Category Archives: Major Projects Authority

Francis Maude boasts of £10bn savings but …

Posted on 03/06/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins 

This morning Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude held a press conference with his senior officials to announce that civil servants have radically changed the way they work to save £10bn in 2012/13.

The savings are nearly £2bn higher than originally planned and, according to the Cabinet Office, have been “reviewed and verified” by independent auditors.

With a little journalistic licence Maude says: “…we are on the way to managing our finances like the best-run FTSE100 businesses.”

The breakdown of the £10bn savings:

Procurement   £3.8bn
Centralisation of procurement for common goods and services  £1.0bn
Centrally renegotiating large government contracts  £0.8bn
Limiting expenditure on marketing and advertising, consultants and temporary agency staff   £1.9bn
Transformation savings   £1.1bn
IT spend controls and moving government services and transactions onto digital platforms  £0.5bn
Optimising the government’s property portfolio  £0.6bn
Project savings   £1.7bn
Reviewing performance of major government projects  £1.2bn
Taking waste out of the construction process  £0.4bn
Workforce savings   £3.4bn
Reducing the size of the Civil Service   £2.2bn
Increasing contributions to public sector pensions   £1.1bn

Comment

It’s good news and the figures don’t seem plucked out of thin air which sometimes happens when central government announces savings.

The big question is whether the savings are sustainable. Maude has inspired the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group to be motivated and hard-working. But bringing about long-term change in Whitehall – as opposed to restricting consultancy contracts and cutting annual costs of supplier contracts by reducing what’s delivered – is like peddling uphill. How long can you do it without losing motivation and energy? It’s not just parts of the civil service that are resistant to the savings agenda – it is also some IT suppliers, according to Government Computing.

It’s likely that only profound changes in central government operations and working practices will outlast the next general election. At the moment the civil service is like a rubber band that has been stretched a little. It wants to return to its standard shape, which the next government may allow it to do.

The National Audit Office said in its report in April 2012 on the Efficiency and Reform Group in 2011/12:

“Savings to date have differing degrees of sustainability.”

The NAO also said this:

“It is not fully clear how ERG intends to make the reforms necessary to secure enough savings over the rest of the spending review. ERG has yet to translate its ambition for saving £20 billion by 2014-15 into more detailed plans.

“ERG has made progress in developing strategies across its wide range of responsibilities, and is focusing on core activities likely to produce savings. However, until recently ERG’s focus has mainly been on the savings themselves, with less emphasis on delivery of the longer-term changes and improvement in efficiency necessary to make them sustainable.”

And this:

“Departments have still tended to lack a clear strategic vision of what they are to do, what they are not, and the most cost-effective way of delivering it. Much of departments’ 2014-15 savings are likely to come from further reductions in staff. Sustainability of these savings will depend on developing skills and working in new ways while maintaining staff motivation and engagement.”

But the NAO was generally positive about the ERG’s contribution to savings.

“ERG’s actions to date, particularly its spending controls, have helped departments deliver substantial spending reductions.”

We hope the Cabinet Office’s diligent efforts continue  – sustainably.

Efficiency and Reform 2012/13 savings. Summary report.

Some suppliers still resistant to change? – Government Computing.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, Cloud, Cloud Computing, consultants, cost reduction, culture, G-Cloud, Government IT, Green IT, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, managing change, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, reducing cost strategically

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Is Major Projects annual report truly ground-breaking?

Posted on 29/05/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, describes as “nothing short of groundbreaking” a report of the Major Projects Authority which gives the RAG (Rred/Amber/Green) status of more than 100 major projects.

That the report came out late on Friday afternoon as most journalists were preparing to go home, some of them for the whole bank holiday weekend, suggests that the document was a negotiated compromise: it would be published but in such a way as to get minimal publicity.

Indeed the report is a series of compromises. It has the RAG status of projects but not the original text that puts the status into context.

Another compromise: senior civil servants in departments have persuaded Maude to publish the RAG decisions when they are at least six months old.

This enables departmental officials to argue their case in the “narrative” section of the MPA annual report that a red or amber/red decision is out-of-date and that there has been significant improvement since. This is exactly the DWP’s justification for the amber/red status on Universal Credit.

The DWP says in the MPA report: “This rating [amber/red] dates back to September 2012, more than seven months ago. Since then, significant progress has been made in the delivery of Universal Credit. The Pathfinder was successfully launched and we are on course both to expand the Pathfinder in July 2013 and start the progressive national roll-out of Universal Credit in October.”

That the Pathfinder was launched successfully might have nothing to do with Universal Credit’s amber/red status which could be because of uncertainties over how the IT will perform at scale, given the complexities and interdependencies.  The MPA report says nothing about the uncertainties and risks of Universal Credit.

More compromises in the MPA annual report: the Cabinet Office appears to have allowed departments to hide their cost increases on projects such as HMRC’s Real-time Information [RTI] in the vague phrase “Total budgeted whole life costs (including non-government costs).”

