“I thought great efforts were made in BBC Vision and in BBC North both by senior people and by some front-line programme makers to help us to get the thing to work.

“Where my perspective perhaps differs from John’s perspective – it is very easy for me to sit here and say that this project failed because some difficult programme makers refused to use it, although there may have been an element of that somewhere – is that I thought that, overall, this was a project on which there was a lot of work and effort to try to get it to work on the business side…”

Hodge asked again if Thompson had been misled when he assured the PAC in February 2011 that DMI was being used at the BBC.

Thompson: I believed it.

Hodge: You believed it?

Thompson: Yes.

Hodge:  You believed it, but were you being misled?

Thompson: “I think that the language that the team was using, combined to some extent with the fact that I had seen what looked like a very positive demonstration of it … I had heard that “The One Show” had also started using it, and I saw a list of other programmes that were also using it. That combined with the language in the briefing led me to believe that it was being more extensively used.”

PAC conclusion

The PAC could have concluded in its report today that the BBC had misled Parliament in February 2011. But MPs used the word “misinformed” instead.

“Neither the [BBC’s] Executive Board nor the [BBC] Trust knew enough about the DMI’s progress, which led to Parliament being misinformed. While [Thompson] assures us that he gave a faithful and accurate account of his understanding of the project at that point in early 2011, he was mistaken and there was confusion within the BBC about what had actually been deployed and used.

“In its reporting on major projects, the BBC needs to use clear milestones that give the Executive and the Trust an unambiguous and accurate account of progress and any problems.”

Comment

The PAC had every right to be angry.  So credible were the BBC’s assurances about DMI in February 2011 that the Committee published a report in April 2011 that reflected those assurances. It was wrong.

But there is a positive element in the failure of DMI – and that is the completely open and honest testimony of Mark Thompson.

MPs on the PAC are used to be being misled – usually by the sin of omission – when civil servants and ministers come before them. But when Thompson read from his internal briefings it was easy to see how he came to the view that DMI in February 2011 was showing signs of a success.

It was clear to MPs that Thompson had not set out to mislead.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that you can go far with honesty and openness. That’s not an easy lesson for the ministers and civil servants who have to appear before the PAC, but it has certainly served Thompson well.

BBC Digital Media Initiative – Public Accounts Committee report

 

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, change management, Department of Health, excessive secrecy, Government IT, IT and the Business, IT projects, IT-related failures, managing change, npfit, public sector

Another DWP leader quits – is Universal Credit IT really working?

Posted on 12/03/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

As the head of the Universal Credit programme, Howard Shiplee, returns to work after being off sick with bronchitis, news emerges that the DWP is to lose its IT head Andy Nelson whose responsibilities include Universal Credit.

The highly regarded Nelson is to leave this summer after little more than a year as the DWP’s CIO.

The DWP’s press office – which for more than a year had a brief to tell journalists that Universal Credit was on time and to budget – is saying that Nelson’s brief was the whole of the DWP’s IT. The implication is that Nelson had little to do with Universal Credit.

But Nelson’s brief specifically included Universal Credit. At the weekend IDS told the BBC’s Sunday Politics that the IT for Universal Credit is working. If that were so, wouldn’t Nelson want to be associated with such a high-profile success?

The FT, in an article in February on Shiplee’s sick leave, pointed out that Terry Moran, the civil servant in charge of universal credit at its inception, retired from the department last year after an extended period of sick leave.

Hilary Reynolds, a department civil servant who was appointed programme director in November 2012, moved to another role four months later. She in turn had taken over from Malcolm Whitehouse, who had stepped down from the programme around the same time as Moran.

Departures of top DWP people may be one of the few outward signs of the true state of UC IT until the next government reviews the programme and perhaps announces the results.

Open?

On the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme on 9 March 2014 IDS suggested he is being entirely open about the Universal Credit programme – he invited the media and come and see where it is being rolled out. But the DWP keeps hidden its internal reports on the actual state of the programme.  The Information Tribunal is currently weighing up whether the DWP should be ordered to publish one of its internal reports on the Universal Credit project.

