Category Archives: local government

Do some councils serve their own officials and councillors better than they serve the public?

Posted on 10/01/2019 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Increasing numbers of local government and NHS officials are paying themselves salaries of £100,000 upwards, and some more than £500,000, but competence in handling public money appears to be diminishing.

Today, the outgoing head of the National Audit Office Amyas Morse expresses “shock”. He said,

“I am shocked by the persistent high level of qualified audit reports at local public bodies.

“A qualification is a judgement that something is seriously wrong, but despite these continued warnings, the number of bodies receiving qualifications is trending upwards.

“Let us hear no cries of ‘where were the auditors?’ when things go wrong. The answer will be ‘they did the job, but you weren’t listening’.

“This is not good enough; local bodies need to address their weaknesses, and departments across government should ensure they are challenging local bodies to demonstrate how they are responding.”

Today’s National Audit Office report “Local auditor reporting in England 2018″ says that the number of NHS and local government bodies with significant weaknesses in their arrangements for delivering value for money for taxpayers is “unacceptably high and increasing”.

The report makes no comparison between how well or badly NHS and council organisations are run in comparison with the salaries paid but it makes a point of saying that there are no consequences for councils and other public bodies of having a poor grip on how they spend public money.

Says the National Audit Office,

“There is no direct consequence of receiving a ‘non-standard’ report from a local auditor.

“While departments responsible for the oversight of local bodies may intervene in connection with an issue, such as failure to meet expenditure limits, there are no formal processes for reporting publicly whether bodies are tackling these issues.

“Departments use information from local auditors’ reports to differing extents to inform their understanding of the issues local bodies are facing, but they also need to be able to challenge local bodies to demonstrate that they are taking appropriate action where necessary.

“Given increasing financial and demand pressures on local bodies, they need to take prompt and effective action to strengthen their arrangements and improve their performance when issues are raised.

“The proportion of bodies with insufficient plans for keeping spending within budget or who have significant weaknesses in their governance, is too high.

“This is a risk to public money and undermines confidence in how well local services are managed. Local auditors need to exercise the full range of their additional reporting powers, especially where they consider that local bodies are not taking sufficient action.”

Comment

Anyone who reads the National Audit Office latest findings together with the numerous reports about poorly-run council IT-based outsourcing deals, including ones at Somerset County Council and Barnet Council, and an IT-related fraud involving Barnet council that was spotted by chance,  is entitled to ask: are some council officers and councillors serving themselves better than local communities?

Alongside amounting evidence of poor decision-making – or worse – in local government and the corporate NHS, there is a general lack of openness and, as the National Audit Office points out, widespread failures to act diligently on auditor findings.

Council taxes are rising, spending on important local services is diminishing yet the amounts paid to layers of senior management at councils and within the NHS and NHS England are rising without any link to competent decision-making.

For the most part, top officials cannot be fired. Their jobs are not appraised or at risk as they would be in the private sector.   Indeed some councils change senior job titles regularly and increase the salaries they pay themselves.

There is no sign of austerity when it comes to the pay of departmental leaders in local government.

Published figures indicate that at least 2,500 council officials were paid more than £100,000 each last year — and about 500 of them grossed in excess of £150,000, more than the prime minister earns.

The number whose total remuneration was in six figures has also risen. A report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance found that 16 local government CEOs received more than £300,000 and four grossed in excess of £500,000 in 2016-17.

All of which raises the question in the headline of this post: do some councils serve their own officials and councillors better than the public?

Local government officers defend their pay levels by saying that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

But some primates with large brains work remarkably well in their local communities. Do council departmental chiefs on unjustifiably large salaries always work well for their local communities? Or do they serve their own interests rather better than they serve the public?

Local auditor reporting in England – NAO report

 

3 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, local democracy, local government, National Audit Office, NHS, NHS England

Are you happy paying to help with problem Capita contract?

Posted on 01/05/2018 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

This week, as Barnet residents go to the polls, how many will be influenced by the continuing national and local media coverage of the council’s mass outsourcing deal with Capita?

Barnet’s Capita contracts are a local election issue. The council’s conservatives and Capita say the outsourcing contracts have saved money and are performing as expected “in many areas”.

But a former local Tory councillor Sury Khatri , who has been deselected after criticising the Capita contract, described the deal as “disastrous”. Barnet has paid Capita £327m since the deals were signed in 2013. Capita runs council services that range from cemeteries to IT.

Councillor Khatri said,  “My time at the council has been overshadowed by the disastrous Capita contract that is falling apart at the seams. Four years on, issues still keep rolling out of the woodwork. This contract represents poor value for money, and the residents are being fleeced.”

Another critic of the Capita contracts is John Dix who blogs as “Mr Reasonable” and is one of several highly respected local bloggers. He has been studying the council’s accounts for some years. He runs a small business and is comfortable with accounts and balance sheets.

He writes,

“I have no problem with outsourcing so long as it is being done for the right reasons. Typically this is where it involves very specialist, non core activities where technical expertise may be difficult to secure and retain in house.

“In Barnet’s case this outsourcing programme covered so many services which were core to the running of the council and which in 2010 were rated as 4 star (good). Barnet has been an experiment in mass outsourcing and almost five years in, it appears to be a failure.

