Category Archives: Major Projects Authority

Maude gives up on plan to publish regular reports on major projects

Posted on 09/08/2012 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has given up on publishing regular “Gateway” reports on the progress or otherwise of big IT and construction projects.

Publication of the independent reviews has proved a step too far towards open government.  Were Maude to insist on publishing Major Projects Authority “Gateway” review reports, it would alienate too many influential senior civil servants whose support Maude needs to implement the Civil Service Reform Plan of June 2012.

Gateway reviews are independent reports on medium and high-risk projects at important stages of their lifecycle.  If current and topical the reviews are always kept secret. One copy is given to the project’s senior responsible owner and the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority keeps another. Other copies have limited distribution.

In opposition Maude said he would publish the reviews; and when in power Maude took the necessary steps: the Cabinet Office’s “Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates” included an undertaking to publish Gateway reviews by December 2011 .

When some officials, particularly those who had worked at the Office of Government Commerce, objected strongly to publishing the reports (for reasons set out below), the undertaking  to publish them vanished from further Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates.  When asked why, a spokesman for the Cabinet Office said the plan to publish Gateway reviews had only ever been a “draft” proposal.

The anti-publication officials have thwarted even Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the Home Civil Service, who replaced Sir Gus O’Donnell.  When in May 2012 Conservative MP Richard Bacon asked Kerslake about publishing Gateway reviews, Kerslake replied:

“Yes, actually we are looking at this specific issue as part of the Civil Service Reform Plan….I cannot say exactly what will be in the plan because we have not finalised it yet, but it is due in June and my expectation is that I am very sympathetic to publication of the RAG [red, amber, green] ratings.”

Inexplicably there was a change of plan. The Civil Service Reform Plan in fact said nothing about Gateway reports. It made no mention of RAG ratings. What the Plan offered on openness over major projects was an undertaking that “Government will publish an annual report on major projects by July 2012, which will cover the first full year’s operation of the Major Projects Authority.”  (This is a far cry from publishing regular independent Gateway assessments on major projects such as the IT for Universal Credit.)

Even that promise has yet to materialise: no annual report has been published. The Cabinet Office originally promised Parliament an annual report on the Major Projects Authority by December 2011. The Cabinet Office says that the annual MPA report has been delayed because the “team is now clear that it makes sense to include a full financial year’s worth of data and analysis in its first report”.

When eventually published the annual report will, says the Cabinet Office,  “make for a far more informative and comprehensive piece, and will include analysis of data up to 31 March 2012. This will be the first time the UK government has reported on its major projects in such a coherent and transparent way.”

Even so it’s now clear that the Cabinet Office is discarding its plans to publish regular Gateway review reports. Maude wants cooperation with officials, not confrontation.  He made this clear in the reform plan in which he said:

“Some may caricature this action plan as an attack on the Civil Service. It isn’t. It would be just as wrong to caricature the attitude of the Civil Service as one of unyielding resistance to change. Many of the most substantive ideas in this paper have come out of the work led by Permanent Secretaries themselves.”

But Maude is also frustrated at the quiet recalcitrance of some officials.  To a Lords committee that was inquiring into the accountability of civil servants, he said

“The thing for me that is absolutely fundamental in civil servants is that they should feel wholly uninhibited in challenging, advising and pushing back and then when a decision is made they should be wholly clear about implementing it.

“For me the sin against the holy ghost is to not push back and then not do it – that is what really enrages ministers, certainly in talking to ministers in the last government and in the current government. It is by no mean universal, but it is far more widespread than is desirable.”

It’s likely that Maude will keep Gateway reports secret so long as he has the cooperation of officials on civil service reforms.

Why officials oppose publication

The reasons for opposing publication were set out in the OGC’s evidence to an Information Tribunal on the Information Commissioner’s ruling in 2006 that the OGC publish two Gateway reports on the ID Cards scheme.

Below are some of the OGC’s arguments (all of which the Tribunal rejected).  The OGC went to the High Court to stop two early ID Cards Gateway reports being published, at which time OGC lawyers cited the 1689 Bill of Rights. The ID Cards gateway reports were eventually published (and the world didn’t end).

The OGC had argued that publishing Gateway reports would mean that:

–  Interviewees in Gateway reviews gave their time voluntarily and may refuse to cooperate.  (The Information Commissioner did not accept that officials would cease to perform their duties on the grounds the information may be disclosed.)

– Interviewees would be guarded in what they said;  reviewers would be less inclined to cooperate; and disclosure would result in anodyne reports. These three arguments were given in evidence by Sir Peter Gershon, the first Chief Executive of the OGC.

– Civil servants would be reluctant to take on the role of senior responsible owner of a project.

– Critics of a project would have ammunition which could discourage other departments and agencies from participating in the scheme.

– Cabinet collective responsibility could be undermined if Ministers were interviewed for a review.

– Criticisms in the reviews could be “in the newspapers within a very short time”, and the media could misrepresent the review’s findings. (The Tribunal discovered that those involved in the reviews were generally more concerned with their programme than possible adverse publicity.)

– Reports would take longer to write.

– The public would not understand the complexities in the reports.

Why Gateway reports should be published

The Tribunal found that OGC fears about publishing were speculative and that disclosure would contribute to a public debate about the merits of ID Cards, and provide some insight into the decision-making which underlay the scheme. Disclosure would ensure that a complex and sensitive scheme was “properly scrutinised and implemented”, said the Tribunal.

Was OGC evidence to Tribunal fixed?

The Tribunal was also suspicious that the OGC had submitted several witness statements that used identical wording. The Tribunal said the witnesses should have expressed views in their own words.

It found that disclosure could make Gateway reviewers more candid because they would know that their recommendations and findings would be subject to public scrutiny; and criticisms in the reports, if made public, could strengthen the assurance process.