IDS on BBC’s Sunday Politics

Below is a partial transcript of IDS’s interview with presenter Andrew Neil on the Universal Credit project. IDS refers incorrectly to write-offs of £28bn on IT programmes by the last government,  and he gives some seemingly contradictory answers.  If the government needs a spokesman to argue that day is night and night is day, IDS is probably the man.

Andrew Neil (presenter) Why has so much been written off on UC although it has barely been introduced?

IDS: “It’s a £2bn project and in the private sector IT programmes write off 30%-40% regularly because that’s the nature. The point I want to make here is that UC is already rolling out. The IT is working. We are improving as we go along. You keep your eye on the bits that don’t work and you make sure they don’t create a problem for the programme.

“The £40m that was written off was to do with security IT. I took the decision over a year and half ago. That is the standard write down – the amortisation of costs over a period. The existing legacy systems were written down in cost terms years ago in the accounts but they continue to work right now.

“We are doing pathfinders and learning a lot about it but I am not going this again like the last government did which is big bang launches and then you have problems like they had with the health IT and it crashes. You do it phase by phase, you learn what you have to do and you make the changes, then you continue to get the rest of it out.

“The key point is that it is rolling out and I invite anybody from the media etc to come and look at where it is being rolled out …”

Neil: You say it [Universal Credit] is being rolled out but nobody notices. You were predicting that one million people would be on universal credit by April and now it’s March and there are only 3,200 are on it.

IDS: “I am not bandying figures around but it is 6,000 and rising. I changed the way we were rolling out over a year ago. Under the advice I brought in from outside – he said: you are better off Pathfinding this out, making sure you learn the lessons, roll it out slower and you gain momentum later on.

“On the timetables for the roll-out we are pretty clear. It is going to rollout in the timescales originally set [completion by October 2017] but the scale of that rollout … so what we are going to do is roll it out in the North West,  recognise how it works properly, and then you roll it out region by region.

“There are lot of variations and variables in this process but if you do it that way you won’t end up with the kind of debacle the last government had in the health service and many others where they wrote off something in the order of £28 billion pounds of IT programmes. We won’t be doing that. There is £38bn of net benefits so it is worth getting it right.”

Neil: When will UC be universal – when will it cover the whole country?

IDS: “By 2016 everybody who is claiming a benefit will be claiming universal credit.

Neil: But not everybody will be getting it by then.

IDS: “Because there are some who are on sickness benefits and they will take longer to bring on because it is a little more problematic, and a bit more difficult because many of them have no work expectations. For those who are on tax credits and job seekers allowance they will be making claims on universal credit and many are already doing that now. There are over already 200,000 people around the country who are on parts of universal credit now.”

Neil: When will everybody be on UC?

IDS: “We said they would be on UC by 2018.”

Are you on track for that?

“Yes we are. 2016 is when everybody claiming this benefit will be on. Then you have to bring on those who have been on a long time on other benefits. UC is a big and important reform. It is not an IT reform. IT is only the automation. The important point is that it will be a massive cultural change.   The change is dramatic. You can get a jobseeker to take a small part-time job immediately while they are looking for work. That improves their likelihood of getting longer work and it means flexibility for business.”

Comment

The DWP says it needs a “safe space” to discuss the progress of its projects without the glare of publicity. That’s one reason it refuses to publish any of the reviews it has commissioned on UC. But the hiding of these reports, which have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, means that IDS can go on TV and say almost whatever he likes about progress on the Universal Credit project, without fear of authoritative contradiction.

Why does the Cabinet Office allow the DWP and other departments to keep secret their internal reports on the progress or otherwise of their IT-based projects and programmes? Probably because the Cabinet Office’s minister Francis Maude doesn’t want to be too intrusive.

So we’ll be left guessing on the state of big IT-enabled programmes until the scheme’s defects are too great to be hidden or the NAO publishes a report. Will the former that be the fate of Universal Credit IT?