“Last night’s [19 April 2018] audit committee was a litany of service problems, system failures, lack of controls, under performance, a major fraud. Internal audit saying issues were a problem, Capita saying they weren’t.”

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has entered the debate. He has applauded Barnet’s Unison branch for its enduring, close scrutiny of the Capita contracts. Unison this week published a report on the deal.

Capita’s share price rises

Earlier this month the national press reported extensively on concerns that Capita would follow Carillion into liquidation.

Since the bad publicity, the company’s announcement of a pre-tax loss of £535m, up from £90m the previous year, £1.2bn of debt and a rights issue to raise £662m after fees by selling new shares at a discount, Capita’s share price has risen steadily, from a low a month ago of about 130p to about 191 yesterday.

Could it be that investors sense that Capita’s long-term future is secure: the company has a wide range of complex and impenetrable public sector contracts where history shows that public sector clients – ruling politicians and officials – will defend Capita more enthusiastically than Capita itself, whatever the facts?

A list of some of Capita’s problem contracts is below the comment.

Comment

Carillion, a facilities management and construction company, collapsed in part because the effects of its failures were usually obvious: it was desperately short of money and new roads and hospitals were left unfinished.

When IT-based outsourcing deals go wrong, the effects are usually more nuanced. Losses can be hidden in balance sheets that can be interpreted in different ways; and when clients’ employees go unpaid, or the army’s Defence Recruiting System has glitches or medical records are lost, the problems will almost always be officially described as teething even if, as in Capita’s NHS contracts, they last for years.

It is spin that rules and protects IT outsourcing contracts in the public sector. Spin hides what’s really going on. It is as integral as projected savings and key performance indicators.

When Somerset County Council signed a mass outsourcing deal with IBM, its ruling councillors boasted of huge savings. When the deal went wrong and was ended early after a legal dispute with IBM the council announced that bringing the deal in-house would bring large savings: savings either way. Liverpool council said the same thing when it outsourced to BT – setting up a joint venture called Liverpool Direct – and brought services back-in house: savings each time.

Barnet Council is still claiming savings while the council’s auditors are struggling to find them.

Spinmeisters know there is rarely any such thing as a failed public sector IT contract: the worst failures are simply in transition from failure to success. Barnet’s council taxpayers will never know the full truth, whoever is in power.

Even when a council goes bust, the truth is disputed. Critics of spending at Northamptonshire County Council, which has gone bust, blame secretive and dysfunctional management. Officials, ruling councillors and even the National Audit Office blame underfunding.

In March The Times reported that Northamptonshire had paid almost £1m to a consultancy owned by its former chief executive. It also reported that the council’s former director of people, transformation and transactions for services, was re-hired on a one-year contract that made her company £185,000 within days of being made redundant in 2016.  Her firm was awarded a £650-a-day IT contract that was not advertised.

In the same month, the National Audit Office put Northamptonshire’s difficulties down to underfunding. It conceded that the “precise causes of Northamptonshire’s financial difficulties are not as yet clear”.

Perhaps it’s only investors in Capita who will really know the truth: that the full truth on complex public sector contracts in which IT is central will rarely, if ever, emerge; and although Capita has internal accountability for failures – bonuses, the share price and jobs can be affected – there is no reason for anyone in the public sector to fear failure. No jobs are ever affected. Why not sign a few more big outsourcing deals, for good or ill?

Thank you to FOI campaigners David Orr and Andrew Rowson for information that helped me write this post.

Some of Capita’s problem contracts

There is no definitive list of Capita’s problem contracts. Indeed the Institute for Government’s Associate Director Nick Davies says that poor quality of contract data means the government “doesn’t have a clear picture of who it is buying from and what it is buying”. Here, nevertheless, is a list of some of Capita’s problem contracts in the public sector:

Barnet Council

A Capita spokesperson said: “The partnership between Capita and Barnet Council is performing as expected in many areas. We continue to work closely with the council to make service enhancements as required.”

Birmingham City Council

“The new deal will deliver a mix of services currently provided under the joint venture, plus project based work aimed at providing extra savings, with forecasts of £10 million of savings in the current financial year and £43 million by 2020-21.”

West Sussex County Council

A spokesman said, “Whatever your concerns and small hiccups along the way, I believe this contract has been and will continue to be of great benefit to this county council.”

Hounslow Council

A Capita spokesperson said: “We are working closely with the London Borough of Hounslow to ensure a smooth transition of the pensions administration service to a new provider.”

Breckland Council

“They concluded that planning officers, working for outsourcing company Capita, had misinterpreted a policy, known as DC11, which dictates the amount of outdoor playing space required for a development..”

Army

Mark Francois, a Conservative former defence minister,  said Capita was known “universally in the army as Crapita”. But Capita said in a statement,

“Capita is trusted by multiple private and public clients to deliver technology-led customer and business process services, as demonstrated by recent wins and contract extensions from clients including British Gas, Royal Mail, BBC, TfL Networks, M&S and VW.”

Electronic tagging

(but it’s alright now)

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “As the National Audit Office makes clear, there were challenges in the delivery of the electronic monitoring programme between 2010 and 2015…

“As a direct result, we fundamentally changed our approach in 2015, expanding and strengthening our commercial teams and bringing responsibility for oversight of the programme in-house.