The Cabinet Office has also allowed departments to write their own story to accompany the RAG status. So when HMRC writes its story on RTI it says that “costs have increased” but not by how much or why. We know from evidence that HMRC gave to the Public Accounts Committee that RTI costs have risen by “tens of millions of pounds”. There is nothing to indicate this in the MPA annual report.

Another compromise in the MPA annual report: there are no figures to compare the original forecast costs of a project with the projected costs now. There are only the 2012/13 figures compared with whole-life projected costs (including non-government projected spend).

And the MPA report is not comprehensive. It came out on the same day the BBC announced that it was scrapping its Digital Media Initiative which cost the public £98m. The MPA report does not mention the BBC.

The report is more helpful on the G-Cloud initiative, showing how cheap it is – about £500,000. But there is little information on the NHS National Programme for IT [NPfIT] or the Summary Care Record scheme. 

Yet the MPA annual report is ground-breaking. Since Peter Gershon, the then head of the Office of Government Commerce, introduced Gateway reviews of risky IT projects about 12 years ago with RAG decisions, they have remained unpublished, with few exceptions. The Cabinet Office is now publishing the RAG status of major departmental projects for the first time. Maude says

“A tradition of Whitehall secrecy is being overturned. And while previous Governments buried problems under the carpet, we are striving to be more open. By their very nature these works are high risk and innovative.

“They often break new ground and dwarf anything the private sector does in both scale and complexity. They will not always run to plan. Public scrutiny, however uncomfortable, will bring about improvement. Ending the lamentable record of failure to deliver these projects is our priority.”

Comment

The MPA annual report is a breath of fresh air.

Nearly every sentence, nearly every figure, represents compromise. The report reveals that the Universal Credit project was last year given an amber/red status – but it doesn’t say why. Yet the report has the DWP’s defence of the amber/red decision. So the MPA report has the departmental defences of the RAG decisions, without the prosecution evidence. That’s a civil service parody of openness and accountability: Sir Humphrey is allowed to defend himself in public without the case against him being heard.

But it’s still useful to know that Universal Credit is at amber/red.  It implies well into the project’s life that the uncertainties and risks are great. A major project at amber/red at this stage, a few months before go-live, is unlikely to turn green in the short term, if ever.

Congratulations

The Cabinet Office deserves congratulations for winning the fight for publication of the RAG status of each major project. Lord Browne, the government’s lead non-executive director and a member of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform group, has said  that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being frittered away because of “worryingly poor” management of government projects.

“Nobody ever stops or intervenes in a poor project soon enough. The temptation is always to ignore or underreport warning signs,” he says.

The management of some large projects – usually not the smaller ones – is so questionable that departments ignore advice to have one senior responsible owner per major project, says the MPA.

The MPA annual report will not stop the disasters. Its information is so limited that it will not even enable the public – armchair auditors – to hold departments to account. Senior civil servants have seen to that.

But the report’s publication is an important development: and it provides evidence of the struggle within Whitehall against openness. Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, have had to fight to persuade departmental officials to allow the RAG status of projects to be published. The Guardian’s political editor Patrick Wintour says of the MPA annual report

“Publication led to fierce infighting in Whitehall as government departments disputed the listings and fought to prevent publication.”

Large-scale change

If Maude and Kerslake struggled to get this limited distance, and there is still so much left to reform, will large-scale change ever happen?

Maude and his officials have as comprehensive mandate for change from David Cameron as they could hope for. Yet still the Cabinet Office still seems to have little influence on departments. When it comes to the big decisions, Sir Humphrey and his senior officials hold onto real power. That’s largely because the departments are responsible to Parliament for their financial decisions – not the Cabinet Office.

Maude and his team have won an important battle in publishing the MPA annual report. But the war to bring about major change is still in its very early stages; and there’s a general election in 2015 that could halt Maude’s reform plans altogether.

The Major Projects Authority Annual Report.

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Posted in capacity building, change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Report on status of big Gov’t projects to be published at last

Posted on 09/05/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Telegraph reports that the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority is about to publish its first annual report – and it will reveal the status of schemes that include Universal Credit, says the article.

The Cabinet Office said in 2011 that the MPA’s annual report would be published by the end of December that year. In 2012 Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, told the Public Accounts Committee’s Conservative MP Richard Bacon that the MPA’s annual report would be published in June 2012.

But senior departmental  civil servants have objected repeatedly to the red-amber-green “traffic light” status of projects being published, which contradicts the wishes of Kerslake and Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister.

One reason for the delay in publishing the MPA annual report is that Maude and Kerslake have been weighing objections to the reporting of the red-amber-green status against the need for departmental cooperation to implement civil service reforms.

From the Telegraph article it appears that Maude has persuaded (or forced) departmental heads to accept the publication of the traffic light status on big and risky projects. The Major Projects Authority reviews IT and other projects costing more than £50m.