Andy Nelson quits as DWP CIO

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, operational issues, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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NHS database: is it a top IT priority?

Posted on 19/02/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

It’s called the NHS database but the new “giant” medical records system is to be run by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, largely for the benefit of researchers.

Though it may help patients in the longer term, say by helping to identify what treatments work and don’t, it is arguably not the NHS’s most immediate IT priority.

I said on BBC R4’s Today programme this morning that a top NHS IT priority is providing secure links to health records so that patients with acute and chronic illnesses can be treated in one part of the NHS one week and another part of the health service the following week – perhaps in a different county – and have their updated records accessible wherever they go.

At present patients with multiple problems can end up being treated in different NHS or non-NHS centres without each organisation knowing what the other is doing.  This is dangerous for patients and gives the impression the NHS is technologically backwards.

Links can be made to existing medical records – there are millions of electronic records already in the NHS – without creating a big central database. The records can reside where they are at the moment, inside and outside the NHS, and be linked to securely by clinicians and nurses, subject to the patient’s specific consent.

Indeed patients should be able to look at their record online and correct any mistakes.

Research database

My comment on BBC R4 Today that a research database is a good idea has brought a mixed response – understandably, because are risks. We need some facts from the Health and Social Care Information Centre on who is going to run the database, and how information will be made genuinely anonymous.

The HSCIC concedes in its information material that some patient information on the database will be potentially identifiable, but it implies this is acceptable if the organisations using the data can be trusted.

Why must information be potentially identifiable? And to what extent can the HSCIC be trusted to run the database? It is, after all, managing contracts under the National Programme for IT, a scheme which Jeremy Hunt called a “huge disaster”.

How much extra will be paid to BT which runs the SUS database under the “dismantled” NPfIT? It is likely that BT’s Spine and SUS-related work will link into the new “NHS database”. Have any new contracts gone to open competitive tender?

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Posted in BT, BT Health, Campaign4Change, data sharing, Department of Health, e-health, Government IT, health, health records, HSCIC, LPfIT, NHS, npfit

Of mice and IT elephants – guest blog

Posted on 04/02/2014 | 4 comments

By John Pearce

I heard your interview on BBC’s World at One today Tony. You were saying there may be potential for fleet-of-foot small IT firms to access government contracts. It was music to my ears.

You referred to the NHS and Universal Credit IT disasters and the way contracting has been dominated by a few big beasts and multi-nationals.  You killed the myth that “big is beautiful”  and praised “new rules”  to break up projects into smaller units.

Small can be perfectly formed and powerful. Businesses like ours are quick-reflex mice stuck behind the elephants blocking the doors. Why don’t they just sit out of the way, in the room, like other elephants?

We are an SME in IT.  We have great pedigree, an innovative product, a presence in education and are ready to break into the business world and government work more generally. But without the bulk and buying power to advertise, lobby and bid for the current huge projects we have not been able to do much, if anything. We are encountering elephant in the door syndrome.

So we continue doing what we do, scurrying like mad, working unreasonable but happily given hours. It is not in the country’s interest for us to be tired, blocked and trapped. We fear being swallowed up, of losing our identity. I suppose it might be quicker than being slowly squashed under an elephant’s backside.

iAbacus

Dan O’Brien, my business partner, is young, creative, dynamic and rushed off his feet.  I am three of those and old.  He has run a small successful software company for 15 years. I had a successful senior career in education and in business as consultant, evaluator, writer and publisher.  I created a deceptively simple, improvement model for individual, team and organisation. So, Dan and I created an on-line version.

We launched “The iAbacus” in 2012 and were finalists in the BETT2014Awards [hosted by Jo Brand] on 22 January 2014.  There were lots of mice competing with us and the usual elephants. But before we announce the winner let’s have a look at the iAbacus focusing on school governance. 

We dream of developing this and moving into business generally. We see a huge potential for this “empowering personnel” approach applied to NHS and civil service personnel. Up to now the elephants have blocked the way, or grinned through the windows while they ate ice buns. Can elephants grin?