“We are now in a strong position to continue improving confidence in the new service and providing better value for money for the taxpayer.”

Disability benefits

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said, “Assessments work for the majority of people, with 83 per cent of ESA claimants and 76 per cent of PIP claimants telling us that they’re happy with their overall experience…”

Miners

A Capita spokesperson said: “This issue has been resolved and all members affected will shortly receive letters to advise that they do not need to take any action. We sincerely apologise for any concern and inconvenience this has caused.”

NHS

Opticians

Dentists

BBC licence fee

Windrush

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Posted in Barnet Council, Birmingham City Council, Campaign4Change, Capita, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, IBM, Institute for Government, local democracy, local government, managing outsourced services, National Audit Office, NHS, NHS England, operational issues, outsourcing, PCSE, Politics

Capita’s problems were “preventable” says Royal London

Posted on 06/02/2018 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Royal London, a Capita investor, said yesterday it has been “raising concerns about Capita’s weak governance with the firm for a number of years, and voting against many resolutions on director re-elections and pay consistently since 2014.”

Royal London is the UK’s largest mutual life, pensions and investment company. It managed £113bn of funds as of 31 December 2017. It owns a 0.44% stake in Capita.

Ashley Hamilton Claxton, Royal London Asset Mananagement’s Head of Responsible Investment, said in a statement,

“We welcome the honesty and transparency with which Capita’s new CEO has accepted the company’s past failings, and put a plan in place to simplify and improve the business. However, we believe this was preventable and have been privately raising concerns about Capita’s weak governance with the firm for a number of years, and voting against many resolutions on director re-elections and pay consistently since 2014.

“Until recently, Capita’s board flouted one of the basic rules of the corporate governance code, with a small board primarily comprised of management insiders. The result was a board that lacked the independent spirit to rigorously assess whether the company was making the right long-term decisions.

“Our concerns about governance were compounded by the complexity of the underlying business and the company’s acquisition strategy. Capita’s approach to remuneration also left something to be desired, with major losses in 2013 being excluded from the profit figures used to assess the bonuses paid to executives at the firm.

“The sea change in the board over the past 18 months has been welcome and has addressed the key issue of independence. It will be up to the new Chairman and the Board to ensure that Capita does not repeat the mistakes of the past, and that its strategy is fit for purpose during a particularly turbulent time for the outsourcing sector.”

Last week Capita issued a profits warning and announced plans to raise £700m from investors to reduce debts.

With Capita seeking to raise money and cut costs, where will this leave local government customers that are reliant on the supplier to cut the costs of running local services?

Barnet Council has, controversially, contracted out a large chunk of its services to Capita – and also gives the company tens of millions in advance payments in return for a discount on the supplier’s fees.

By becoming a “commissioning council”, Barnet has made itself wholly reliant on Capita, say critics of the outsourcing deal. Among other responsibilities, Capita produced the council’s latest annual accounts – including a financial account of its own services to the council. The accounts were not produced on time which created extra chargeable work for the council’s auditors BDO.

Capita has run into problems on a number of its major outsourcing deals. The National Audit Office is investigating its work on GP support services.

Councillor Barry Rawlings, leader of the Labour group in Barnet, said the profits warning and Capita’s low share price raised questions about how it may respond to further troubles.

He told The Guardian that Capita may be looking to cut back services it supplies.

“Capita handles all of the back office, enforcement, planning, environmental health, trading standards, estates, payroll and so on. Will that be part of their core services? We might be one of the only places they do some things. If they narrow their scope, what is going to happen to these services?

Conservative leader of  Barnet council, Councillor Richard Cornelius, said,  “Capita currently runs approximately 10 per cent of our services by value. They do not run the entire council as some reports have suggested.

“The council regularly reviews the financial status of its major suppliers as part of its contract management and contingency planning arrangements. This is what any responsible local authority would do.”

Capita’s share price has more than halved in the last month – from about 400p to a low on 1 February 2018 of 158p – but today rose by about 10% to 196.

Comment

When an outsourcing giant is looking to cut its costs and raise money to cover debts, how does that square with local government customers that also want to cut costs – which is why they outsourced to Capita?

Outsourcing can make good sense – when for example a global company like BP wants to standardise IT services across the world. It doesn’t always make sense when an organisation wants a service transformation while also cutting costs. Something usually has to give which, perhaps, Barnet Council and its taxpayers are slowly finding out.

3 Comments

Posted in Barnet Council, Campaign4Change, change management, consultants, local government, managing outsourced services, National Audit Office, outsourcing

Nine-year outsourcing deal caught on camera?

Posted on 14/09/2017 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

This photo is of a Southwest One board that was surplus to requirements.

Southwest One continues to provide outsourced services to Avon and Somerset Police. The 10-year contract expires next year.

But unless Southwest One continues to provide residual IT services to the police, the company – which is owned by IBM – will be left without its three original public partners.

Photo a metaphor?

IBM and Somerset County Council set up Southwest One in 2007  to propel council services “beyond excellence”.

Joining in the venture were Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Police. The hope was that it would recruit other organisations,  bringing down costs for all.