The Telegraph says the MPA annual report will reveal Government troubleshooters’ concerns about multi-billion pound projects like the Universal Credit.

The article says the MPA annual report will show that about a third of projects it has reviewed are late or over budget. Says the Telegraph: “Government sources said that the MPA will show that management of big projects has improved significantly since 2010, when two-thirds of programmes were in trouble.

“But the report, expected later this month, will confirm that Whitehall ‘still has a long way to go’ to improve its handling of major projects, a source said.”

The article adds that publication of the annual report “follows a lengthy internal struggle between ministers and civil servants about the disclosure of problems with big Government schemes”.

Some ministers, says the article, are privately concerned that civil servants are bad at managing big, expensive projects but repeatedly cover up their failings and refuse to tell ministers about problems.  Disclosing “candid” assessments about big projects will improve management, ministers believe.

The Telegraph says that a “new publication scheme that will start later this month” will publicly rate each project at red, amber, or green. 

Each central department will be told to publish details of its major projects every six months, including the red-amber-green ratings and the data behind them, says the article.

The Telegraph quotes as a coalition source as saying: “Releasing a candid report about Whitehall’s major projects is a big and brave step for Government…”

Management of big projects better but still generally poor? 

Lord Browne, a lead non-executive in the Cabinet Office and the man appointed to recruit business leaders to Whitehall departmental boards, has criticised the management of major projects as “worryingly poor”.

He said that insufficient attention was given to identifying risks in the planning stage, and that there had been a “consistent failure” to appoint leaders with the right skills and experience.

Browne said the creation of the Major Projects Authority (MPA) in the Cabinet Office in 2011 had improved their delivery, but “nobody ever intervenes in a poor project soon enough” and that warning signs were often ignored or under-reported.

He called for an “ongoing and rigorous review process with real teeth” which would monitor measures of progress and call “time out” on failing projects, allowing them either to be fixed or stopped.

Browne said the government could learn from the private sector, where projects are scrutinised to a “very high standard” before work begins. In line with this, he suggested that the MPA should have a strengthened “stage-gate approval process” to ensure that projects achieve objectives.

He said that projects should not be allowed to begin until a team with the right skills – including a leader who had previously delivered a large, complex project – had been identified.

He also suggested that the MPA nominate leaders and veto unsuitable candidates. He said that expensive projects should “never be seen as a personal development opportunity”.

He advocated using pay, benefits and bonuses to give team members incentives to work on the project “until appropriate milestones are reached”. This, Browne said, had been key to the success of major projects delivered by the private sector.

Departments still sceptical of Maude’s reforms?

Meanwhile the FT has reported that Maude’s attempts to inject commercial acumen into Whitehall by putting leading business figures on departmental boards is failing to live up to its billing, with some departments rarely consulting their external non-executive directors.

The FT says that the Treasury department’s supervisory board met only once in the year to April 2012, according to a report by Insight Public Affairs, a consultancy. The energy department’s board met twice, compared to 15 meetings in the transport department, reflecting the inconsistent involvement of non-executive directors.

John Lehal, managing director of Insight Public Affairs, said the ad hoc manner in which departments held board meetings reflected the need for greater accountability – as underlined by the Treasury’s failure to engage its non-executives.

Comment

At long last the Major Projects Authority, under the straight-talking Australian David  Pitchford, will publish its annual report; and it may contain more detail on major projects than has been published by any government.

As departments fear public embarrassment more than any other sanction, publication of the traffic light status of projects – with the underlying detail – should genuinely discourage the starting of ill-considered projects.

Although the MPA annual report is much delayed Maude has succeeded in getting agreement for it to be published. Provided it contains enough detail to allow the status of projects to be judged by armchair auditors, it should begin to make a real difference.

Telegraph article

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Posted in change management, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Why isn’t Universal Credit IT a disaster yet?

Posted on 30/04/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

voltaireVoltaire said those who walk well-trodden paths tend to throw stones at those who show a new road. 

Iain Duncan Smith has had nothing but criticism in the media for his extreme caution over the go-live yesterday of the innovative Universal Credit scheme. But he told Radio 4’s Today presenter Justin Webb he was learning from the NHS IT scheme and the implementation of tax credits.

[With the NPfIT the Department of Health threw caution to the wind and spent billions on IT work and contracts that were unnecessary. After working tax credits went live the Office of National Statistics estimated that, of the £13.5bn paid out in tax credits in 2004, £1.9bn was in overpayments; and IT-related problems led to delays in issuing payments, which caused hardship for those on low incomes.]

Iain_Duncan_Smith,_June_2007IDS said on R4 Today yesterday:

“What I have introduced here is a deliberate and slower process introduction because I learned from the chaos of tax credits where it collapsed and the chaos of the health department’s changes to their IT systems. I want to do this carefully to make sure we get it right.”