Importantly, the Tribunal said the disclosure would help people judge whether the Gateway process itself works.

Comment

Hundreds of Gateway reports are carried out by former civil servants who can earn more than £1,000 a day for doing a review (although note Peter Smith’s comment below). As the reports are to remain secret how will the reviewers be held properly accountable for their assessments? No wonder officials don’t want the reports published.

Any idea how many projects we have and what they’ll cost? – Cabinet Office.

Whitehall cost cutting saves £5.5bn

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Posted in excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, governance, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, project management, public sector, Universal Credit

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How CIOs and IT suppliers view GovIT change

Posted on 25/06/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

CIOs and IT suppliers give their views on Government ICT in an authoritative report published today by the Institute for Government

Inside the wrapper of generally positive words, a report published today on government ICT by the Institute for Government suggests that major change is unlikely to happen, despite the best efforts of  CIOs and the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

The report “System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT strategy”  says progress has been made. But its messages suggest that reforms are unlikely to  amount to more than tweaks.

These are some of the key messages in the report:

If the minister and CIOs cannot direct change who can?

–          “… while the Minister for the Cabinet Office and government CIO are viewed as being responsible for delivering the ICT strategy (for example by the Public Accounts Committee) they currently lack the full authority to direct change.”

Not so agile

–           “While just over half of government departments may be running an agile project, there were concerns that these were often very minor projects running on the fringe of the departments.”

–          “We heard concerns from the supplier community and those inside government that in some areas projects may be being labelled as ‘agile’ without having really changed the way in which they were run.”

–          “CIOs should question whether they are genuinely improving the ways that they are working in areas such as agile, or whether they are just attaching a label to projects to get a tick in the box,” says the Institute for Government.

Savings not real?

–          “There was also an element of challenge to the savings figures provided by government. For example, some from government and the supplier community questioned whether the numbers represented genuine savings or just cuts in the services provided or deferred expenditure. “

–          “Others … cautioned that project scope creep or change requests could reduce actual savings in time. It was pointed out that the NAO [National Audit Office] will scrutinise whether savings have been achieved in future, which was seen as a clear incentive for accuracy – but there were, nonetheless, concerns that pressure to provide large savings figures meant that inadequate attention might be paid to verifying the savings …”

CIOs want faster ICT progress

–          “Among the CIOs we interviewed, there was a clear recognition that government ICT needed to improve.  ‘You expect an Amazon experience from a government department…’ ”

Lack of money good for change

–          “As one ICT lead noted, a lack of money was ‘always helpful’ in driving change as it promoted cross-government solution-sharing and led to more rigour in approving new spend.”

–          “Both ICT leaders and suppliers felt that the ICT moratorium had been a helpful stimulus for increased focus on value for money.”

–          “Though some of the larger suppliers felt bruised by the ‘smash and grab’ of initial interactions with the Coalition government, there was a recognition that the moratorium had been about ‘stopping things which were inappropriate’”.

GDS challenges norms

–          “New ways of working in the new Government Digital Service and the opening up of government through the Transparency agenda were also seen as providing a challenge to existing norms.”

–          The new Government Digital Service (GDS) is providing an example of a new way of doing things, and was pointed to by those inside and outside of government as embodying mould-breaking attitudes, using innovative techniques and … delivering results on very short timescales. Several interviews mentioned being invigorated by the positive approach of the GDS and their focus on delivering services to meet end-user needs.

ICT so poor staff circumvent it

–          “Public servants are increasingly frustrated that the ICT they use in their private lives appears to be far more advanced than the tools available to them at work. Indeed, there are already examples of employees circumventing the ICT that government provides them as they attempt to perform their job more effectively: creating what is known as a system of ‘shadow ICT’ that creates significant challenges for maintaining government security, collaborative working and government knowledge management.”

Joined-up Govt impossible?

–          “The possibility that departmental incentives continue to trump corporate contributions is further suggested by our survey results. Individuals do not yet feel that corporate contributions are valued or rewarded … elements of the [ICT] strategy call for departments to give up an element of autonomy and choice for the ‘greater good’. Several CIOs expressed concerns that by adopting elements of the strategy that were being developed or delivered by another department, they would end up having to accept a service that had been designed  around the needs of a different department.”

–          “Similarly, there were concerns that the host department would be at the top priority in the event of any problems or opportunities to develop services further. This speaks to a strongly department-centric culture. Suppliers noted, for example, that certain parts of government were still happy to ‘pay a premium for their autonomy’.”

–          “… the vast majority of those we spoke to suggested that departmental interests would almost always ultimately trump cross-government interests in the current government culture and context.”

–          “CIOs felt that they would be rewarded for delivery of departmental priorities – not pan-government work …”

CIO Council frustrations

“CIOs noted that there could be a discrepancy between what got agreed at the old CIO Council meetings and what people actually went away and did. Larger department CIOs also expressed frustration that – despite holding the largest budgets and carrying the largest delivery risks – their voices could easily be outweighed by the multitude of other people round the table.”

“The delivery board model [which has superseded CIO Council] has been recognised by both big and small departments as pragmatically dealing with both sides of this issue. Larger departments now form part of an inner-leadership circle, but with this recognition of their clout comes additional responsibility to own and drive through parts of the strategy… the challenge will now be to ensure that the ICT strategy doesn’t become a ‘large department-only’ affair and that other ICT leads can be effectively engaged.”

Canny suppliers?

–          The majority of ICT leads …stated that they believed the ICT strategy would benefit their department and government as a whole. This confidence was less apparent in the attitudes of suppliers who were, on the whole, more sceptical of government’s ability to drive change, though again generally supportive of the direction of travel.

