Category Archives: IT-related failures

After two IT disasters, immigration officials launch £208m agile project

Posted on 22/07/2014 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

In 2001 immigration officials cancelled a £77m system with Siemens for a Casework Application system.

The objective had been to create a “paperless office”, help reduce a backlog of 66,000 asylum cases and provide a “single view” of individuals. But the scope was overambitious and the supplier underestimated the complexities. It proved difficult to automate paper-based processes.

In 2010 immigration officials came up with a similar scheme that also failed to meet expectations.  They developed a business case for a flagship IT programme called Immigration Case Work (ICW).

It was designed to draw together all casework interactions between the business and a person, enabling caseworkers to gain a single accurate view of the person applying. It was expected to replace both the legacy Casework Information Database (CID) and 20 different IT and some paper-based systems by March 2014.

A National Audit Office published today says the ICW programme was closed in
August 2013, having delivered “significantly less than planned for £347m.”

So in the end, while the taxpayer has paid hundreds of millions for caseworking systems for immigration staff, many of the workers are still, says the NAO, relying on paper.  Today’s NAO report says:

“Both directorates [UK Visas and Immigration and Immigration Enforcement, which were formerly the UK Border Agency] rely heavily on paper-based working.

“The Permanent Migration team is 100 per cent paper-based and acknowledge this as a barrier to efficiency.”

Immigration officials use some technology to record personal details of people who pass through the immigration system. But:

• A lack of controls mean staff can leave data fields blank or enter incorrect
information. The NAO found many errors in the database.
• There is a history of systems freezing and being unusable.
• A lack of interfaces with other systems results in manual data transfer or
cross‑referencing.

Agile success?

Now, says the NAO, the Home Office has begun a new agile-based programme, Immigration Platform Technologies  (IPT). It is due to cost £208.7 million by 2016-17.

A tool for online applications for some types of visa has already been rolled-out and is being updated using applicant feedback,” says the NAO.

But support contracts for the existing technology [the legacy Casework Information Database] expire in January 2016, before the scheduled completion of IPT in 2017.

The Home Office is “reviewing options for support contracts to cover this gap”.

Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, says of the agile project: “Given its poor track record, I have little confidence that the further £209 million it is spending on another IT system will be money well spent.”

Comment

Is it possible for a genuinely agile project to cost £208m? The point about agile is that it is supposed to be incremental, quick and cheap.  It looks as if the Home Office is running a hybrid conventional/agile programme, as the DWP did with Universal Credit. Either a project is agile or its not. Hybrids, it seems, are not usually successful.

There again is the Home Office congenitally capable of running an agile project?  The Agile Manifesto is based on twelve principles, most of which could be said to be alien to the Home Office’s culture:

1.Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software
2.Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
3.Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
4.Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
5.Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
6.Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
7.Working software is the principal measure of progress
8.Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
9.Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
10.Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential
11.Self-organizing teams
12.Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

So what’s needed?

Big government IT-based change programmes tend to be introspective and secretive. Those working on them don’t always feel able to challenge, to criticise, to propose doing things differently.

What would be innovative would be openness and independent challenge, and tough and well-informed Parliamentary scrutiny. It rarely happens. Ask the Home Office for any of its progress reports on its IT-base change programmes and it’ll tell you exactly what the DWP says when asked a similar question: “That’s not something we generally release.”

The NAO report points to a culture problem. “… Having a transparent culture was rated as red on the UK Visas and Immigration risk trends in April 2014.”

Will the new agile project be any more successful than the other 2 major immigration IT projects? The Home Office will doubtless claim success as it usually does. Even when the patient dies it tells Parliament the operation was a success.  For you can say publicly whatever you like when you keep the facts confidential – as IDS at the DWP knows.

Reforming the UK border and immigration system – National Audit Office report

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, excessive secrecy, Government IT, Home Office, IT projects, IT-related failures, private sector lessons for the public sector

Stop filming! That’s the IBM exit strategy we’re discussing

Posted on 10/07/2014 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Dave Orr, a former IT employee at Somerset County Council, is now a local taxpayer trying to see if public statements made aboutthe authority’s joint venture with IBM match up to the facts.

Some councillors don’t seem to welcome his scrutiny, or his campaigning which can attract the attention of the local press.

Somerset claims it is saving millions of pounds through the Southwest One joint venture – which is majority owned by IBM. But Orr has learned through FOI requests and council reports that once extra costs are taken into account the council has had a net loss of £53m on the contract. He points to:

– £52m of SAP and “transformation” costs the council paid upfront to IBM

– £4m of council bid costs

–  £2m for a written-off loan to Avon and Somerset Police for SAP

–  £3m interest on a £30m loan over 10 years

–  £3m in contract management costs

–  £5m in legal costs over a dispute with IBM

This totals £69m. Procurement savings to December 2013 were £16m – which gives a net loss of £53m. The contract is supposed to save £150m over its 10-year life. The deal was signed in 2007 by IBM, Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Police. The authorities are considering what they will do at the end of the contract.