It didn’t happen.

An outsourcing deal that was supposed to save Somerset residents about £180m over 10 years ended early, in 2016, with losses for the residents of about £70m. The council and Southwest One settled a High Court legal dispute in 2013.

Taunton Deane Borough Council also ended the deal early, in 2016.

Comment

Was it all the fault of Southwest One? Probably not. The success of the deal was always going to be judged, to some extent, on an assumption that other organisations would join Southwest One.

When that didn’t happen, two councils and a police force had to bear the main costs.

There was also the inherent problem that exists with most big council outsourcing deals: that it’s always difficult for a supplier to innovate, save money on the costs of running council services, invest significantly more in IT, spend less overall and still produce a healthy profit for the parent company.

It could be done if the council, police force or other public body was manifestly inefficient. But Somerset County Council outsourced what was, by its own admission, an excellent IT organisation.

Some at the time had no doubts about how the outsourcing deal would end up.

Southwest One – The complete story by Dave Orr

 

2 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, IBM, legal disputes, local government, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships

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Is Barnet Council up to the job of managing its suppliers – including Capita?

Posted on 27/07/2017 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Tonight (27 July 2017) Barnet Council’s audit committee meets to discuss the interim year-end findings of BDO, its external auditor.

BDO identifies a “significant risk” in relation to the council’s contract management and monitoring. There are “numerous issues”, says BDO.

Barnet is well known in the local government community for having adopted a “commissioning council” concept. This means it has outsourced the vast majority of its services, leaving officers and the ruling Conservative group to set policy and monitor suppliers.

Capita is a main supplier. Its responsibilities include cemeteries, ICT and collecting council tax.

BDO’s report for tonight’s council meeting says that, with the council’s services now being delivered through various outsourcing arrangements, “it is important to establish strong contract management and monitoring controls”.

It adds that such controls “allow the Council to ascertain whether or not it is receiving value for money from the use of its contractors, and to take remedial action where issues are identified”.

On this point – contract management and monitoring –  BDO says,

“During the course of 2016/17 we have noted a number of internal audit reports which have raised significant findings in this area.

“In addition, further concerns have been identified through our own audit work. As such, we have recognised a significant risk to our use of resources [value for money] opinion.”

BDO’s findings are interim. It cannot finalise its final statutory report until many questions are answered and errors, financial misstatements and lapses in disclosure are corrected in Barnet’s draft financial accounts.

The auditors comment in their report on the “number and value of errors found” and the “level of misstatement in the current year accounts”.

These are some of BDO’s findings so far:

  • Large advance payments (about £44m in prepayments) as part of the Customer Service Group contracts with Capita. Not all of the payments were set out in the payments profile of the original contract. Significant payments were made at the start of the contract (and in subsequent years) to cover capital investment and transformational expenditure. The financial profile of the contract anticipates the advance payments being used by 2023. One advance payment of £19.1m in December 2016 covers service charge payments relating to the first three quarters of 2017/18. The council receives a £0.5m discount for paying in advance. The council also paid for some projects in advance. BDO finds that there was proper council scrutiny of the decision to make the payments.
  • Barnet overspent on services in 2016/2017 by £8.3m.
  • There’s a budget gap prior to identified savings of £53.9m over the three years to 2020.
  • There’s a substantial depletion in the council’s financial reserves.
  • Will claimed savings materialise? “Savings targets remain significant and achievement of these will be inherently challenging, as evidenced by the overspend in 2016/17.”
  • Net spending on the Customer and Support Group contracts with Capita increased to £34.4m in 2016/17 from £26.9m the previous year.
  • More than 100 officials at Barnet receive at least £60,000 a year and twelve at least £100,000.
  • Some councillors have failed to make formal declarations. A “poor response rate as compared to other authorities” says BDO’s report.

Comment:

You’d think a “commissioning council” – one that outsources the delivery of most of its services – would, above all, have a firm grip on what its main suppliers are doing and what they’re charging for.

In fact BDO’s report for tonight council meeting rates the council’s contract management and monitoring at “red”. BDO has identified “numerous” issues.

It’s easy for Barnet Council to issue press releases on the tens of millions it claims to have saved on its contracts with Capita.

But BDO possesses the facts and figures; and it questions the council’s “use of resources” – in other words “value for money”.

At the outset of its joint venture with IBM, officials at Somerset County Council spoke of planned savings of £180m over 10 years. In fact the deal ended up losing at least £69m.

Barnet blogger “Mr Reasonable” who has long kept a close eye on payments made by Barnet to Capita doubts that the council is up to the job of properly scrutinising Capita. We agree.

It was clear to many in 2013 when Barnet signed contracts with Capita that the council was unlikely to find the money to acquire adequate contract monitoring expertise and resources, given that its suppliers were required to deliver such a wide range of complex services.

Barnet Council’s most adept scrutineers, rather than local councillors, have proved to be its dogged local bloggers who include Derek Dishman (Mr Mustard), John Dix (Mr Reasonable), Theresa Musgrove (Mrs Angry) and Roger Tichborne (The Barnet Eye).

Had ruling councillors taken local blogger warnings more seriously, would they have specifically avoided becoming a “commissioning council”?