A toothless ICT Strategy is of little value?

–          “…There was also a lack of clarity on how different elements of the [ICT] strategy would be enforced. As one ICT leader commented … ‘Is this a mandatable strategy or a reference document?’ ”

–          … “there are risks that the strategy could be delivered in a way that still doesn’t transform ICT performance.”

Francis Maude an asset

–          “Government ICT has also been a priority of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude – giving the [change] agenda unprecedented ministerial impetus. He has been a visible face of ICT to many inside and outside of government, from demanding departmental data on ICT to being heavily involved in negotiations with ICT suppliers. Though few of his ministerial colleagues appear as passionate about improving government ICT, the CIOs we interviewed overwhelmingly expressed confidence that they would receive the support they needed to implement the changes in ICT.”

Smaller-budget CIOs out of the loop?

–          “With the CIO Council in hiatus for most of the last year, the CIOs of smaller departments felt out of the loop …”

Most ICT spending is outside SW1

–          “Suppliers and other ICT leaders pointed out, rightly, that the vast majority of ICT expenditure happens outside SW1 – with agencies, local government and organisations like primary care trusts and police forces still determining much of the citizen and workforce experience of ICT.”

SMEs still left out?

–          “Smaller suppliers … were generally encouraged that government was trying to use more contractual vehicles which would be open to them – but noted that it was ‘still extremely difficult to get close to government as an SME’.”

Who knows if use of ICT is improving?

–          “Government still lacks the information it needs to judge whether use of ICT across government is improving.”

System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT Strategy.

Too early to claim success on GovIT – Institute for Government

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, CIO, cost reduction, culture, efficiency savings, governance, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, procurement, reducing cost strategically

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Civil service reform plan – real change or a tweak?

Posted on 19/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The civil service reform plan is to be published this afternoon, at 3.30pm.  The Cabinet Office minister  Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, write about it in today’s Daily Telegraph.

They say that the plan will help deliver a civil service culture that is “pacier, more innovative, less hierarchical and focused on outcomes not process”. They write:

“We also need sharper accountability, in particular from permanent secretaries and those leading major projects, and we need more digital services, better data and management information and for policy and implementation to be linked seamlessly together…”

In the same edition of the Telegraph Andrew Haldenby,  director of the independent think tank Reform, criticises the reform plan which, although not yet published, has been foretold in newspapers including the Financial Times yesterday.

He said the reform plan will “leave the flawed structures of Whitehall in place and do no more than propose some minor variations on a theme”.

We await publication of the paper before we judge it. We hope it will, at least, require the publication of “Gateway” review reports on the progress or otherwise of major IT-enabled projects.

Without timely publication of the Major Projects Authority’s Gateway reports, MPs and the public will continue to learn of failed schemes such as the NPfIT and Firecontrol when it is too late to do much about any rescue; and without contemporaneous publication there will continue to be no accountability for the rigour or otherwise of the reviews, or their outcome.

Civil service reform – meltdown or business as usual? – Institute for Government

Cabinet Office promises unprecedented openness on big, risky projects.

Civil service shake-up – Guardian

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, Cloud Computing, cost avoidance, cost reduction, culture, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, openness and transparency, public sector, public services

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Francis Maude talks open govt – and Whitehall does the opposite

Posted on 12/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

“If people do not know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong.” – Sir Arnold Robinson, Cabinet Secretary in a discussion on open government in Yes Minister.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said all the right things at the Intellect World Class Public Services conference 2012.

He said that:

– smaller, innovative and efficient suppliers were finding themselves locked out of the supply of services to Government because of what was described by Parliament as a powerful “oligopoly” of large suppliers

– for the first time in Government “we are using agile, iterative processes, open source technology platforms and world-class in-house development teams alongside the best digital innovation the market can offer”

– “We must eliminate failure waste. At the moment, a large proportion of our service delivery costs are incurred through incomplete or failed digital transactions. And these transactions create cross-channel duplication, which burdens the user and costs Government a huge amount in repeated costs. For HMRC alone, they estimate that 35% of calls to its contact centres are avoidable, which would save £75m.”

– “Transparency is a defining passion for this Government …”

Comment:

How much influence does Maude really have? Can he persuade permanent secretaries to effect major change? The evidence so far is that departmental officials and Maude have different ideas on what reform means.

In “Yes Minister” civil servants were proud of a new hospital that was the best run and most hygienic in the country, with no medical staff, 500 administrators and no patients.

Maude may also recall that Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the acclaimed writers of Yes Minister, spoke of the Whitehall law of inverse relevance – “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it”.

Open government? 

Perhaps civil servants are letting Maude get on with talking the talk while they find every way to keep things much as they are. A good example: The Guardian reported yesterday that a key part of the Government’s transparency drive has stalled amid reports of ministry opposition.

The paper’s political editor Patrick Wintour reported that plans to publish regular ‘traffic-light’ progress reports on large, costly and risky IT projects “appear to have been shelved”.

When it comes to IT this could have been the coalition’s most important single reform. It would have given MPs and the public a way of knowing when mega projects such as Universal Credit are failing. Usually we don’t know about a failed IT-related project unless there is a leak to the media, or the National Audit Office finds out and decides, with its limited budget, to do a study.

Sir Bob Kerslake, who is head of the civil service,  had indicated to MP Richard Bacon that “Gateway” review reports on large and risky IT and construction projects may be published in the civil service reform plan which is expected to be released this month.

Gateway reports to go unpublished?

Now it seems that departmental civil servants  have persuaded the Sir Bob not to publish “Gateway” reports. So the secrecy over the progress or otherwise of government mega projects is set to continue.

Yes, civil servants will allow the Cabinet Office to have its way on the publication of data about, say, some government spending. But it’s becoming clear that the civil service will not allow any publication of its reports on the progress or otherwise of major projects. It has been that way since Gateway reviews were introduced in 2001.