Justin Webb: But your critics say you are not testing the things that could go wrong – children and homeless people are not involved.  When are you going to involve them in a pilot?

IDS: They are all going to be involved as we roll out.

Webb: There will be a pilot that includes those more difficult groups?

IDS: These pilots are to test two things; first of all that the base process works and secondly that all the other issues …

Webb: No homeless people involved in that. The difficult people are not involved?

IDS: What we are doing is testing the basic process. As we roll out from October onwards we then complicate the process and we roll it out in such a way as we are able to bring those people in and ensure that we also test them as we are going through. It’s a perpetual process of rolling out and checking, rolling out and checking. That is the better way to do it. I have done this in the private sector and Lord Freud [work and pensions minister] did this in the banking sector. We have insisted on it because this is the right way to do it. Get it right. Not get it early.

Can IDS be too cautious?

Universal Credit is live on GOV.UK.  To claim it now you need to live in an OL6, OL7, M43 or SK16 postcode, have just become unemployed, fit for work, have no children, not be claiming disability benefits, not have any caring responsibilities, not be homeless or living in temporary accommodation, and have a valid bank account and national insurance number.

But still it’s a test of links between UC  and HMRC’s RTI systems. If the links are working properly the systems should verify that the new UC claimant has recently left PAYE employment. The pilot in Ashton is also a test of the UC payment system and whether the new scheme will encourage claimants to find a job and stay in work longer.

On Sunday, on BBC Radio 5’s Double Take, I praised the Department of Work and Pensions for an ultra-cautious approach in going live with UC.

But IT consultant Brian Wernham, author of Agile Project Management for Government, pointed out to BBC’s World This Weekend that thousands of people will need to claim UC every day from the official start of the scheme in October 2013 to the end of 2017 if the DWP is to complete its UC roll-out within the coalition’s promised schedule.

Yet the limited pilot in Ashton has restricted claimants to about 300 a month. At this rate the roll-out to more than eight million claimants will not be anywhere near complete by the end of 2017.

Comment

The Financial Times quotes Iain Duncan Smith as saying that one million claimants would be receiving universal credit by the end of April 2014.

This is now unlikely if not impossible. Even in October when the UC roll-out begins nationally, it will start with simple cases. By April 2014 it is hard to see that there will be 100,000 people claiming UC, let alone one million. Indeed the most complex cases may be handled outside of the main UC system, possibly manually or on a spreadsheet.

Why should the coalition care if the 2017 deadline is not met? A general election on 7 May 2015 means that UC will become the responsibility of a new government. IDS is then unlikely to be the DWP’s secretary of state. He could argue at that time that he should not be held responsible for any delays in the roll-out. Indeed the Tories could be out of government by then.

So what the coalition says now about UC’s future means little or nothing.

That said, the coalition seems to be learning lessons from past IT-related failures. It deserves praise for its extreme caution over the introduction of UC.

It is not doing everything right: the DWP is refusing to publish any of its expensive consultancy reports on the progress of the UC IT systems. Partly that is because of DWP culture and because shadow ministers are waiting to jump on any putative weakness in the UC scheme. Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said on yesterday’s Today programme that universal credit was “a fine idea that builds on Labour’s tax credits revolution”.

liam byrneHe added: “The truth is the scheme is late, over budget, the IT system appears to be falling apart and even DWP [Department of Work and Pensions] ministers admit they haven’t got a clue what is going on.”

But when Byrne was in government he was an unswerving advocate of the disastrous NPfIT. So can his criticism of the UC project be trusted now?

Despite a generally negative media there are no signs yet that UC is a disaster in the making.  Indeed RTI is working so far, which was the biggest single risk.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is said to remain concerned that UC could prove an electoral disaster, and his concern is good for the UC IT project. It means the coalition will continue to roll out UC with extreme caution.

Such a play-it-safe approach might never have occurred before on a major government IT project. So does it matter that UC  takes years to roll out?

Perhaps the roll-out may continue well beyond 2017 but it’s better to complete a simplification of the benefits system over an extended time than pay claimants the wrong amounts or leave the vulnerable without payment altogether.  

Teething troubles on day one of Universal Credit scheme – Guardian

Could HMRC have a major success on its hands? – RTIis working

The vultures circle over Universal Credit IT.

DWP hides the facts on UC IT progress.

Are civil servants misleading IDS over Universal Credit IT progress?

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Posted in Agile, change management, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, innovation, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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Could HMRC have a major IT success on its hands?

Posted on 17/04/2013 | 11 comments

By Tony Collins

It’s much too soon to say that Real-Time Information is a success – but it’s not looking  like another central government IT disaster.

A gradual implementation with months of piloting, and HMRC’s listening to comments from payroll professionals, software companies and employers, seems to have made a difference.