We didn’t win the Bett2014 Big Cheese but it was a great show – it makes people like us feel good.  Yes, coming back to the office was disappointing but we are nibbling away, on-line, working in education but, even in this field I know so well, customers can be sniffy too – “small is ugly and simple is simplistic; let’s go for the big suppliers”. 

New rules

Will the Cabinet Office’s new rules work?

 Not unless there is support for small outfits like ours who, intent on the day to day business, will struggle writing the bids and attending the selections. We’ll keep running and swerving around elephant bottoms but we need muscle power and finance for the advertising and lobbying. We need to elbow past the elephants, get an audience with buyers.  Is there anyone out there?  Echo…echo….echo…

Or, are there friendly elephants out there who could help us, encourage and include us?  Could the regulations persuade them?  How about a clause like the one when planning new houses?  Every housing project has to include a percentage of affordable homes. How about every IT contract having to include a percentage of SMEs?  

I want to one of them. I want to be a Trojan Mouse!

John Pearce is a freelance consultant, working across education, business and community. After a successful career in teaching and headship, he became Deputy Chief Inspector for Nottinghamshire County Council. He was a BETT2014 finalist for The iAbacus which he created with Dan O’Brien.

john@iabacus.co.uk   dan@iabacus.co.uk

BBC’s World at One focus on government IT.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Government IT, SME

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When “life and death” NHS IT goes down

Posted on 29/01/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Almost unnoticed outside the NHS an email was circulated by health officials last weekend about a national “severity 1” incident involving the Electronic Prescription Service, running on BT’s data Spine .

“The EPS [electronic prescriptions service] database is currently experiencing severe degradation of performance. … BT engineers [are] currently investigating with the database application support team,” said the email.

A severity 1 or 2 incident, which involves a temporary loss of, or disruption to, the Spine or other national NHS system,  is not unusual, according to a succession of emails forwarded to Campaign4Change.

The Department of Health defines a severity 1 incident as a  failure that has the potential to:

— have a significant adverse impact on the provision of the service to a large number of users; or

— have a significant adverse impact on the delivery of patient care to a large number of patients; or

— cause significant financial loss and/or disruption to NHS Connecting for Health [now the Health and Social Care Information Centre], or the NHS; or

— result in any material loss or corruption of health data, or in the provision of incorrect data to an end user.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre, which manages BT’s Spine and other former NPfIT contracts, reports that the spine availability is 99.9% or 100%. But the HSCIC’s emails tell a story of service outage or disruption that is almost routine.

If the spine and other national services  are really available 99.9% of the time, is that good enough for the NHS, especially when ministers and officials are increasingly expecting clinicians and nurses to depend on electronic patient records and electronic prescriptions?  In short, are national NHS IT systems up to the job?

NHS staff access the spine tens of millions of times every month, often to trace patients before accessing their electronic records.  The spine is pivotal to the use of patient records held on Rio and Cerner Millennium systems in London. It is critical to the operation of Choose and Book, the Summary Care Record, Electronic Prescription Service pharmacy systems, GP2GP, iPM/Lorenzo, and the Personal Demographics Service.

According to a Department of Health letter sent to the Public Accounts Committee, payments to BT for the Spine totalled £1.08bn by March 2013.

BT says on its website that its 10-year NHS Spine contract involves developing systems and software to support more than 899,000 registered NHS users. The HSCIC says the Spine is used and supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a day.

“There is a huge amount of industrial-strength robustness, availability, disaster recovery, that you cannot get someplace else,” said a BT executive when he appeared before MPs in May 2011.

Life and death  

Sir David Nicholson spoke of the importance of the spine and other national NHS systems at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee in 2011. He said they were

“providing services that literally mean life and death to patients today … So the Spine, and all those things, provides really, really important services for our patients…”

When Croydon Health Services NHS Trust went live with a Cerner Millennium patient records system at the end of September a “significant network downtime” – of BT’s N3 network – had an effect on patients.