Some senior officials – by no means all – say they want a confidential “safe space” to discuss the progress of projects. The reality is that they do not want outsiders – MPs, the media and NAO auditors – meddling in their failing schemes – schemes such as Firecontrol and e-filing at the Ministry of Justice.

Unlike Maude, senior civil servants have what Jay and Lynn call a “flexible approach to open government”. This means in practice that Whitehall will happily release data – but not project reports on which the civil servants themselves can be judged.

Activity is not achievement

Maude’s speeches will give the impression of activity. But activity is the civil service’s substitute for achievement. I quote Jay and Lynn again, in part because their depiction of Whitehall seems to have been taken as serious wisdom by those officials who think Sir Humphrey a character worth living up to.

It’s time Maude and his team got a grip on departments. Until they do, permanent secretaries and their senior officials will regard Maude as trying to get out of situations that don’t need getting out of.

Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects?

The empty hospital – Yes Minister

Government’s transparency drive stalls.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cost avoidance, cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, oversight, Politics, SME

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Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects – after 10-year campaign?

Posted on 29/05/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office may be about to change its decade-old policy of not publishing reports on  the progress or otherwise of its large, costly and risky IT-based projects.

A change of policy from secrecy to openness would give MPs and the public warning of when a major project is in trouble and needs rescuing or cancelling.

Parliament last to know

For more than a decade campaigners have sought to persuade successive governments to publish “Gateway” reviews, which are short independent audits on the state of big projects.  The secrecy has meant that Parliament is usually the last to know when new national schemes go wrong. IT-related failures have hit many public services including those related to tax, benefits, immigration, passports, the fire service, prisons, schools examinations, student loans, the police and health services.

Now Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, has hinted to campaigning Conservative MP Richard Bacon that the Cabinet Office may change its policy and publish the “red, amber, green” status of large projects as they are routinely assessed.

Kerslake was replying to Bacon at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee meeting on transparency. Bacon pointed out at the hearing that the Public Accounts Committee had, years ago, called for Gateway reviews to be published.

Not learning from mistakes

“Something I have always been puzzled by is why government does not learn from its mistakes particularly but not only in the area of IT where things go wrong again and again, again and again,” said Bacon. “I have come to the conclusion government does not learn from its mistakes because it does not have a learning curve. If you don’t have a learning curve you are not going to learn.”

He cited the example of how Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, had, at Bacon’s request, arranged for an “Opening Gate” report on Universal Credit to be published in the House of Commons library.

But, said Bacon, when an IT journalist applied to the Department for Work and Pensions, under the FOI Act, for the release of all Gateway reports on Universal Credit, the DWP would not publish any of them  – and even refused an FOI request to release the report Watmore had arranged to be placed in the House of Commons library, which Bacon obtained.  “So there is still a culture of intuitive, instinctive secrecy,”  Bacon said. Kerslake replied:

“Yes, actually we are looking at this specific issue as part of the Civil Service Reform Plan….I cannot say exactly what will be in the plan because we have not finalised it yet, but it is due in June and my expectation is that I am very sympathetic to publication of the RAG [red, amber, green] ratings.”

Bacon pointed out that the Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates had said Gateway reviews would be published.  But the commitment was removed for no apparent reason. When the Cabinet Office was asked why,  it said the Structural Reform Plans were only ever “drafts”.

Bacon asked Kerslake if the Government now plans to publish the Gateway reports.  “The Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates originally said Gateway reviews would be published  and then it somehow got downgraded into a draft; and from what’s publicly available at the moment the position of the government is not to publish Gateway reviews.  You sound as if you’re saying that’s going to change. Is that right?” asked Bacon.

“Watch this space,” replied Kerslake. “I am sympathetic. I generally broadly welcome, in principle, the idea of publishing information but there are lots of risks …”

Peter Gershon introduced Gateway reviews when he was Chief Executive of the Office of Government Commerce, which is now part of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group. The reviews are carried out at key decision times in a project and are sometimes repeated:

  • Gateway Review 0 – Strategic assessment
  • Gateway Review 1 – Business justification
  • Gateway Review 2 – Procurement strategy
  • Gateway Review 3 – Investment decision
  • Gateway Review 4 – Readiness for service
  • Gateway Review 5 – Benefits realisation

Are Gateway reviews a success?

Gateway reviews are now supplemented by regular assurance audits carried out for the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. None of the reports is published.

Gateway reviews have not stopped costly failures such as Firecontrol or the NPfIT.  One permanent secretary told an MP that the reviews in his department were considered unimportant by senior responsible owners, for whom the reports are written. This may be because SROs often have charge of many projects; and even their SRO responsibilities are often in addition to their main jobs.

But Gershon had high hopes of Gateway reviews when they were introduced in February 2001. This is evident from the number of times he referred to Gateway reviews at one hearing of the Public Accounts Committee in December 2001.