Stop filming

At a meeting of the council’s audit committee last month, the chairman of the audit committee asked Orr to stop filming. He was using a Panasonic compact camera. A vote was proposed and seconded that the meeting not be recorded.

Five councillors voted in favour and 3 Lib-dems abstained. Those supporting the motion to stop filming included Tory, Labour and UKIP members.  Somerset is Conservative controlled.

Orr says the discussion shortly before the vote was taken was on Southwest One and the council’s exit strategy from the contract.  Councillors also agreed that they may at a later date go into a secret “Part 2” session to discuss a “lessons learnt” report about the collaboration with Southwest One.

A blow to local democracy?  

The government has issued guidance that states explicitly that councils should allow the public to film council meetings. Under the heading “Lights, camera, democracy in action” an announcement by local government secretary Eric Pickles  says on the gov.uk website:

“I want to stand up for the rights of journalists and taxpayers to scrutinise and challenge decisions of the state. Data protection rules or health and safety should not be used to suppress reporting or a healthy dose of criticism.

“Modern technology has created a new cadre of bloggers and hyper-local journalists, and councils should open their digital doors and not cling to analogue interpretations of council rules.

“Councillors shouldn’t be shy about the public seeing the good work they do in championing local communities and local interests.”

Before the meeting of the audit committee Orr had obtained informal consent from the council to filming.

Comment

Open government is not a party political issue – none of the parties seem to want it. Indeed councillors at Somerset seem at their most comfortable  when voting for secrecy.  Is this because it gives them a feeling of privilege – having access to information the ordinary citizens don’t have?

In central government one of the first things the civil service does after a general election is give new ministers access to state secrets. It distances the ministers from ordinary people. Ministers feel privileged – “one of us”.  Is this the main unspoken reason some Somerset councillors  love to have secret meetings?

Councillors may feel weighed down by Orr’s questions and campaigning. But his questions are arguably more important than those raised internally by deferential party politicians who don’t ask the most difficult questions.

If anything they should be asking themselves whether they should ask the questions he is asking.

It’s too easy on big outsourcing contracts for supplier and client to put a gloss on the relationship. It’s easier talking about unsubstantiated savings than explaining why the contract isn’t making the savings originally intended. And it’s even easier when you shun scrutiny from members of the public.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, IBM, IT-related failures, legal disputes, local democracy, local government, managing change, managing outsourced services, SAP, shared services

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Minister didn’t lie over UC business case – but did officials deliberately mislead?

Posted on 09/07/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Comment

DWP minister Esther McVey is facing criticism that she misled Parliament by saying that the Universal Credit business case had been approved when it hadn’t.

A close look at the facts shows that the minister spoke the truth, and the DWP officials who wrote her Parliamentary answer also told the truth. But MPs were still misled, perhaps deliberately so.

The officials who wrote the minister’s reply knew that there is an early and very basic business case for Universal Credit,  the strategic outline business case, which had been approved.

All big projects in central government have strategic outline business case approval before they get underway. Universal Credit was the same as any other big programme in this respect.

What hadn’t been approved was the full business case which requires much more detail than the strategic outline case – and it requires plans and costs to be finalised among other things.

When, on 30 June 2014,  Rachel Reeves, Labour’s spokeswoman on work and pensions, asked the government whether the business case for Universal Credit had been approved officials wrote a cleverly deceptive answer.

They wrote that the strategic outline business case had been approved. They did not mention that the full business case had not been approved. It’s certain that the minister did not realise that this answer was deceitful.

That said, the  answer was in line with the DWP’s culture which is to project good news and conceal bad news (NAO report Universal Credit: early progress, September 2013).

This was the original Parliamentary question and answer on 30 June 2014.

Rachel Reeves (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; Leeds West, Labour)  

“To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions … whether he has approved the Department for Work and Pensions’ business case for the implementation of universal credit.”

Esther McVey (The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions; Wirral West, Conservative)

“The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has approved the UC Strategic Outline Business Case plans for the remainder of this Parliament (2014-15) as per the ministerial announcement.”

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the DWP, in drafting the minister’s reply to Reeves, intended to mislead.

That’s politics. On the other hand it is an extraordinary misuse of power by senior civil servants.

A strategic outline business case is very different to a full business case.

The strategic outline case merely sets out the strategic context and the case for change, together with the supporting investment objectives for the scheme. It sets out likely funding needs and speculates that the scheme is achievable and meets best practice principles.