6 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, local democracy, local government, outsourcing, oversight, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships

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Why are councils hiding exit costs of outsourcing deals – embarrassment perhaps?

Posted on 26/06/2017 | 4 comments

Tony Collins

Excerpt from Taunton Deane council’s confidential “pink pages”.
The last sentence contains a warning that IBM-owned SWO – Southwest One – may try to “maximise revenues” on exiting its joint venture with the council.

Somerset County Council has refused a Freedom of Information request for the costs of exiting its joint venture with IBM.

But a secret report written last year by officers at Taunton Deane Borough Council – which was a party to the IBM-owned joint venture company Southwest One  – warned that the supplier could attempt to “maximise revenues on exit”.

It said,

“… from experience anything slightly ambiguous within the contract is likely to be challenged by SWO [Southwest One] in order to push it into the chargeable category as they attempt to maximise revenues on exit”.

A separate section of the confidential report said,

“disaggregating from the SWO [Southwest One] contract will be complex and expensive …”

Taunton Deane Borough Council did not tell councillors what the exit turned out to be. The figures are also being kept secret by Somerset County Council which signed the “transformative” SWO joint venture deal with IBM in 2007.

Both councils have now brought back services in-house.

Secrecy over the exit costs is in contrast to Somerset’s willingness to talk in public about the potential savings when local television news covered the setting up of Southwest One in 2007.

The silence will fuel some local suspicions that exit costs have proved considerable and will have contributed to the justifications for Somerset’s large council tax rise this year.

£69m losses?

David Orr, a former Somerset County Council IT employee, has followed closely the costs of the joint venture, and particularly its SAP-based “transformation.

It was his FOI request for details of the exit costs that the council refused.

Orr says that Somerset has lost money as a result of the Southwest One deal. Instead of saving £180m, the joint venture has cost the council £69m, he says.

FOI

Under the Freedom of Information Act, Orr asked Somerset for the “total contract termination costs” including legal, consultancy, negotiation, asset valuations, audit and extra staffing.

He also asked whether IBM was paid compensation for early termination of the Southwest One contract. In replying, the council said,

“The Authority exited from a significant contract with Southwest One early, and the services delivered through this contract were brought back in-house in November 2016.

“The Authority expects the costs to fall significantly now it has regained control of those services.

“Somerset County Council made payment under the ‘Termination for Convenience’ provisions of the original contract. We do hold further information but will not be releasing it at this point as we believe to do so would damage the commercial interests of the County Council, in that it would prejudice the our negotiating position in future contract termination agreements in that it would give contractors details on what terms the Council was willing to settle …”

Orr will appeal. He says the Information Commissioner has already established a principle with Suffolk Coastal District Council that the termination costs of a contract with a third party should be disclosed. The commissioner told Suffolk Coastal council that, in opting out of FOI,

“there is no exemption for embarrassment”

Hidden costs

Taunton’s pink pages paper said that the Southwest One contract’s Exit Management Plan provided for a smooth transfer of services and data, and for access to staff to assess skills and do due diligence.

In practice, though, there were many exit-related complications and costs – potential and actual. The paper warned that Taunton would need to find the money for:

  • Exit programme and project management costs
  • Early termination fees
  • Contingency
  • ICT infrastructure disaggregation
  • Service transition and accommodation costs
  • Disaggregating SAP from Southwest One. Also the council would need to exit its SAP-based shared services with Somerset County Council because the estimated costs were lower when run on a non shared services basis. SAP covered finance, procurement, HR, payroll, website and customer relationship management.
  • Costs involved in a “soft” or “hard” (adversarial) exit.
  • Estimating council exit costs when IBM was keeping secret its own Southwest One running costs.
  • Staff transfer issues.

Comment

So much for open government. It tends to apply when disclosures will not embarrass local government officials.

In 2007 Somerset County Council enjoyed local TV, radio and newspaper coverage of the new joint venture with IBM. Officials spoke proudly on camera of the benefits for local taxpayers, particularly the huge savings.

Now, ten years later, the losses are stacking up. Former Somerset IT employee and FOI campaigner Dave Orr puts the losses at £69m. And local officials are keeping secret the further exit costs.

Suffolk Coastal District Council lost an FOI case to withhold details of how much it paid in compensation to a third party contractor to terminate a contract. But at least it had published its other exit costs.

Somerset is more secretive. It is withholding details of the sums it paid to IBM in compensation for ending the joint venture early; it also refuses to publish its other exit costs.

Trust?

Can anything said by councils such as Somerset or Barnet in support of major outsourcing/joint venture deals be trusted if the claimed savings figures are not audited and the other side of the story – the hidden costs – are, well, hidden?

In local elections, residents choose councillors but they have no say over the appointment of the permanent officials. It’s the officials who decide when to refuse FOI requests; and they usually decide whether the council will tell only one side of the story when public statements are made on outsourcing/joint ventures.

Across the UK, local councils employed 3,400 press and communications staff –  about double the total number in central government – in part to promote the authorities’ services and activities.

What’s the point if they publicise only one side of the story – the benefits and not the costs?

Somerset’s decision to refuse Orr’s reasonable FOI request makes, in its own small way, a mockery of open government.