 “… as the Gateway review process cuts in, which I have referred to on a number of occasions when I have appeared at this Committee …”

“… Through things like the Gateway process we are helping to sharpen the focus on the whole life aspects of these and other forms of complex projects in public sector procurement…”

“ …First, we have the introduction of the Gateway review process…”

“ … The Gateway process is a demonstrable example of how we have introduced a technique to support that whole life approach…”

“… If you look at the guidelines around the Gateway review process that is one of the things that is tested by these independent reviews …”

“… we recognised that that was a problem some time ago, which is why in the Gateway review one of the things that is explicitly tested is things like the skills and capabilities of the team at the design and build stage and that the skills and capabilities of the team at the procurement stage …”

“… in this area with the Gateway review process, from when we first launched it last February, we have been helping the department take a whole life approach to these forms of complex projects …”

“… Part of the Gateway Review process is to get a much sharper insight on to where we see good things happening where we can encourage other clients to replicate them…”

“… Now, with the Gateway Review process, my experience has been because of where we have deliberately focused the attention on the early life of projects where there is the greater scope for management to take corrective action, the accounting officers are paying a lot of attention to the recommendations that are emerging because, much to my surprise, most of them do not seem to like coming here defending what has gone wrong in the past. They seem to welcome the recommendations that we are providing to them to help try to get projects on to much stronger foundations in the future…”

“… With the Gateway Review, my experience has been that the Accounting Officers respond to the recommendations very positively…”

“…Gateway Reviews explicitly test how the department is planning in the pre-contract phase to secure ongoing value for money in the post-contract phase…”

“… Take, firstly, the Gateway Review process. That is testing various points in the life cycle of the project, from the very earliest stage…”

“… I would certainly expect in Gateway Reviews that the review team would be testing what methods were in place to facilitate the ongoing management of the contract…”

“… I think it is encouraging that Sir Ian Byatt thought the Gateway Review process had sufficient value to recommend it in his own review…”

And so forth.

Comment:

We applaud Richard Bacon MP for his persistent call for Gateway reports to be published.

Gateway reviews have defeated expectations that they would stop failures; and the National Audit Office tells us that central departments don’t even request Gateway reviews on some big and risky projects although they are supposed to be mandatory.

But Gateway and other project assurance reports could prove invaluable if they are published. In the public domain the reports would enable Parliament and Francis Maude’s “armchair auditors” to hold officials and SROs to account for projects that are in danger of failing. That would be an incentive for officialdom to fail early and fail cheaply; and Gateway reviewers may take greater care to be neutral in their findings – not too lenient, or too harsh – on the basis that the reports would be open to public scrutiny. SROs would also have to take the review reports seriously – not just put them in a draw because nobody knows about them anyway.

We welcome Kerslake’s comments but hope that he and his colleagues plan to publish more than the RAG (Red/Amber/Green) status of projects. Otherwise they will be missing an opportunity.  Gateway reports and other assurance reviews are expensive. Reviewers can earn up to £1,000 a day. This money  could be well spent if the reviews are to be published; but it will add to public waste if the reports are kept secret and continue to be deemed pointless or unimportant by departments.

It is ironic, incidentally, that the Ministry of Justice, which introduced the FOI Act, gives advice to departments to keep the RAG status of Gateway reviews confidential. In its advice on Gateway reviews and the FOI, the MoJ tells departments that the “working assumption” is that the substance of the Gateway reports should be kept confidential until at least two years have elapsed.

It’s time for a culture change. Maybe the Civil Service Reform Plan next month will be worth reading.

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Posted in change management, cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, NHS, npfit, openness and transparency, oversight, Politics, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Farewell to Ian Watmore – the antithesis of Sir Humphrey

Posted on 17/05/2012 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

A good insight into the departure of Ian Watmore comes from Peter Smith of Spend Matters who says:

 “He (Watmore) lives in Cheshire still (and does a weekly commute to London) and this seems to be driven by personal factors – he wants to do more non-executive stuff,  work with charities, education bodies, and support his wife who is being ordained as a vicar shortly.

“There will be a competition to replace him but Melanie Dawes (?) will be the interim Perm Sec.”

Watmore leaves in June at the height of his civil service career. It would be too easy to cite his background as UK Managing Director of Accenture to say that he came to the civil service with a sympathy for big suppliers and not upsetting the smooth-running of the government IT machine.

Indeed he will not go down in civil service history as a heavy-handed enforcer of central government reforms: he respects too much the work of senior civil servants and particularly CIO colleagues to be seen as an opponent whose will cannot be overcome.

Rather he has been an authoritative go-between, a pragmatist who has sought to implement the radical cost-saving measures demanded by the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude without giving departments any excuse to cite central diktats as the reason for disruption to frontline services.

Watmore gave an insight into his relationship with Maude at a Parliamentary committee hearing earlier this year. His comments also exploded the myth that the private and public sectors can be run on comparable lines.

“I have been on both sides of the divide on private and public,” said Watmore. “The thing that is different about  the public sector is the combination of leadership from the ministerial class and the civil service class. There is no corporate analogue for it. People talk about the way it analogises to the business world—I don’t think it does; it is different…

“I work on a daily basis with Francis Maude. I am not going to make any political comments about Francis, but as a man I feel that he cares about what he is doing;  he knows his stuff and he drives us very hard. In response, I give, shall we say, robust advice in return. Mostly, he listens and sometimes I defer to him and we come back to the same place we started, but more often than not we flesh out the differences behind closed doors and then we come out on a united front. I think that is the best way to get civil service and ministerial leadership. If you have a weakness in one part or the other, the whole thing breaks down.”

At Campaign4Change we will remember Watmore’s career in the civil service for his openness, honesty and lack of ego.

When answering questions before Parliamentary committees, some permanent secretaries seem to see MPs as adversaries. These civil servants’ replies are characterised by clever, evasive or adversarial comments.  They apologise if the mistakes were before their time but usually they’re protective of their departments, as if defending their children against criticism by outsiders.

Watmore is the antithesis of the archetypal civil servant.  Whereas, for example, most civil servants want to keep confidential internal “Gateway” reports on the progress or otherwise of high-risk IT and construction projects, Watmore is on record as saying he would like them published (though they haven’t been).

And he has earned respect among MPs for his straightforwardness. He’ll speak lucidly on his department’s achievements, but not his own.

How much effect he has had on other departments is hard to gauge. It’s difficult to see how the most ruthless enforcer in the Cabinet Office could ever have much influence in other departments.