The full business case has finalised arrangements including key contractual arrangements , costs,  agreed implementation timescales, main risks, constraints, dependencies, benefits and “dis-benefits”. It sets out an argument on the affordability of the scheme.

The controversy over whether Parliament was misled – which it was – shows the ease with which the senior civil service can protect the government of the day from embarrassment. Except that this time the truth came out; and it came out unexpectedly because a tenacious Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, kept asking civil servants whether the business case for UC had been approved. Eventually, though with some reluctance, they told her the truth.

If a little truth comes out in such an unplanned way, one can only guess at how much other information on the Universal Credit programme is being hidden. Perhaps deliberately so.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, IT-related failures, managing change, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

Treasury refusing to sign off Universal Credit business case?

Posted on 08/07/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Government Computing reports that the business case for the Universal Credit programme has yet to be signed off.

It appears that the Department for Work and Pensions receives money for the programme only when it needs it.

It is odd that the business case remains to be signed although the programme is more than three years old. The programme was “reset” last year.

At a hearing yesterday of the Public Accounts Committee the four top civil servants who appeared before MPs were reluctant to admit that the business case had not been signed off.

They four were:

– Sir Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary, Cabinet Office;

– Sir Bob Kerslake, Head of the Home Civil Service and Permanent Secretary, Communities and Local Government;

– Richard Heaton, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office and

– Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary, HM Treasury.

Government Computing reports that the four were “reduced to bluster” when the committee’s chair Margaret Hodge  questioned them repeatedly on whether the business case for Universal Credit had been signed off by the Treasury.

She said, “There is no argument about the policy. It is entirely an implementation issue. And I cannot understand a centre that fails to intervene when there is such a classic failure at the departmental level on something that the centre says it is interested in, which is IT.

“It’s supposed to be a digitisation exercise in the way we administer benefits so you can integrate the benefits. What we’ve got out there is not a digitisation – it’s an incredibly staff intensive, pathfinder thing. Why is the centre allowing that to happen? Have you signed off the business case yet?”

“Have you assigned off the business case?” she repeated to  MacPherson.

After some looks between the four permanent secretaries, Kerslake said, “I think we should stop beating about the bush. It hasn’t been signed off. What we’ve had is a set of conditional assurances about progress and the Treasury has released money accordingly. And that’s one of the key controls they have. “

Defending the role of the centre in the Universal Credit programme, Heywood said, “This is an example of where the centre did intervene very strongly, both the Treasury and the Major Projects Authority (MPA).

“The MPA with the support of the Treasury and with a lot of technical help from the Government Digital Service (GDS) has played a very clear role in bringing to the secretary of state’s attention that the project was way off track. And that was a very important intervention from the centre.

“It then followed up with the next technique that the centre has got, which is to provide support in seconding in the then head of the MPA, David Pitchford, to help re-programme the project, a lot of support from Mike Bracken and his team at GDS to help the digital underpinnings of it and also some help on the commercial renegotiation of some of the contracts from Bill Crothers and his team. So it’s a very good example of the assurance role was followed by a support role and that continues.”

Pressed by Margaret Hodge on whether Universal Credit was now on track, Heywood said, “In its current form, yes, I think it is.”

Comment

Among so-called enlightened democracies the UK, perhaps, stands alone. In what other country would the nation’s four most senior civil servants, when asked if the business case for a major project has been signed off, look like children in a playground who are being asked to reveal a secret?

What does it say about open government that the UK’s four most senior civil servants cannot immediately say yes or no to such a basic question?

[One thing it says, perhaps, is that they are all terrified of Iain Duncan Smith who doesn’t like anything being said about Universal Credit that isn’t entirely positive. Worse still, they probably all agree with him.]

Treasury still to fully sign off Universal Credit business case 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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Are passport officials hiding IT problems?

Posted on 08/07/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Are Passport Office systems crashing regularly – for up to half a day – without anyone outside knowing?

Last month a Home Office spokesman told Government Computing that IT was “not to blame” for delays in issuing passports.

But yesterday a Passport Office insider gave the opposite impression to Eddie Mair’s BBC R4 “PM” programme. She said that passport systems are sometimes out of action for up to half a day.

It also emerges that the Passport Office’s contract with one of its contractors, Steria, takes into account, in peak periods, the sorts of numbers of applications that offices are receiving – about 150,000 a week.

Home Office minister James Brokenshire told the House of Commons yesterday (7 July 2014) that there have been about 4 million applications so far this year, implying that the number is unexpectedly high.

But 4 million applications is not out of line with Steria’s contractual expectations of up to 150,000 applications a week.

This raises the question of whether the delays are due to a combination of IT problems and high numbers of applications – rather than high numbers alone.