It also gives just cause for Somerset residents to be sceptical about any council statement on the benefits of its services and activities.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, IBM, IT-related failures, joint ventures, local democracy, local government, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, SAP, shared services, supplier relationships

Will MPs’ report on Capita’s BBC contract make any difference?

Posted on 26/04/2017 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

At one level, Capita’s contract to handle most of the BBC’s TV licensing work is, in general, a success, at least according to statements made to the media.

Were it not for the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, a fuller story would not have emerged.

Today in The Guardian, a BBC spokesperson speaks of the Capita TV licensing contract in glowing terms. Through the contract, the BBC has reduced collection costs by 25% and increased revenue for programmes and services.

A Capita spokesperson spoke in similar terms. Capita has helped the BBC to collect more TV licence fee revenue every year since 2010-2011.

The only blip in the contract had seemed to be the heavy-handed tactics of some Capita staff. The Daily Mail reported in February 2017 that vulnerable people were hounded as some Capita staff tried to catch 28 TV licence evaders a week for bonuses of £15,000 a year.

This blip aside, has anything else gone wrong? There’s no hint of any technological problems on Capita’s website – or the BBC’s.

The BBC reported in 2011 that Capita will transform the TV licensing service, “using advances in technology and analytics to increase revenue and reduce costs”.

Capita’s website has a case study on its work for the BBC that refers to cost savings of £220m over the life of the contract, organisation-wide efficiencies and “protected brand image” among other benefits.

In December 2016, Capita described the “partnership” with the BBC  as a “success”.

The bigger picture

Capita processes TV licence payments, collects arrears and enforces licence fee collection. Its current contract with the BBC began in July 2012 and, after a recent renegotiation, ends in 2022 with the option to extend by up to a further five years.The BBC paid Capita £59 million in 2015–16.

The BBC has had a long-standing ambition to improve its main TV licensing databases so that they are structured by individual customers rather than households.

This was one of the hopes for the contract with Capita but it hasn’t happened. Capita had partly subcontracted work on the BBC’s legacy databases to CSC Computer Sciences.

Manual workarounds

The BBC, in its contract with Capita, aimed to upgrade ICT as part of a wider transition programme. The BBC paid Capita £22.9m for parts of the programme that were delivered, including restructuring contact centres, updating the TV Licensing website and upgrading handheld units for field staff.

The Public Accounts Committee says in today’s report,

“However, improvements with a contract value of £27.9m, primarily related to replacing legacy ICT systems, were not delivered by Capita and its subcontractor (CSC), and were not paid for by the BBC.

“As a result of the transition programme being only partly completed and subsequently stopped, the BBC and Capita currently have to do resource-intensive manual workarounds between inefficient ICT systems.

“Capita informed us that it was bearing the additional costs associated with undelivered elements of the transition programme. However, the BBC has had to allocate £9m to Capita to support the ongoing use of legacy systems, costs which the BBC told us were compensated for elsewhere in the renegotiated contract.

“It is unclear to us why ICT database improvements have proved so difficult over the last 15 years, particularly when competitors and other organisations can make similar changes.

“The BBC acknowledges that its current database is not fit for purpose for the future but does not yet have a clear plan to replace it.”

Comment

All outsourcing contracts have their strengths and failures – including early promises that don’t come to anything.

But it’s unlikely councils and other public sector organisations that are seriously considering outsourcing will take into account the past failures and broken promises of their potential suppliers.

If officials and councillors want to outsource IT and other services they probably will, whatever the record of their favoured potential suppliers.

They will see reports of the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee as biased towards negative disclosures.

Indeed the BBC and Capita, in their responses to today’s TV licensing report of the Public Accounts Committee, have drawn attention to the positive aspects of the report and not mentioned the technological failures.

Where does this leave councils and other organisations that are considering IT-related outsourcing and are seeking reference sites as part of the bid process?

Will those reference sites give only the positive aspects and not mention, or successfully deprecate, any media, PAC or NAO reports on contract failures?

Negative findings by the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee are usually important. Were it not for their scrutiny would not know how public money is being spent and misspent.

But their reports will have little or no effect as warnings to organisations that want to outsource.

Public Accounts Committee – BBC Licence Fee – 26 April 2017

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, IT-related failures, local government, managing outsourced services, National Audit Office, outsourcing

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Capita’s chief executive to step down

Posted on 02/03/2017 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Capita’s chief executive Andy Parker is to step down later this year. The company has today announced that full-year results for 2016 were “disappointing”.

The company reported a sharp fall in annual profit.

Underlying pre-tax profit – which strips out restructuring costs – was £475.3m, well below the group’s expectations despite two profit warnings late last year.

Capita had said in December it expected annual pre-tax profits in the current financial year to be at least £515m.

Reported pre-tax profit was £74.8m, down 33 per cent year-on-year on slightly higher revenues of £4.9bn.

The company is moving some jobs to India, where it already provides outsourcing services for UK companies.

Capita is being dropped from the FTSE 100 from 20 March 2017. Its share price has fallen sharply over the past year but has risen gradually from its low about three months ago. The company’s share price fell sharply this morning, at one point down nearly 10% on yesterday’s close.