For though the Cabinet Office has powers from David Cameron to enforce cost-savings,  departmental heads remain accountable for their own decisions. Watmore has spoken of the tensions between the Cabinet Office and departments.  He told MPs earlier this year:

“There are lots of examples where we and Departments have common cause. There will be times when we challenge what they want to do and it can be a tense relationship. Sometimes we agree with what they were going to do anyway, and other times they agree with us, but it means that we are engaging with them.”

Chair: How well is it working on a scale of one to 10 … on the cross-departmental working?

Watmore: “On the whole cross-departmental working, I would say it is somewhere around the six or seven mark. There is more to do.”

Watmore shuns the trappings of high office.  He doesn’t even have an office. “I refuse to have one,” he told MPs this year. “I don’t believe in physical offices for managers. I hot-desk wherever I happen to feel it is appropriate to work that week…

“What I tend to do is I move around and I sit with a different group in the Cabinet Office for a week. Initially people think it is a bit odd having the Permanent Secretary sitting next to them but once you carry on as normal they realise you are just another person working there.

“You actually get to find out quite a lot about how the operation works by being there with the staff for a week as well as hearing from them in a more formal setting…

“It is how I operated when I was in business so it is a long-term way of working. But when I came into Government I discovered it by accident; when I wanted to move the staff from two different bits of Government into a new building and introduce flexible working, hot-desking and all the rest of it, I said, ‘If it is good enough for the rest of the staff, it should be good enough for me…’

Will Maude find someone authoritative and influential but without a big ego to replace Watmore at the top of the Cabinet Office? A difficult assignment.

4 Comments

Posted in capacity building, efficiency savings, governance, Government IT, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, procurement, public sector, supplier relationships

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The real reason NHS Risk Register is a State secret?

Posted on 16/05/2012 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Yesterday  (15 May 2012) the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham issued a finely-crafted report to Parliament on his concerns about the Government’s use of a ministerial veto to stop publication of the Transition Risk Register relating to health service reforms.

Graham’s concern is that the veto represents a new and worrying approach to Freedom of Information.

Graham cannot do anything about the veto but he can warn MPs when he feels the Government has gone too far. This he has done in his report which says that the previous three occasions on which the ministerial veto has been exercised related to the disclosure of Cabinet material under FOIA. Now the Government has applied the veto to information held by the Department of Health.

Says yesterday’s report: “ The Commissioner would wish to record his concern that the exercise of the veto in this case extends its use into other areas of the policy process. It represents a departure from the position adopted in the Statement of Policy and therefore marks a significant step in the Government’s approach to freedom of information.”

The Government’s decision to ban publication of the health service risk register is particularly relevant to IT-related projects. This is because the government uses exactly the same arguments to ban contemporaneous publication of Gateway reviews and other independent assessments of IT-related projects and programmes.

Risk registers and Gateway reviews of IT-enabled change projects are similar. They are designed to identify all the main risks associated with the project or programme and have a red/amber/green system of rating the risks.

The Government’s argues that risk registers (and Gateway reviews) are researched and written in a “safe space” that allows civil servants to give advice and recommendations in a frank way. This candour would be compromised if the civil servants thought their advice would be published, says the Government.

In issuing a veto on the health risk register Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary said, in essence, that he could not trust civil servants to be entirely honest if they knew their reports would be made public.

Said Lansley:  “If risk registers are routinely or regularly disclosed at highly sensitive times in relation to highly sensitive issues, or there is legitimate concern that they could be, it is highly likely that the form and content will change: to make the content more anodyne; to strip out controversial issues or downplay them; to include argument as to why risks might be worth taking; to water down the RAG [red,amber, green] system.

“They would be drafted as public facing documents designed to manage the public perception of risk; not as frank internal working tools. These consequences (many of them insidious) would be to the detriment of good government.”

Lansley also wanted to ban publication to pre-empt sensational media coverage.  In this he was repeating the arguments made by civil servants under Labour who refused, under the FOI Act, to publish risk registers and Gateway reviews.  Said Lansley “I consider that the form and the frankness of the content of TRR [health service Transition Risk Register] would have been liable to create sensationalised reporting and debate.

“The content would also have been inherently highly open to misinterpretation by both the press seeking a headline and/or for political reasons. The likelihood of this occurring is particularly acute where the subject matter is, as with the Transition programme, controversial and the proposals at a highly sensitive stage.”

But the Commissioner did not accept that disclosure of the Transition Risk Register would affect the frankness and candour of future risk registers. The Commissioner also said that a ministerial veto should, by law, be made only in exceptional circumstances.  But the Government has failed to explain why there are exceptional circumstances in this case.  Said the Commissioner:

“The Commissioner does not consider that sufficient reasons have been given as to why this case is considered to be exceptional, particularly in light of the [Information] Tribunal’s decision dismissing the Department’s [Department of Health’s] appeal.

“The Commissioner notes that much of the argument advanced as to why the case is considered to be exceptional merely repeats the arguments previously made to Commissioner and the Tribunal and which were in part dismissed by the Tribunal.”

Graham concludes:

“In light of previous commitments he has made, and the interest shown by past Select Committees in the use of the ministerial veto, the Commissioner intends to lay a report before Parliament under section 49(2) FOIA on each occasion that the veto is exercised. This document fulfils that commitment.

“ Laying this report is an indication of the Commissioner’s concern to ensure that the exercise of the veto does not go unnoticed by Parliament and, it is hoped, will serve to underline the Commissioner’s view that the exercise of the ministerial veto in any future case should be genuinely exceptional…

“The arguments employed by the Department at the Tribunal and by the Secretary of State in explanation of the subsequent veto, both in the Statement of Reasons and in exchanges in the House of Commons around the Ministerial Statement, certainly use the language of ‘exceptional circumstances’ and ‘matter of principle’. But the arguments are deployed in support of what is in fact the direct opposite of the exceptional – a generally less qualified, and therefore more predictable, ‘safe space’.