On the BBC “PM” programme the comments by the Passport Office insider were spoken by an actor.  She said the backlog of passport applications has increased since the government announced emergency measures last month.

” The numbers have increased significantly and they are just the ones in the system.  What you need to take into account – and I don’t think people have realised – is that we have another huge backlog of applications that have not been scanned onto the system and are not in process.

“The backlog of applications – what they call “work in progress” – is not a true figure because but you still have another backlog that has not been scanned …”

BBC reporter: So there is another set of passports that don’t appear in official figures?

“That’s correct.”

She said that increasing backlogs are indicated on figures on boards around offices that give dates of which offices are working on what on certain dates.

“Her Majesty’s Passport Office is in total crisis. It’s a total mess …  it is chaos.”

BBC reporter:  A member of my family phoned up to try and make an appointment to sort out a passport last week and while she was on the phone she was told the computer kept crashing. Is that a common problem?

“Yes.  Once the system crashes you cannot issue anything or do anything. You just have to sit there until the technicians or the IT experts reboot the system or put a patch in to get it up and running again.”

BBC: How long does that last? How long are the computers and therefore the people handling the passports out of action for?

“Sometimes I would say a minimum of half an hour up to half a day.”

She said that passports are being stored in meeting and conference rooms which are locked. The windows have been “blacked out or covered with paper so no photos can appear, for instance, in the Guardian“.

She does not believe the Home Secretary Theresa May or her ministers have a grip of the situation. “I don’t think they understand. I am not too sure whether it is because they haven’t been fed the correct information or whether they are just putting their heads in the sand.”

The Home Office said a minister was not available to speak to the BBC.  It provided a statement instead – which gave no response to the insider’s claims of computer problems.

The statement said:

“These allegations are false. We receive thousands of application every week with their numbers constantly changing. We aim to log applications within 48 hours of receipt at which point they become active work in progress…”

Update 18.00 8 July 2014

Paul Pugh, Chief Executive of the Passport Office, appeared before MPs on the Home Affairs Committee this afternoon and was not asked about IT problems and made no mention of any.

He declined to say how many applications have been received by the Passport Office which have not been scanned into the systems. He said the number varied daily. He conveyed a quiet self-confidence which wasn’t in any way dented by committee members who in general did not put him under pressure.

They thanked him repeatedly for dealing with complaints from their constituents.  Committee chairman Keith Vaz handed Pugh 180 emails from people who are facing delays and need a passport urgently.

He denied the Passport Office was in chaos and said the “vast majority” of people working there would disagree with the comments of the anonymous contributor to the BBC “PM” programme.

Comment

The insider’s comments may be relevant given that the Passport Office had serious IT processing difficulties when it has changed its main processing systems in 1989 and 1999.   Has it had a third IT-related calamity as a result of an upgrade of passport systems in 2013?

US-based supplier CSC helped with the upgrade last year but no information has been released on the change-over.  The new system was installed as part of a $570m services contract the Passport Office awarded CSC in 2009.

Steria manages the front-end of passport application processing. It receives applications from the public, scans them digitally, verifies the contents, checksthe scanned documents for accuracy and makes corrections where necessary, and banks payments received. It then passes applications to Her Majesty’s Passport Office to complete the examination.

Steria expected up to 150,000 passport applications a week at peak times and it appears that actual applications have been around this number for much of this year. So why are ministers and officials blaming delays on a record number of applications?

There may be IT problems that nobody in officialdom is mentioning.

The most worrying thing is that they do not have to mention them. Perhaps the cause or causes are complex and they are unsure who bears most of the responsibility.

In politics nobody seems to expect the truth to be told. So it’s likely that ministers and officials will continue to blame the delays in issuing passports on record numbers of applications, and not mention anything to do with IT, except to deny it has anything to do with the backlog.

BBC PM programme (approx 47 minutes into the programme).

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Posted in Campaign4Change, CSC, excessive secrecy, IT-related failures, openness and transparency, outsourcing, Passport Office, Steria

Upper Tribunal refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports

Posted on 26/06/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

An upper tribunal judge this week refused consent for the Department of Work and Pensions to appeal a ruling that four reports on the Universal Credit programme be published.

It’s the third successive legal ruling to have gone against the DWP as its lawyers try to stop the reports being released.

The DWP is likely to request further consideration of its appeal. History suggests it will devote the necessary legal time and funding to stop the reports being published.

In March 2014, the first-tier information tribunal rejected the DWP’s claim that disclosure of the four reports would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to them – the so-called chilling effect.

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

They 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.

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

The upper tribunal’s judge Nicholas Wikeley says in his ruling this week:

“This [chilling effect] is a well known concept, and I can see no support for the argument that the [first-tier] Tribunal misunderstood its meaning.