The company has had problems on multiple contracts.

In a statement this morning Parker said,

“2016 was a challenging year and Capita delivered a disappointing performance. We are determined to turn this performance around. We have taken quick and decisive action to reduce our cost base, increase management accountability, simplify the business, strengthen the balance sheet, and return the Group to profitable growth.

“We remain very confident that our target markets continue to offer long term structural growth. Capita is well placed in these markets with our unique set of complementary capabilities and the talent of our people. The bid pipeline of major contract opportunities remains active, and we are also seeing success in providing additional new, high value, replicable services to clients.

“The proposed sale of our Asset Services businesses and Specialist Recruitment businesses are on track. We have received good interest and, following regulatory approvals where required, we remain confident in concluding these transactions this year, which will leave us with a more focussed Group and significantly strengthen our balance sheet.

“We expect 2017 to be a transitional year for the business, as we complete our disposals, bed down the structural changes inside the business, and re-position Capita for a return to growth in 2018”.

Capita’s 2016 full-year results

Hunt is prepared to end Capita’s NHS contract if necessary.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, local government, outsourcing

Whitehall’s outsourcing of IT a “bad mistake” – and other Universal Credit lessons – by ex-DWP minister

Posted on 09/02/2017 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Lord Freud, former Conservative minister at the Department for Work and Pensions – who is described as the “architect” of Universal Credit – said yesterday that outsourcing IT across government had been a “bad mistake”.

He announced in December 2016 that was retiring from government. Having been the minister for welfare reform who oversaw the Universal Credit programme, Lord Freud yesterday went before the Work and Pensions Committee to answer questions on the troubled scheme.

He said,

“The implementation was harder than I had expected. Maybe that was my own naivety. What I didn’t know, and I don’t think anyone knew, was how bad a mistake it had been for all of government to have sent out their IT.

“It happened in the 1990s and early 2000s. You went to these big firms to build your IT. I think that was a most fundamental mistake, right across government and probably across government in the western world…

We talk about IT as something separate but it isn’t. It is part of your operating system. It’s a tool within a much better system. If you get rid of it, and lose control of it, you don’t know how to build these systems.

“So we had an IT department but it was actually an IT commissioning department. It didn’t know how to do the IT.

“What we actually discovered through the (UC) process was that you had to bring the IT back on board. The department has been rebuilding itself in order to do that. That is a massive job.”

But didn’t DWP civil servants make it clear at the outset that there wasn’t the in-house capability to build Universal Credit?

“The civil service thought it had the capacity because it could commission the big firms – the HPs and the IBMs – to do it. They did not see the problem, and government as a whole did not see the problem of doing it.

“It’s only when you get into building something big you discover what a problem that was…”

Accountability needed

But it was known at the launch of Universal Credit that government IT projects had a history of going wrong. Why hadn’t people [the DWP] learnt those lessons?

“I agree with you. People have found it very hard to work out what was the problem… you need someone doing it who is accountable. But when you commission out, you don’t have that process.

“You need a lot of continuity and that’s not something in our governance process. Ministers turn over very regularly and more importantly civil servants tend to turn over rather regularly because of the pay restrictions – they only get more pay when they are promoted – so there is a two-year promotion round for good people.

“Effectively we had a programme that had been built outside, or with a lot of companies helping us build it.”

Lord Freud explained differences between the two Universal Credit systems being rolled out.

First there is the “live” system [built at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds that interfaces with legacy benefit systems but is not interactive beyond the initial application form].

The DWP is also rolling out in some pilot areas such as Croydon a “full system” [built at a cost of less than £10m, run on agile principles and is interactive beyond the initial application form].

Lord Freud said,

“The difference between the two is that the live system has all of the essential features of Universal Credit – you get paid an amount at a certain time – but interaction with the system after the initial application is through the telephone or through the post.

“The interactive [“full”] system has the features of Universal Credit but interaction with it is much faster because it’s on the internet. That’s the difference…

“How would I have done it in retrospect?

“The other thing I have discovered about big organisations that I hadn’t understood was it’s very difficult for them to deal with something that’s purely conceptual.

“You need something on the ground. What you should do is get something on the ground quickly – small, maybe imperfect – but the organisation can start coalescing around it, understand it, and start working it.

“Oddly, not having an all-singing, all-dancing system that is now going out, was essential for the organisation to understand what it had and how to adapt it. The IT is only a very small element. Most of the work is around your operations and organisation and how you apply it.

“The second thing we introduced in the 2013 reset was “test and learn”. It’s a phrase but what it means is that you have a system you understand and then test and test, instead of going out with a big system at once. You test all the elements because it’s impossible to envisage how something as big (as Universal Credit) unless you do it like that.

Lessons for government as a whole?

“It was a mistake putting IT out. You have to bring it back in. It’s quite hard to bring it back in because the image of government with the IT industry is not great so you have to set up an atmosphere of getting really good people in, so it’s an attractive place to work; you have to pay them appropriately.

“Our pay scales are not representative of what happens in some of these industries.

Scarce skills

“There are three areas of specialisation that government finds it very hard to buy: various bits of IT, running contracts and project management. Those are three really scarce skills in our economy. We need in government to pay for those specialisms if we are to do big projects.”