“As such, the Government’s approach in this matter appears to have most to do with how the law might be changed to apply differently in future. This question falls naturally to consideration by the Justice Committee who have been undertaking post-legislative scrutiny of the Act.”

Comment:

The reason for the veto in the case of the health service risk register has little to do with protecting a safe space for frank discussion.

Civil servants already compile risk registers, Gateway reviews and similar reports on the basis that they may, at some point, be published. Officials are no more likely to be frank if they know their reports will be confidential than more guarded if they know the documents will be published. They will do what their job entails. Their job requires honesty. They will do that job whether or not reports are published.

The real reason for the veto – and the refusal of departments to publish all contemporaneous internal reports on large and complex programmes, particularly those with a large IT element – is that some new schemes within Government operate at a shambolic level.

Any new government, whatever its hue, soon learns to keep secret the fact that such programmes are sometimes characterised by near anarchy.

One outsider to the UK government, Australian David Pitchford, discovered the truth when he became Executive Director of Major Projects within the Efficiency and Reform Group which is part of the Cabinet Office. Pitchford may not have realised his comments would be reported when he told a project management conference in 2010 that “nobody in the UK Government seems to know how many projects they have on the books, nor how much these are likely to cost”.

He found that projects were launched, and continued, without agreed budgets or business cases.  Today, there is better scrutiny of major projects, by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. But the MPA is limited in what it can do or scrutinise. Which leaves government in a general mess when it comes to implementing anything new.

Evidence for this mess comes from the National Audit Office. Its auditors tend to investigate departments as a whole more than they do specific projects but when they do the careful reader can see that projects such as the Rural Payments Agency’s Single Payment Scheme (a scant regard for public funds, said the NAO) and the C-NOMIS project for the prison service (kindergarten mistakes, said chair of Public Accounts Committee) were without a structure. Chaos prevailed – and ministers were among the last to know.

Publication of project reports encourages professionalism. Departmental heads can be held to account if Parliament knows what has gone wrong. That’s precisely the reason departmental heads don’t want risk registers and other project reports published. It’s why all internal reports on Universal Credit, the government’s biggest IT-related project, are kept secret in spite of FOI requests.

The ministerial veto in the case of the NHS risk register is the government and civil service colluding in keeping the public and Parliament in ignorance of internal management’s inability to run complex new projects and programmes in a professional way.

Ministers and permanent secretaries don’t especially mind media criticisms that are based on speculation. They don’t want their critics having authoritative internal reports. That’s why the Cabinet agreed the health service veto – and it’s one reason the government has a not-very-hidden aversion to the FOI Act.

The coalition cannot justly claim to cherish open government while it is refusing so many requests under FOI to publish contemporaneous taxpayer-funded reports on its major schemes.

We agree with the Information Commissioner that use of the ministerial veto is a step too far. No number of announcements by the Cabinet Office on open government will gloss over the fact that the coalition is even more secretive about mega-projects than Labour. That’s saying something.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, NHS, operational issues, Politics, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Whitehall defies NAO and Cameron on publishing status of big projects

Posted on 02/05/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Government action to cut the number of failures of big projects including those with a major ICT component has made a difference, the National Audit Office reports today.

In its report “Assurance for major projects”  the NAO is largely supportive of actions by the Government, , the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority and the Treasury in setting up reviews of major high-risk projects, including ICT-based programmes, to ensure that if they are failing they are put back on track or cancelled.

The NAO says the Government’s decision to “dismantle” the NPfIT was taken after the project was assessed by the Major Projects Authority.

But the report also shows how civil servants have managed to defy a mandate from the Prime Minister, and a separate NAO recommendation in 2010, for information on the status of big ICT and other high-risk projects to be published.

Says the NAO report

“The ambition to publish project information, as part of the government’s transparency agenda, has not been met.

“Our 2010 report recommended that the government should publicly report project status. We consider that public reporting of project information is key to providing greater accountability for projects and improving project outcomes… Regular transparent reporting of performance which highlights successes and non-compliance would also help to build an enduring assurance system.”

Separately in the report the NAO says

“There has been a lack of progress on transparency.  The [Cabinet Office’s Major Projects] Authority has not yet met its commitment to publish project information in line with government’s transparency agenda. The Authority cannot deliver this objective on its own. Senior level discussions are ongoing, between Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and departments, on the arrangements for public reporting.”

Should ministers intevene to force publication?

But the NAO report does not raise the question of why ministers have not intervened to force civil servants to publish the status information on high-risk projects.

Campaign4Changehas argued that publishing status reports on big ICT projects and programmes would be the most effective single action any government could take to reduce the number of failures. (see “Comment” below)

Prime Minister’s 2011 mandate

The NAO’s 2010 recommendation for status information on major projects to be published was backed by a mandate from the Prime Minister in January 2011 which included the undertaking to “require publication of project information consistent with the Coalition’s transparency agenda”.

The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has recommended that departments publish information on the state of their major IT-based projects and programmes; and the Information Commissioner has rejected civil service arguments for not publishing such information.

In addition Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said, when in opposition, that the Conservatives, if they gained power,  would publish “Gateway” review reports soon after they are completed.  Gateway reports are similar to the assurance reviews carried out for the Major Projects Authority.

Yet none of this has happened.

The “rebel” civil servants

How is it that a group of civil servants who are opposed to publishing information on the status of large risky projects can defy the Prime Minister, Francis Maude, the National Audit Office, and the all-party Public Accounts Committee? Those recalcitrant civil servants argue that assurance reviewers would not tell the whole truth if they knew their assessments would be made public.