The Cabinet Office’s high-priority attempts to avoid IT disasters, through the Major Projects Authority, seems also to have helped, by making HMRC a little more humble, collegiate and community-minded than in past IT roll-outs. HMRC is also acutely sensitive to the ramifications of an RTI roll-out failure on the reputation of Universal Credit which starts officially in October.

On the GOV.UK website HMRC says that since RTI started on 6 April 2013 about 70,000 PAYE [pay-as-you-earn] returns have been filed by employers or their agents including software and payroll companies.

About 70,000 is a small number so far. HMRC says there are about 1.6 million PAYE schemes, every one of which will include PAYE returns for one or more employees. About 30 million people are on PAYE. Nearly all employers are expected to be on RTI by October 2013.

The good news

 Ruth Owen, HMRC’s Director General Personal Tax, says:

“RTI is the biggest change to PAYE in 70 years and it is great news that so many employers have started to report PAYE in real time. But we are under no illusions – we know that it will take time before every employer in the country is using RTI.

“We appreciate that some employers might be daunted by the change but …we are taking a pragmatic approach which includes no in-year late filing penalties for the first year.”

It hasn’t been a big-bang launch. HMRC has been piloting RTI for a year with thousands of employers. Under RTI, employers and their agents give HMRC real-time PAYE information every time the employee is paid, instead of yearly.

When bedded down the system is expected to cut administrative costs for businesses and make tax codes more accurate, though the transitional RTI costs for some businesses, including training, may be high and payroll firms have had extra costs for changes to their software.

RTI means that employers don’t have to complete annual PAYE returns or send in forms when new employees join or leave.

The bad news

The RTI systems were due to cost £108m but HMRC’s Ruth Owen told the Treasury sub-committee that costs have risen by tens of millions:

“… I can see that it [RTI] is going to cost £138m compared with £108m. I believe that is going to go up again in the scale of tens of millions.”

She said that in October 2012.

Success?

The Daily Telegraph suggested on Monday that RTI may be “ready to implode”.

But problems with RTI so far seem to be mainly procedural and rule-based – or are related to long waits getting queries answered via the helpline – rather than any major faults with the RTI systems.

In general members of the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals report successes with their RTI submissions, and some comment on response times being good after initial delays at around the launch date.

Payroll software supplier Sage says the filing of submissions has been successful. There was a shaky start, however, with HMRC’s RTI portal being under maintenance over the weekend.

Jonathan Cowan from the Sage Payroll Team said: “There was understandable confusion and frustration over the weekend with businesses unable to file due to HMRC site issues.”

Accountingweb’s readers have had many problems – it said RTI “stumbled into action –  but few of the difficulties are, it seems, serious. “Have I missed something, but RTI despite all the commotion doesn’t seem that bad,” says an accountant in a blog post on the site.

Payrollworld says RTI problems have been minor. “The launch of Real Time Information (RTI) has encountered a number of minor issues, though payroll suppliers broadly report initial filing success.”

Comment

It’s not everyday we report on a big government IT project that shows signs of succeeding. It’s too early to call RTI a success but it’s difficult to see how anything can go seriously wrong now unless HMRC’s helplines give way under heavy demand.

It’s worth remembering that RTI is aimed at PAYE professionals – not the general public as with Universal Credit. Payroll specialists are used to solving complex problems. That said, RTI’s success is critical to the success of Universal Credit. A barrier to that success has, for now, been overcome.

Perhaps HMRC’s RTI success so far shows what a central department can achieve when it listens and acts on concerns instead of having a mere consultation; and it has done what it could to avoid failure. They’re obvious precepts for the private sector – but have not always in the past been characteristics of central government IT schemes such as the NPfIT.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cost reduction, culture, DWP, Government IT, HMRC, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, managing change, npfit, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Universal Credit and Pitchford – good move or a potential conflict of interest?

Posted on 21/02/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that the executive director of the Major Projects Authority, David Pitchford, is to take interim charge of the delivery of Universal Credit, starting this week, says Government Computing.

Pitchford will stay initially for a three-month stint until a permanent replacement is appointed. He joins DWP’s CIO Andy Nelson, who was previously at the Ministry of Justice,  in helping to oversee the Universal Credit project.

Pitchford and Nelson are jointly taking the place of Philip Langsdale, DWP’s highly respected CIO, who passed away just before Christmas last year.

The Daily Telegraph and Independent have portrayed Pitchford’s appointment as a sign that Universal Credit is in trouble. The Telegraph’s headline on Monday was

Welfare reforms in doubt as troubleshooter takes over

And the Independent reported that:

“Ministers have been forced to draft in one of the Government’s most experienced trouble-shooters to take charge of the troubled Universal Credit programme – amid fears the complex new system could backfire.”

But DWP officials say Pitchford’s appointment is not a sign Universal Credit is behind schedule.

A DWP spokesperson said, “David Pitchford will be temporarily leading Universal Credit following the death of Philip Langsdale at Christmas. This move will help ensure the continued smooth preparation for the early rollout of Universal Credit in Manchester and Cheshire in April. A recruitment exercise for a permanent replacement will be starting shortly.”