A trust board paper, dated 25 November 2013 says:

“CRS Millennium (Cerner) Deployment -Network downtime – Week 1.  In particular, the significant network downtime in week 1 (BT N3 problem) led to no electronic access to Pathology and Radiology which resulted in longer waits for patients in the Emergency Department (ED) leading to a large number of breaches. This was a BT N3 problem which has been rectified with BT …”

Below are some of the emails passed to Campaign4Change in the past four months. Written by the Health and Social Care Information, the emails alert NHS users to outages or disruption to GP or national NHS IT systems.

Some HSCIC messages of disruption to service

October 2013

Severity 2
HSCIC
National
CQRS has not received a number of participation status messages.
Also affecting: GPES
USER IMPACT:
CQRS Users are not able to manually submit specific information, this will impact the users’ business process for entry of achievement data.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
Following a configuration change by the GPES Business Unit a specific code has now been added to the GPET-Q Database. We are currently awaiting confirmation that the addition of the relevant code has been successful. Discussions are taking place regarding the re-submission of status messages. HSCIC conference calls are on-going.

[A severity 2 service failure is a failure [that] has the potential to:

– have a significant adverse impact on the provision of the service to a small or moderate number of service users; or

– have a moderate adverse impact on the delivery of patient care to a significant number of service users; or

– have a significant adverse impact on the delivery of patient care to a small or moderate number of patients; or

– have a moderate adverse impact on the delivery of patient care to a high number of patients; or

– cause a financial loss and/or disruption … which is more than trivial but less severe than the significant financial loss described in the definition of a Severity 1 service failure.]

**

Severity 2
HSCIC
BT Spine
National
Intermittent performance issues on TSPINE.
T-Spine
RESOLUTION:
BT Spine have confirmed that the incident has been resolved and users are able to perform routine business processes without delays.

November 2013

Severity 1
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
Users are unable to log into PDS.
USER IMPACT:
All sites are currently unable to access PDS, this is causing a delay to normal services.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
BT Spine are working to restore service.

**

Severity 2
BT Spine
HSCIC
National EPS users.
Slow performance on reliable and unreliable messages for EPS.
USER IMPACT:
This is causing delays to routine business processes as some users may be experiencing slow performance with the EPS service.
BT investigating.

**

Severity 2
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
Slow performance on EPS Messaging.
USER IMPACT:
This is causing delays to routine business processes as some users may be experiencing slow performance with the EPS service.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
BT moved the database to an alternate node following application server restarts. This temporarily restored normal message response times however performance has started to degrade again. BT Investigation continues.

**
Severity 1
Atos
HSCIC
National
Multiple users were unable to log in to the Choose & Book application.
ATOS made some network configuration changes overnight 19th/20th November which restored service. After a period of monitoring throughout the day yesterday the service has remained stable and at expected levels. Further activities and investigation will be carried out by several resolver teams which will be scheduled through change management.

**
Severity 2
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
Slow performance on EPS Messaging.
No further issues of slow response times with EPS messaging have occurred today. BT Spine to continue root cause investigation.

**

Severity 2
Cegedim RX
HSCIC
National
Cegedim RX – Users are experiencing slow performance in EPS 1 and EPS 2.
USER IMPACT:
Users are experiencing slow performance and delays to routine business processes when using EPS 1 and EPS 2.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
Following a restart of application services, traffic has improved for all new EPS messages. However there is a backlog of EPS messages which may cause delays to routine business processes. Cegedim RX to continue to investigate.

**

December 2012

Severity 1
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
Performance issues have been detected with the transaction messaging system (TMS).
Also affecting: Choose and Book, GP2GP
USER IMPACT:
This may cause delays to routine business processes. This may have an effect on all Spine related systems. This includes PDS, Choose and Book, PSIS, SCR, ACF Services.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
This has been resolved but BT are currently monitoring performance. Further investigation is required by BT into the root cause.