“The Tribunal was surely saying that whilst it heard Ms Cox’s claim that disclosure would have a chilling effect, neither she nor the Department provided any persuasive evidence to that effect.” [Sarah Cox is a senior DWP executive on the Universal Credit programme.]

“Indeed, the Tribunal noted, as it was entitled to, that Ms Cox did not suggest that frank discussion had been inhibited in any way by a third party’s revelation of the ‘Starting Gate Review’.”

In conclusion the judge says:

“I therefore refuse permission [for the DWP] to appeal to the Upper Tribunal.”

The DWP’s lawyers asked the upper tribunal for a stay, or suspension, of the first-tier tribunal’s ruling that the four reports be published. This the judge granted temporarily.  The lawyers also asked for a private hearing, which the judge did not decide on.

DWP too secretive?

John Slater, who has 25 years experience working in IT and programme and project management, requested three of the four reports in question under the FOI Act in 2012. He asked for the UC issues register, high-level milestone schedule and risk register. Also in 2012 I requested a UC project assessment review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

The Information Commissioner ruled that the DWP should publish three of the reports but not the Risks Register.  In March 2014 the first-tier information tribunal ruled that all four reports should be published.

Excluding these four, the DWP has had 19 separate reports on the progress or otherwise of the Universal Credit programme and has not published any of them.

Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud, told the House of Lords, in a debate on Universal Credit this week:

“I hope we are as transparent as we can be.”

What happens now?

Slater says that as the DWP has been refused permission to appeal it will probably ask for an oral hearing before the upper tribunal. This would mean that the DWP would get a second chance to gets its point across directly in front of the Upper Tribunal rather than just on paper, as it has just tried, says Slater. There is no guarantee that the DWP would be granted an oral hearing.

Comment

If all was going well with the DWP’s largest projects its lawyers could argue, with some credibility, that the “safe space” civil servants need to produce reports on the progress or otherwise of major schemes is having a useful effect.

In fact the DWP has, with a small number of notable exceptions such as Pension Credit, presided over a series of major IT-based projects that have failed to meet expectations or business objectives, from  “Camelot” in the 1980s to “Operational Strategy” in the 1990s. Universal Credit is arguably the latest project disaster, to judge from the National Audit Office’s 2013 report on the scheme.

The”safe space” the DWP covets doesn’t  appear to work.  Perhaps it’s a lack of firm challenge, external scrutiny and transparency that are having a chilling effect on the department.

Upper Tribunal ruling Universal Credit appeal

My submission to FOI tribunal on universal credit

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

 

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, Universal Credit

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Labour promises new NAO inquiry into Universal Credit project if elected

Posted on 23/06/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

“All our [Universal Credit] IT at the moment is working and it’s working well, which is why we’ve taken the decision to roll it out to the whole of the North West,” said Iain Duncan Smith on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics programme at the weekend.

But IDS is not publishing any of the Department for Work and Pensions’ reports on Universal Credit  IT, such as the project assessment reviews, risk registers or issues registers, so it’s difficult to verify independently his assurances that the IT is working well.

Labour, meanwhile, has promised, if it wins the 2015 election,  a new National Audit Office inquiry into Universal Credit.

In an interview with BBC One’s Sunday Politics programme, shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves said:

“We set up a universal credit rescue committee in the autumn of last year because we had seen, from the National Audit Office [and] from the Public Accounts Committee, report after report showing that this project is …not going to be delivered according to the government timetable.

“We believe in the principle of universal credit, we think it is the right thing to do.”

Reeves criticised ministers for not being open about what had gone wrong with the project. “There is no transparency,” she said. “It’s going to cost £12.8bn to deliver and we don’t know what sort of state it is in.

“So we have said that if we win the next election we will pause… the build of the system for three months, calling in the National Audit Office to do a warts-and-all report on it.”

She said the “pause” would not involve halting the pilot schemes that were already in place. She urged coalition ministers to follow her prescription immediately.

“The government doesn’t need to wait for the next election,” she said. “They could do this today: call in the National Audit Office … and finally get a grip on this incredibly important programme.”

The Department for Work and Pensions has announced the roll-out of UC to all job centres in the north west by the end of this year but the IT will handle only the simplest of cases and some of these involve clerical intervention.

Integration with back-office systems is handled manually, and claims from couples or those with dependents are still not allowed.

The DWP said last month that the IT would be handle claims from couples starting this summer but this now seems unlikely.

UC claimants for the time being must be single, without children, newly claiming a benefit, fit for work, not claiming disability benefits, not have caring responsibilities, not be homeless or in temporary accommodation, and have a valid bank account and National Insurance number.