In Pitchford’s absence, the day-to-day running of the Major Projects Authority will be handled by Juliet Mountford and Stephen Mitchell, with oversight from government chief operating officer Stephen Kelly. Pitchford will retain overall responsibility for the MPA’s activities, says Government Computing.

Comment

On the face of it Pitchford’s appointment is a clever move: the Cabinet Office now has a senior insider at the DWP who can report back on the state of the Universal Credit project.

Francis Maude, who is the Cabinet Office minister in change of efficiency and is trying to distance the government from from Labour’s IT disasters, is almost openly worried about the smell that could come from a failure of the Universal Credit project.

DWP secretary of state Iain Duncan Smith keeps reassuring his ministerial colleagues that critics are ill-formed and all is well with the project. But it is not clear whether he has an overly positive interpretation of the facts or understands the complexities of the project and all that could go wrong.

Even officials at HMRC are having difficulty understanding some of the detailed technical lessons from the work so far on RTI – Real-time information. Although RTI does not need Universal Credit to succeed, Universal Credit is dependent on  RTI.

With  much conflicting information within government over the state of the Universal Credit project – which is compounded by DWP’s refusal under FOI to publish several consultancy reports it has commissioned on the scheme – it is useful for the Cabinet Office to have the highly experienced and much respected Australian David Pitchford run Universal Credit. 

Pitchford is a much-valued civil servant in part because he is straight-talking. He said in  2011 that government projects failed because of:

– Political pressure

– No business case

– No agreed budget
– 80% of projects launched before 1,2 & 3 have been resolved
– Sole solution approach (options not considered)
– Lack of Commercial capability  – (contract / administration)
– No plan
– No timescale
– No defined benefits

Since he made this speech, and it was reported, Pitchford has become a little more guarded about what he says in public. The longer he stays in the innately secretive UK civil service, the more guarded he seems to become but he is still one the best assets the Cabinet Office has. His main advantage is his independence from government departments.

Potential for a conflict of interest?

The Major Projects Authority exists to provide independent oversight of big projects that could otherwise fail. Regularly it is  in polite conflict with departments over the future direction of questionable projects and indeed whether they should come under the scrutiny of the MPA at all.

Pitchford’s taking over of Universal Credit, even on an interim basis, raises questions about whether he can ever  be seen in future as an independent scrutineer of the project. According to The Independent, Pitchford will report directly to Iain Duncan Smith – bypassing the DWP’s permanent secretary Robert Devereux.

Once his secondment to the DWP ends Pitchford may wish to criticise aspects of the project. Can he do so with the armour of independence having run the project? Would he have the authority to delay Universal Credit’s introduction?

Pitchford is now an integral part of Universal Credit. He is in the position of the local government ombudsman who is seconded to a local authority, or an auditor at the National Audit Office who sits on the board of a government department.  If a big project at the department goes wrong, the permanent secretary can say to the NAO:  “Well you had a representative on our board. Are you in a position to criticise us?”

The MPA does a good job largely because it is independent of departments. There are signs that it is intervening to stop failing projects or put them on a more secure footing. Can the MPA remain independent of departments if its head has been seconded to a department?

On the other hand Francis Maude is likely to receive an account of how Universal Credit is going. And the Universal Credit project will have the benefit of an external, independent scrutineer as its head.

But if the MPA and Universal Credit are inextricably linked how can the MPA do its job of being an independent regulator of big IT projects including Universal Credit?

Pitchford takes on Universal Credit role

Government brings in troubleshooter to get Universal Credit on track.

Welfare reforms in doubt after troubleshooter takes over

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HMRC, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Outsourcing costs in Cornwall escalate – and no deal signed yet

Posted on 16/10/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

The estimated procurement costs of a mega-outsourcing project in Cornwall have risen sharply, not necessarily under the full control of the county council’s cabinet, and before any deal with BT or CSC is signed.

Meanwhile councillors are due to be told, in confidential briefings, that BT and CSC may claim back their costs so far, and are prepared to legally enforce that claim,  if no outsourcing deal is signed.

Such a legal claim, of potential suppliers suing a potential client, would be highly unusual perhaps unprecedented. 

Is Cornwall’s  cabinet using FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt – to make councillors fearful of not  agreeing a deal with CSC or BT at a full council vote next week?

Papers published by Cornwall County Council show that a mega-outsourcing deal proposed by the authority’s ruling cabinet will be worth between £210m and £800m.

The full  council will vote on whether to proceed with a contract with BT or CSC on 23 October.

Before that vote the cabinet is expected to give confidential briefings to individual councillors. The briefings will focus on the promised benefits of signing a deal,  and the disadvantages of not going ahead.