But how do we know they tell the whole truth when the reports are kept confidential? The Information Commissioner has pointed out in the past that civil servants have a public duty to be candid and honest. If they are not because their reports are to be published, they are failing in their public duty.

Today’s NAO report says there are differences of opinion among civil servants over whether to publish status information on projects.

Says the NAO

“There has been some support for greater transparency from departments who believe that tracking and publishing major milestones could create helpful tension in the system.

“However, concerns have been raised that increased transparency could limit the value of assurance, as it could inhibit assurance reviewers and project staff holding full and frank discussions.

“Some senior project staff also have concerns that public reporting could have a negative commercial impact, and would prefer delayed rather than real-time public reporting.”

The Cabinet Office told Campaign4Change in 2010 and 2011 that instead of publishing status reports on each major project, it will publish an annual report on the state of its programmes.

But that hasn’t happened either.

Says the NAO:

“As well as the objective to publish project information, the [Major Projects] Authority has not yet met its objective to publish an annual report on government’s major projects.

“The Authority initially expected to publish an annual report in December 2011 but is now expecting the report to be published in May or June 2012. The format of the annual report, and the information it will contain, has yet to be decided.”

Comment:

Many times over the last 20 years I have said that publishing status reports on major IT-based projects and programmes would be the most effective single action any government could take to deter departments from going ahead with overly ambitious schemes that are doomed to fail. If, against good sense, impractical schemes are approved, publishing status information will make all the difference.

Permanent secretaries will not lose sleep over a failing project, but they will not want information on it published – which is why that information should be published.

Publishing status information would give civil servants a good reason to tackle weaknesses as they developed.  Permanent secretaries may not mind losing public money on a failing project or programme. They will always fear embarrassment, however.

Who is really in control of Whitehall – civil servants or No 10? David Cameron’s office has issued a mandate that requires status information on projects to be published. The NAO has issued a similar recommendation. How long can the civil service hold out against the political will?

Links:

NAO report – Assurance for major projects

Firecontrol – same mistakes repeated on other projects

1 Comment

Posted in cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, operational issues, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public sector

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Is DWP stance on Universal Credit reports mocking FOI?

Posted on 27/04/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions, which has remained as secretive over the progress or otherwise of its IT-based projects as before the 2005 Freedom of Information Act, has, as expected, rejected our FOI request for reports on the state of the Universal Credit project.

We have appealed and the DWP has, as is customary, delayed its response. It appears that the Department works on the principle that the longer it delays FOI responses the more out of date will be its reports when the Information Commissioner eventually rules they must be published.

In its reply to us, the DWP gave reasons for hiding a report it has already put in the public domain: a “Starting Gate Review” of Universal Credit.

Hiding reports under its jumper

The review was carried out in February 2011. That the DWP is keeping under its jumper a public report suggests that its responses to the FOI Act owe more to instinct than proper consideration.

The DWP also refused to publish, under the FOI Act, a Universal Credit “Project Assessment Review in November 2011” by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

These are the reasons Ethna Harnett, Universal Credit Division, DWP,  gave for refusing our FOI request for Universal Credit project progress reports:

– “Further reviews, by the Major Project Authority and by the National Audit Office are planned.”

– “Elements of the information you requested is being withheld as it falls under the exemption in Section 36 (2) (b) and (c) of the Freedom of Information Act. This exemption requires the public interest for and against disclosure to be balanced.”

– “The information you have requested includes details of a sensitive nature whose publication would prejudice effective conduct of public affairs. There is a strong public interest in the Department maintaining an efficient and effective risk management and assurance process and in ensuring that this process is not undermined by premature disclosure particularly where risks are not yet fully mitigated.”

– “There is also a strong public interest in the Department being able to carry out and use frank assessments, including unrestrained and candid contributions from business areas. ”

– “The assurance reports produced by the Major Project Authority are not shared beyond the Senior Responsible Owner and interested parties within Government.”

– “DWP Ministers have, however, committed to update Parliament on the Universal Credit programme through written ministerial statements. These statements are available on the Parliamentary website – www.parliament.uk.”

– “The Major Projects Authority will publish information on the progress of the Government’s high-risk and high-value projects, referred to collectively as the government major projects portfolio, alongside the first annual report at the end of this financial year.”

Comment:

The DWP has never met any of our FOI requests and has, in every case, delayed its responses to our requests for internal appeals. The result of the appeals is always the same – the upholding of the original decision. We are in awe of the DWP’s ability to detach its IT operations from the FOI Act.

The DWP considers it is acting in the public interest: that assessments of its IT-based projects such as Universal Credit would not be candid if they were put in the public domain.

But if the DWP had got this right and that its assurance reports would be less effective if published, we’d expect to see successes with major DWP IT-based projects. We don’t see the evidence.

Indeed the signs are that Universal Credit, the DWP’s biggest project, is in trouble; and after 20 years the Department is still having trouble combining its various benefit systems.

The National Audit Office has qualified the DWP’s accounts every year for the last 23 years, largely because of the level of official error and fraud.

Is this a department that is getting IT right?  There is no evidence it is; and some evidence suggests it isn’t.

The DWP needs to change. It needs to see openness as an opportunity not a threat. Openness would show that officials are prepared to be measured publicly against the findings of their assessment reports. That needs self-confidence.

On the other hand secrecy permits an uneasy introspection, allows weaknesses to take hold, and gives officials comfort in not changing.

Somerset Maugham put it well in his excellent book Of human Bondage. He said: “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”

Time for truth on Universal Credit

Millions of pounds of secret DWP reports

Universal Credit latest

FOI blog

Trying to kill the FOI Act?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, culture, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HMRC, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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