The National Audit Office in a report on UC last September questioned whether the IT will work for the millions of people whose claims are complicated.

Comment

Labour’s promise of an NAO investigation if it wins power – and its suggestion that the NAO publish an update to its September 2013 report on UC before the next election – are welcome.

Probably the last thing IDS wants at the moment is an up-to-date report by the NAO on Universal Credit. At present IDS and the Department for Work and Pensions can say without fear of authoritative contradiction that the IT is working well.  An NAO update would show whether that assurance is optimistic.

Labour if it wins the election cannot force the NAO to investigate the UC project. No political party instruct the NAO to investigate anything.  The NAO is independent of government and decides what to investigate, often in conjunction with the cross-party Public Accounts Committee.

It’s likely, however, that the NAO would agree to publish a new report on the UC project if Labour wins the next election.

Whoever wins the NAO will publish a new report on UC – it is already monitoring the programme – but is likely to do so sooner if Labour wins.

IDS could still win much credibility for the DWP and himself by deciding to publish the UC project assessment reviews, risk registers, issues registers and high-level milestone schedules.

Universal Credit creeps into north west 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, IT projects, IT-related failures, Universal Credit

CEO and CIO resign after troubled EHR go-live

Posted on 05/06/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

At the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Georgia, in America’s deep south, about 70 miles from Atlanta, is Athens .

It was named at the turn of the 19th century to associate its university with Aristotle and Plato’s academy in Greece. It is home to the Athens Regional Medical Centre, one of the USA’s top hospitals.

There on 4 May 2014 the Centre went live with what it described as the most meaningful and largest scale information technology system in its 95-year history – a Cerner EHR implementation.

Now the Centre’s CEO James Thaw and CIO Gretchen Tegethoff have resigned. The Centre’s implementation of the electronic health record system seems to have been no more or less successful than at UK hospitals.

The main difference is that more than a dozen doctors complained in a letter to Thaw and Tegethoff.  A doctor leaked their letter to the local paper.

“Medication errors”

The letter said the timescales to install the Cerner EHR system were too “aggressive” and there was a “lack of readiness” among the intended users. They called the system cumbersome.

The letter referred to “medication errors … orders being lost or overlooked … (emergency department) and patients leaving after long waits”. An inpatient wasn’t seen by a physician for five days.

“The Cerner implementation has driven some physicians to drop their active staff privileges at ARMC [Athens Regional Medical Centre],” said the letter. “This has placed an additional burden on the hospitalists, who are already overwhelmed. Other physicians are directing their patients to St. Mary’s (an entirely separate local hospital) for outpatient studies, (emergency room) care, admissions and surgical procedures. … Efforts to rebuild the relationships with patients and physicians (needs) to begin immediately.”

The boldness of the letter has won praise in parts of the wider American health IT community.

It was signed by the centre’s most senior medical representatives: Carolann Eisenhart, president of the medical staff; Joseph T. Johnson, vice president of the medical staff; David M. Sailers, surgery department chair; and, Robert D. Sinyard, medicine department chair.

A doctor who provided the letter to the Athens Banner-Herald refused a request to openly discuss the issues with the computer system and asked to remain anonymous at the urging of his colleagues.

Swift action

One report said that at a meeting of medical staff 200 doctors were “solid in their vote of no confidence in the present hospital administration.”

Last week Thaw wrote in an email to staff: “From the moment our physician leadership expressed concern about the Cerner I.T. conversion process on May 15, we took swift action and significant progress has been made toward resolving the issues raised … Providing outstanding patient care is first and foremost in our minds at Athens Regional, and we have dedicated staff throughout the hospital to make sure the system is functioning as smoothly as possible through this transition.”

UK implications?

The problems at the Athens centre raise questions about whether problematic Cerner installations in the NHS should have consequences for CEOs.  Health IT specialists say that, done well, EHR implementations can improve the chances of a successful recovery. Done badly an EHR implementation can harm patients and contribute to death.

The most recent installations of Cerner in the NHS, at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, follow the pattern of other Cerner EHR go-lives in the NHS where there have been hints of problems but the trusts are refusing to publish a picture of how patients are being affected.

What has gone wrong at Athens Regional?

IT staff, replying to the Banner-Herald’s article, have given informed views on what has gone wrong. It appears that the Athens Regional laid off about a third of the IT staff in February 2014, about three months before go-live.

Past project disasters have shown that organisations often need more, not fewer, IT staff, advisers and helpers, at the time of a major go-live.

A further problem is that there appears to have been little understanding or support among doctors for the changes they would need to make in their business practices to accommodate the new system.  Had the organisation done enough to persuade doctors and nurses of the benefits to them of changing their ways of working?