The cabinet may tell councillors approximately how much money BT and CSC will claim, and if necessary take legal action to recover, if a deal is not signed, according to an interview the council leader Alec Robertson gave to thisiscornwall.co.uk

“The two bidding companies have spent a lot of money over the past couple of years and they will have a legal claim against the council for changing direction,” Robertson is quoted as saying.

“Councillors need to know the consequences. There is a lot of commercial confidentiality, but we wouldn’t be talking about small amounts of money.”

The council’s own budget for the outsourcing project so far has escalated. An independent panel set up as a “critical friend” to scrutinise the council’s plans for outsourcing has learned that the costs to Cornwall’s taxpayers of planning for the scheme were £375,000 in July 2011.

In March this year the “Single Issue Panel” members were told that the costs for the project would need to be increased from £650,000 to £800,000.

“The current estimate of the cost of the procurement process at the time of writing this report is £1.8m,” says the panel in its July 2012 report.

The £1.8m will be met from existing budget, says the cabinet in council documents.

On top of this, potential NHS partners in the deal have their legal costs.

The cabinet says in its written reply to the panel that the increase in costs is due in part to a “significant  increase in external support drawn in to support the procurement”, including specialist legal support and costs for consultancy KPMG, which has advised on the finance and client side support.

There has also been an “extension of scope” due to the proposed inclusion of telehealth/telecare. In addition there have been “project delays”.

Comment:

With the outsourcing-related costs to Cornwall’s taxpayers escalating before any deal with CSC or BT is signed, what will happen after the council is contractually committed to a long-term deal with one of the companies?

One reason there is no clear answer to this question is that so much of the council’s plans are based on assumptions that BT or CSC will commit contractually to providing up to 500 new jobs, saving money and achieving an IT-led transformation of services (while making a profit from the deal and recovering bid costs).

Cornwall’s cabinet seems confident that BT or CSC will enshrine all its promises in a contract free of caveats and ambiguities, and that the sort of legal dispute that has broken out in Somerset over the IBM/Somerset County Council joint venture Southwest One is unlikely to happen in Cornwall.

But isn’t Cornwall repeating Somerset’s mistake of not seeing that, behind the promises, assumptions, hopes and so-called contractual commitments,  the reality of withheld payments for poor service and the subsequent threat of legal action by the supplier is always there.

If Cornwall’s cabinet is already concerned about possible legal action from the bidders to recover their costs,  will the council be more confident about avoiding a legal action once the chosen suppliers’ lawyers have agreed a long and very carefully-worded outsourcing contract – a contract that may be different from the council’s proposed draft contract?

The Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority, under the enlightened David Pitchford, has a guiding principle that sets the coalition apart from previous administrations when it comes to avoiding disasters. That principle is to stop a deeply-flawed project cheaply before much more is spent and at risk of being wasted.  Ian Watmore, when permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, put it well: “Fail early, fail cheaply.”

Will council leader be asked to stand down?

Cornwall outsourcing/partnership debate.

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, CSC, IT-related failures, KPMG, legal disputes, local government, Major Projects Authority, managing outsourced services, procurement, project management, public sector

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Fujitsu on blacklist? Cabinet Office issues statement

Posted on 14/09/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office has denied it is operating a blacklist of poorly-performing suppliers – but says that suppliers deemed high risk may find it “more difficult to secure new work with HMG”.

In its statements to Kable’s Government Computing, the Cabinet Office also made it clear that suppliers deemed high risk can redeem themselves.

“Mechanisms exist to remove suppliers from the High Risk classification when performance improves dramatically.”

This suggests that Fujitsu would no longer be deemed high risk if it settled its dispute with the government over the NPfIT. Fujitsu has been seeking £700m after the failure of its NPfIT contract. A settlement has proved elusive and the case may go to court.

The FT said on Tuesday that Fujitsu has “in essence” been blacklisted. Neither Fujitsu nor the Cabinet Office are denying that Fujitsu has been put in the high-risk classification.

A Cabinet Office spokesman told Government Computing:

“We cannot comment on the status of individual suppliers, but we are absolutely clear that this Government will not tolerate poor supplier performance.

“We want to strengthen our contract management by reporting on suppliers’ performance against criteria and sharing the information across Government. This means that information on a supplier’s performance will be available and taken into consideration at the start of and during the procurement process (pre-contract). Suppliers with poor performance may therefore find it more difficult to secure new work with HMG.

“This policy will include the identification of any high-risk suppliers so that performance issues are properly taken into account before any new contracts are given.

“High-risk classification is based on material performance concerns. Suppliers deemed high risk will be subject to particularly close scrutiny when awarding new work.

“Overall, this is simply good commercial practice and in line with how we are improving the way government does business and emulating the best of the private sector.”

The spokesman said that contract extensions are within scope of the poor-performance policy but will be tackled in a proportional way – depending on the overall cost of the contract, the relative cost of extending it, and how critical the extension is.