**

Severity 2
GDIT – CQRS
HSCIC
National
DTS has not processed a CQRS payment file.
CQRS
Also affecting: GPES
USER IMPACT:
This is causing delays to routine business processes.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
GDIT are currently developing a fix which will be rolled out tomorrow evening, pending successful testing.

January 2014

Severity 1
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
TMS reliable messaging unavailable.
USER IMPACT:
TMS reliable messaging unavailable and users having to implement manual workarounds.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
Issues experienced due to a planned change overrunning, BT Spine continue to implement the transition activity in order to restore service.

**

Severity 2
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
Users have experienced intermittent issues with the creation and cancellation of smartcards in CMS [Card Management Service for managing smartcards].
CMS
USER IMPACT:
This is intermittently causing delays to routine business processes as some users have been unable to create, cancel, cut or print cards in CMS.
ACTION BEING TAKEN
Users may experience issues with the creation and cancellation of cards in CMS. BT have identified a fix for the issue which is currently undergoing testing prior to deployment into the live environment.

**

Severity 2
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
The maternity browser was unavailable within NN4B.
RESOLUTION:
BT identified a problematic server which was recycled to restore system functionality.

**

Spine scheduled outage for essential maintenance activity.

During critical work to migrate to a new storage solution on Spine an issue was experienced on the Transaction Messaging Service (TMS) in September of this year. The issue resulted in BT failing over the TMS database from its usual site on Live B to Live A to restore service. The failover was completed well within the Service Level Agreement and no detrimental long term impacts to the service were incurred.

On the 15th January 2014 between approximately 22:00-23:30, HSCIC, in conjunction with BT, are planning to relocate the TMS database back to Live B, this is for several critical reasons:

  1. The issues experienced, which prompted the failover, are fully resolved and will not be experienced again as the storage migration work is now complete.
  2. The Spine service is designed to operate with all databases running on Live B so this work supports the optimum configuration for the service.
  3. Most critically the transition for all data on Spine to Spine2 has been designed to operate from a standby site with no live databases on it. Therefore to support the Spine2 transition this work is absolutely essential.

In order to facilitate a safe relocation of the database a 1.5 hour outage is required to TMS. The impact of this to Spine is significant and results in effectively an outage for Spine and its interfaces to connecting systems for that period. The time and date is aimed at the lowest times of utilisation for Spine, to minimise impact to end users, as well as not impacting critical batch processing and Choose & Book slot polls.

 

Date & Time

Change Start Change Finish Services Affected Outage Duration
15/01/2013 22:00 15/01/2013 23:30 Transaction Messaging Service (TMS) 1.5 hours
Service  Impact Description
Choose and Book The Choose and Book service will be available but functionality will be limited until the TMS database has switched over.Users of the web application will experience limited retrievals during the outage window.The system will not be able to create shared-secret for patients who have not been referred via Choose and Book before.Service Providers will be unable to:

  • Perform clinic re-structures and re-arrange appointments for patients for directly bookable services
  • Send DNA messages to Choose and Book.

For directly bookable services the following functionality will be unavailable:

  • Booking appointments
  • Rearranging appointments
  • Creating new patient accounts

Choose & Book systems will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.

Due to the timing of the outage slot polls will not be affected.
Summary Care Record application (SCRa) The SCRa application will be available but functionality will be limited until the TMS database has switched over. Simple traces can be completed on PDS data but users will be unable to perform any PSIS updates (e.g. GP summary updates)
DSA The DSA application will be available but functionality will be limited until the TMS database has switched over.Simple traces can be completed on PDS data but users will be unable to perform any PSIS updates (e.g. GP summary updates).
Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)Pharmacy Systems Reliable messaging will be unavailable for the duration of the switchover work as the TMS service will be suspended dual site. All messages received from EPS systems will be rejected and not go into retry.EPS systems will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
EPS Batch The PPA response for any “claim” messages will not be sent to PPA/PPD. However, EPS will send those response(s) again when the retry jobs are re-activated after the switchover exercise is over. Response for any “claim” messages will not be received until after the switchover. Retry jobs will resend the responses once the TMS service is enabled.
Existing Service Providers (ESPs) There will be varying impacts depending on the product, release version and Spine compliant modules of the solution.ESP systems will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
GP2GP GP2GP will be unavailable until the TMS database has switched over.GP2GP systems will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
GP Extraction Service (GPES) GPES functionality will be unavailable until the TMS database has switched over.Messages will be queued on Spine and processed once the TMS service is restored.
GP Systems Functionality for Choose & Book, EPS and GP2GP, SCR will be limited until the TMS database has switched over.For Choose & Book directly bookable services the following functionality will be unavailable:

  • Booking appointments
  • Rearranging appointments
  • Creating new patient accounts

Systems will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
iPM/Lorenzo The real-time connection to Spine will be unavailable during the TMS outage. However both systems can be disconnected from Spine and operate without synchronised PDS data.iPM/Lorenzo will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
Millennium An outage of PDS reliable messaging will impact Millennium users.Users will be unable to:

  • trace patients
  • register new patients on PDS
  • book or reschedule appointments

Millennium will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
NN4B Trusts will need to be aware that during the outage NHS numbers cannot be generated, new-births cannot be registered and blood-spot labels cannot be generated and should plan accordingly.All birth notifications will be queued and processed once the TMS service is enabled.
Personal Demographics Service (PDS) Simple traces can be completed on PDS data.PDS reliable messaging will be unavailable until the TMS database has switched over.
RiO Users will be unable to:

  • trace patients
  • register new patients
  • book or reschedule appointments

The RiO system will need to queue the messages and resend to Spine once the TMS service is enabled.
TMS Event Service (TES) The majority of TES functionality will be unavailable during the outage.Trusts will need to be aware EPS, Death notifications, and Patient Care Provision Notifications (change of pharmacy) will be queued and sent to the receiving systems once the TMS service is restored.Any impacted notifications will be queued and sent to the receiving systems once TMS is restored.
TMS Batch (DBS, CHRIS, ONS) DBS will be unavailable until the TMS database has switched over (DBS processing will be suspended for the duration of the exercise).As the TMS switchover will be scheduled to start at 22:00, CHRIS batch should complete before the outage starts (CHRIS batch runs at 20:00 nightly).ONS processing will start at 18:00 nightly. If it doesn’t complete before 22:00, the messages will be queued and processed once the TMS service is restored.

**

Severity 2
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
Users are unable to grant worklist items within UIM.
USER IMPACT:
This is causing delays to routine business processes as users are unable to complete their worklist items within the UIM application.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
BT investigating.

**

Severity 1
BT Spine
HSCIC
National
The EPS database is currently experiencing severe degradation of performance.
USER IMPACT:
Delays to routine business processes.
ACTION BEING TAKEN:
BT engineers currently investigating with the database application support team.

Comment

David Nicholson is right. The NHS has become dependent on systems such as the Spine. But can doctors ever trust any aspect of the safety of patients to systems that are not available 24×7 as they need to be in a national health service?

It appears that BT and other suppliers have not been in breach of service level agreements, and the HSCIC has a good relationship with the companies.  But does the HSCIC have too great an interest in not finding fault with its suppliers or the contracts, for finding fault  could draw attention to any defects in a service for which the HSCIC is responsible?

Have national NHS IT suppliers a strong enough commercial or reputational interest  in avoiding  a disruption or loss of service, so long as they keep within their service level agreements? 

If nobody sees anything wrong with the reliability of existing national NHS IT services improvements are unlikely. Diane Vaughan’s book on the culture and organisation of NASA shows that experts in a big organisation can do everything right according to the rules  and procedures – and still have a disastrous outcome.

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Posted in Atos, BT, Campaign4Change, culture, Department of Health, e-health, Government IT, IT projects, LPfIT, NHS, npfit, Summary Care Record, supplier relationships

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