If clinicians do not support the need for change, they may focus unduly on what is wrong with the new system. An organisation that is inherently secretive and resentful of constructive criticism will further alienate doctors and nurses.

Doctors who fully support an EHR implementation may find ways around problems, without complaining.

One comment on the Banner-Herald website says:

“While I have moved on from Athens Regional, I still have many friends and colleagues that are trying to work through this mess. Here is some information that has been reported to me…

“Medications, labs and diagnostic exams are not getting done in a timely manner or even missed all together. Some of this could be training issues and some system.

“Already over worked clinical staff are having to work many extra hours to get all the information in the system. This obviously takes away from patient care.

“Senior leadership tried to implement the system in half the amount of time that is usually required to do such things, with half the staff needed to do it. Why?

“Despite an environment of fear and intimidation the clinical staff involved with the project warned senior administration that the system was not ready to implement and posed a safety risk.

“I have ex-colleagues that know staff and directors that are involved with the project. They have made a valiant effort to make things right. Apparently an 80 to even a 100 hour work week has been the norm of late.

“Some questions that I have: where does the community hospital board stand with all this? Were they asking the questions that need to be asked? Why would the software company agree to do such a tight timeline? Shouldn’t they have to answer some questions as well?”

“Hopefully, this newspaper will continue to investigate what has happened here and not cave to an institution that spends a lot of money on frequent giant full page ads.

“Please remember there are still good people (staff, managers and administrators) that work at ARMC and I am sure they care about the community they serve and will make sure they provide great patient care.”

“The last three weeks have been very challenging for our physicians, nurses, and staff,” said Athens Regional Foundation Vice President Tammy Gilland. “Parts of the system are working well while others are not. The medical staff leadership has been active in relaying their concerns to the administration and the administration has taken these concerns very seriously. Maintaining the highest quality of patient care has always been the guiding principle of Athens Regional Health System.”

Keeping quiet

NHS trusts go quiet about the effect on patients of EHR implementations despite calls by Robert Francis QC and health secretary Jeremy Hunt for openness when things go wrong.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which comprises St Mary’s Paddington, Hammersmith Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, and Western Eye hospital in Marylebone Road, went live with Cerner– but its managers and CEO are refusing to say what effect the system is having on patients.

An FOI request by eHealth Insider elicited the fact that Imperial College Healthcare had 55 different consultants working on the Cerner Millennium project and 45 Trust staff. The internal budget for electronic patient record deployment was £14m.

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, which comprises Croydon University Hospital (formerly Mayday) and the Purley War Memorial Hospital, went live with Cerner last year, also under BT’s direction.

The trust has been a little more forthcoming than Imperial about the administrative disruption, unforeseen extra  costs and effects on patients, but Croydon’s officials, like Imperial College Healthcare’s spokespeople,  refuse to give any specific answers to Campaign4Change’s questions on the Cerner implementation.

Comment

It was probably unfair of doctors at Athens Regional to judge the Cerner system so soon after go-live but their fierce reaction is a reminder that doctors exist to help patients, not spend time getting to grips with common-good IT systems.

Would an NHS CEO resign after a rebellion by UK doctors over a problematic EHR implementation? It’s highly unlikely – especially if trusts can stop news leaking out of the effects on patients. In the NHS that’s easy to do.

Athens Regional CEO resigns

A tragic outcome for Cerner Millennium implementation?

Athens Regional is addressing computer problems encountered by doctors

Athens Regional is addressing computer problems after patients put at risk

CEO forced out?

 

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Posted in BT, BT Health, Campaign4Change, Cerner, change management, CIO, consultants, cost reduction, Department of Health, e-health, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, health records, IT-related failures, LPfIT, NHS, npfit, public sector, public services

Has DWP suppressed a “red” rating on Universal Credit project?

Posted on 28/05/2014 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office’s Major Project Authority gave the Universal Credit programme a “red” rating which IDS and the Department for Work and Pensions campaigned successfully to turn into a neutral “reset” designation, says The Independent.

Universal Credit was “only given a reset rating after furious protests by Iain Duncan Smith and his department,” says the newspaper.

A “reset” rating is unprecedented. All major projects at red will need a reset. That is one of the reasons the Major Projects Authority gives a red rating: to signal to the senior responsible owner that the project needs resetting or cancelling. A “reset” designation is a non-assessment.

The MPA’s official definition of a red rating is:

“Red: Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues on project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”

The suppression of Universal Credit’s red rating may indicate that the project, at the top, is driven by politics – the public and Parliamentary perception of the project being all-important – rather than pragmatics.

It is a project management aphorism that serious problems cannot be tackled until their seriousness is admitted.

Normally the Major Projects Authority will give even newly reconfigured projects traffic light ratings, to indicate its view of the risks of the revised plans.