The high-risk classification “applies to strategic suppliers who do business across Government, and is not limited to any specific sector”. Frameworks are also included.

“Our performance policy will apply to central government departments, where we have direct control of spending,” said the spokesman. But it is still unclear what direct control the Cabinet Office has of departmental spending.

That said, the Cabinet Office announced in June spending controls on central government that “allow government to act strategically in a way it never could before”. It added that there were “strict controls on ICT expenditure”.

That means that large ICT contracts to be awarded by departments must go to the Cabinet Office for approval; and the Cabinet Office has introduced a single point of contact for major suppliers, which means that the performance of strategic suppliers will be viewed in the round.

In the past suppliers have been able to tell departments that were about to award contracts that rumours of alleged poor performance in other departments were incorrect.

Comment

While not a blacklist the high-risk classification seems a good idea. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, is sending a message to suppliers that if they take legal action against a department it could stop them getting business across Whitehall.

But he’s also saying in effect: settle and we’ll remove you from the high-risk list.

Is there a danger that the power could swing too much in the government’s favour, allowing departments to poorly manage contracts with impunity? Probably not. Suppliers will have to take the high-risk list into account when signing deals.

They know that, in the insurance industry for example, if they mess up one contract word will soon get around.

Poorly-performing suppliers risk being frozen out of Government business – Government Computing

Fujitsu banned from goovernment contracts?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, cost reduction, Fujitsu, Government IT, innovation, legal disputes, Major Projects Authority, operational issues, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, supplier relationships

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Fujitsu banned from Whitehall contracts?

Posted on 11/09/2012 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

The FT reports today that Fujitsu has been deemed for the time being too high risk to take on new public sector deals, along with another unnamed IT services contractor.

The newspaper quotes “people close to the situation”.

It’s likely the article is correct in naming Fujitsu as a supplier that is deemed by the Cabinet Office to be high risk. It is unclear, though, whether being categorised as “high risk” by the Cabinet Office amounts to a ban for the time being on future government contracts.

The FT says that Fujitsu has “in essence” been blacklisted.  “The Cabinet Office refused to confirm the identities of either of the companies that have in effect been blacklisted,” says the FT.

It is also unclear whether the Cabinet Office could exclude a supplier from shortlists even if it wanted to. The Cabinet Office awards few large IT contracts of its own; contracts are awarded by departments, and the Cabinet Office has no unambiguous power to exclude particular suppliers from shortlists drawn up by autonomous departments that take their own decisions on which companies to award contracts to.

Mega-contracts to be awarded by central departments must, however, must go to the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority for approval.  The Authority could in theory require that Fujitsu be excluded from a shortlist before it gives approval.  This blacklisting would require Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, and the minister signing the mega-contract to be in agreement.

If a departmental minister refused to exclude  a supplier from a bid or shortlist because of its past performance what could the Cabinet Office do, especially if the minister argued that the supplier’s continued work , in the form of a renewed contract, was not just desirable but essential?

The FT says that the latest initiative to ban companies with troubled histories in government from new contracts is being spearheaded by Bill Crothers, formerly of Accenture.

He was appointed as chief procurement officer two months ago to inject private sector rigour into Whitehall’s contracting system. He is quoted in the FT as saying that his new approach would allow past performance to be taken into account for the first time when a company is bidding for a fresh tender.

Comment

The idea of a blacklist is a good one; indeed it would be the most important innovation in government IT since the general election. For decades MPs and others have said that under-performing suppliers should not be awarded new contracts. Now at last that may be happening.

After Fujitsu sued the Department for Health for about £700m over the NPfIT a settlement has been elusive, despite the intervention of the Cabinet Office. It is likely that Fujitsu UK’s hands will have been controlled by its parent in Japan.

Fujitsu’s performance on the “Libra” contract for IT in magistrates’ courts was strongly criticised by MPs and the National Audit Office which exposed repeated threats by the supplier to withdraw from the contract unless its terms were met.

Fujitsu could circumvent any blacklisting by becoming a subcontractor on a mega-contract, as it is at HMRC on the “ASPIRE” contract and at the DWP where its hardware runs benefit systems. Or a department could ignore the Cabinet Office and award non mega-contracts to Fujitsu.

We hope the Cabinet Office finds a way to make its blacklist – if that is what it is – stick. A  private sector company would not award a new contract to a supplier that had bitten in the past. Why would the public sector?

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Posted in EU procurement, Fujitsu, Government IT, IT-related failures, legal disputes, Major Projects Authority, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, supplier relationships

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Could CSC use 200 jobs as lever in NPfIT talks?

Posted on 15/08/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

In a blog post on ComputerworldUK.com I have asked whether CSC could use 200 UK jobs as a lever in its talks with the Department of Health and the Cabinet Office on a new NPfIT deal (towards end of the blog post).

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Posted in CSC, e-health, Government IT, health, health records, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, NHS, npfit

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