Other lessons?

“There’s an odd structure which I don’t quite believe in any more, which is the relationship between the politician – the minister – and the civil service.

“The concept is that the politicians decide what their objectives are and the civil service delivers it. I don’t believe that you can divide policy and implementation in that way. That’s a very big issue because our whole government is built up with that concept and has been for more than 100 years.”

Where does project management fit?

“In theory the civil service produces the project management but it’s an odd circumstance. It didn’t quite happen with Universal Credit. In my first five years I had no fewer than six senior responsible owners and six project managers.

“You can imagine what that was like with something as complicated as Universal Credit when the senior people hadn’t had the time to understand what it was they were dealing with; and what that implied for the minister – me – in terms of holding that together.”

Lord Freud suggested that he was acting as the permanent project manager although he had his normal ministerial duties as well – including being the government’s spokesman in the House of Lords on welfare reform matters.

“As a minister you don’t have time to do project manage a big project. I was sending teams out to make sure we were on top of particular things, which were then reincorporated into the whole process. But it was a very difficult time as we built the department into a capability to do this. There is now a very capable team doing it.”

Comment:

Two of the questions raised by Lord Freud’s comments are: If outsourcing IT is now considered such a bad idea for central government, why is it councils continue to outsource IT?

Would it be better for taxpayers in the long run if the Department for Communities and Local Government intervened to stop such deals going ahead?

Lord Freud’s evidence on Universal Credit programme in full

 

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP, IBM, local government, Universal Credit

Birmingham Council to “close down” contract with Capita when it ends in 2021

Posted on 20/01/2017 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Birmingham City Council has said in a job advert that it plans to “close down” its joint venture contract with Capita when it expires in 2021.

The advert was discovered by Government Computing which has reported the job requirements in detail.

Capita and Birmingham City Council have one of the largest and longest IT-based outsourcing contracts in the public sector.

It began in 2006 when the council and Capita set up a joint venture “Service Birmingham”. The council has spent about £85m to £120m a year on the contract which puts the total cost of the deal so far at more than £1bn.

Government Computing reports that the council is seeking an assistant director ICT and digital services and CIO role. The job will include a task to “oversee the effective closedown of the current Service Birmingham ICT contract”.

This suggests the council is unlikely to renew the existing contract. It could decide to sign a new outsourcing deal but the signs so far are that the council will bring services in-house in 2021.

The council says in the job advert it wants to move to an “increasingly agile state of continuous business transformation”.

Nigel Kletz, director of commissioning and procurement for Birmingham City Council, told Government Computing,  “The current Service Birmingham contract has four years still to run (until 2021), so this role will lead the implementation of the ICT and digital strategy, which includes developing a transition programme to identify and then implement ICT delivery options going forward.

“Decisions on how ICT support is provided from 2021 onwards are yet to be taken.”

Capita did not add to the council’s statement.

Alan Mo, research director at public sector analysis group Kable, is quoted in Government Computing as saying,

“When it comes to ICT, Birmingham is the largest spending council in the UK. Given what’s at stake, we cannot over emphasise the importance of early planning…

“As we know, Service Birmingham has been under a huge amount of scrutiny over the past few years. Given the trends in local government, it would not surprise us if Birmingham prefers to go down the in-sourcing path; the council has already opted to take back contact centre services.”

Projected savings of “£1bn” 

Service Birmingham lists on its website some of the benefits from the joint venture.

  • Projected cost savings of £1bn back to the Council over the initial 10-year term, for reinvestment in services
  • £2m investment in a new server estate
  • Rationalising 550 applications to 150
  • Consolidated 7 service desks into 2
  • 500% improvement in e-mail speed
  • Help desk calls answered within 20 seconds increased from 40% to nearly 90%

Service Birmingham provides Birmingham City Council’s IT, along with a council tax and business rates administration service. The council has discussed taking back in-house the council tax  element of the contract. 

Capita has run into trouble on some of its major contracts, including one with the NHS to supply services to GPs.

Comment

It appears that Capita has served its purpose and put the council into a position where it can take back ICT services now that are in a better state than they were  at the start of the contract 2006.

Austerity is the enemy of such large public sector IT-based outsourcing contracts.  When councils can afford to spend huge sums – via monthly, quarterly and annual service charges – on so-called “transformation”, all may be well for such deals.

Their high costs can be publicly justified on the basis of routine annual efficiency “savings” which do not by law have to be verified.

The downfall for such deals comes when councils have to make large savings that may go well beyond the numbers that go into press releases. It’s known that Birmingham City Council has been in almost continuous negotiation to reduce the annual sums paid to Capita.

Capita is not a charity. How can it continue to transform ICT and other services, pay the increasing salaries of 200 more people than were seconded from the council in 2006, accept large reductions in its service changes and still make a reasonable profit?

It makes economic sense, if Birmingham needs to pay much less for IT, to take back the service.

It’s a pity that austerity has such force in local government but not in central government where IT profligacy is commonplace.

Job spec for senior Birmingham IT post looks towards end of Service Birmingham ICT deal – Government Computing

 

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Posted in Agile, Birmingham City Council, Campaign4Change, Capita, joint ventures, local government, outsourcing

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