The Independent calls for the replacement of Iain Duncan Smith as political head of the project.

Comment

The National Audit Office warned last September of the DWP’s fortress mentality and “good news” culture.

The suppression of Universal Credit’s red rating on top of the DWP’s repeated refusals to publish the Universal Credit project assessment report, risk register, issues register and milestone schedule shows that the DWP still avoids telling it like it is. That will make successful delivery of Universal Credit’s complexities impossible.

Well-run IT projects are about problem-solving not problem-denying.

The Independent is right to say that IDS is not the person to be running Universal Credit. He has too much emotional equity to be an objective leader. He sees himself as having too much to lose. The programme needs to be run by an open-minded pragmatist.

In asking the Cabinet Office to agree with a “reset” rating for Universal Credit IDS is acting like a schoolboy who has done something wrong and asks the school not to tell his parents. That’s no way to run something as important as Universal Credit.

IDS and DWP accused of hiding bad news on Universal Credit – The Independent

 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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DWP – and Cabinet Office – hide new Universal Credit secrets

Posted on 23/05/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

In 2009 Francis Maude promised, if the Conservatives came to power,  that his party would publish “Gateway” reviews on the progress or otherwise or big IT-based projects.

He was surprised when I told him that civil servants wouldn’t allow it, that they wouldn’t want Parliament and the media knowing how badly their big programmes were being managed. Maude said he couldn’t see a problem in publishing the reports.

When Maude and the Conservatives won power, the Cabinet Office promised in its forward plans to publish Gateway reviews but it never happened.

The Cabinet Office told me its forward plans were “draft” (although they were not marked “draft”) and the commitment to publishing Gateway reviews was no longer included. It didn’t say why.

Still Maude worked privately within government to persuade departmental ministers to at least publish the “traffic light” status of major projects – red, amber or green. Eventually this happened – sort of.

Senior civil servants and their ministers agreed to publish the traffic light status of major projects only if the disclosures were at least six months old by the time they were published.

Maude agreed – and last year the Major Projects Authority published its delayed 2013 annual report. It revealed the out-of-date traffic light status of big projects.

Today the 2014 Major Projects Authority annual report is published. Alongside publication, departments are publishing the traffic light status of major projects – except the Universal Credit programme.

Where the DWP should be publishing the red, amber or green designation of the UC programme the spreadsheet says “reset”.

Therefore the DWP is avoiding not only the publication of Universal Credit reports as part of a 2-year FOI legal battle, it has stopped publishing the traffic light status of the Universal Credit programme.

Secrecy over the state of the UC programme is deepening, which could be said to make a mockery of the Cabinet Office’s attempts to bring about open government.

It seems that the DWP is happy for MPs, journalists and the public to speculate on the state of the Universal Credit programme. But it is determined to deny its critics authoritative information on the state of the programme.

Universal Credit is looking to me rather like a programme disaster of the type seen during Labour’s administration. And the detail is being kept hidden – as it was under Labour.

The DWP argues that UC reports cannot be published because of the “chilling effect” on civil servants who contribute to the reports. In other words they will not be candid in their assessments if they know their comments will be published.

What’s remarkable about this claim is the assumption that the status quo works. The DWP assumes that publication of the UC reports – even if there is a demonstrable chilling effect – will have a bad effect on the UC programme. But how could things be worse than they are? The National Audit Office report “Universal Credit – early progress” showed that the programme was being poorly managed.

The absence of a chilling effect has not served the UC programme well. Will the non-publication of a traffic light status for UC serve the programme well?

It may be that more rigorous Parliamentary scrutiny – by well informed MPs – is essential for the UC programme’s welfare.

But for that to happen IDS and the DWP’s ministers and senior civil servants will need to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the door marked “open government”. Will it ever happen? I doubt it.

PS: It appears that the Cabinet Office and its Major Projects Authority have agreed with departments that the MPA’s Annual Report will be published today – a Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend . Is this to reduce the chances it will be noticed by the trade press and national media?  

Update:

Shortly after publishing the blog post above a DWP press officer gave me the following statement:

“Universal Credit is on track. The reset is not new but refers to the shift in the delivery plan and change in management back in early 2013.

“The reality is that Universal Credit is already making work pay as we roll it out in a careful and controlled way.

“It’s already operating in 10 areas and will start expanding to the rest of the North West in June. Jobseekers in other areas are already benefiting from some of its positive impacts through help from a work coach, more digital facilities in jobcentres, and a written agreement setting out what they will do to find work.”

The DWP says the “reset” rating reflects the fact that the Secretary of State decided to reset the programme in 2013, with a clear plan developed since then to deliver the programme.

Now this reset has taken place, future Major Projects Authority reports will give a traffic light status, says the DWP.

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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