Category Archives: managing change

New child support system has 90,000 requirements – in phase one

Posted on 29/02/2012 | 3 comments

                               A new old-style government IT disaster?

By Tony Collins

While officials in the Cabinet Office offcials try to simplify and cut costs of Government IT, a part of the Department for Work and Pensions has commissioned a system with 90,000 requirements in phase one.

The projected costs of the child maintenance system have risen by 85% and the delivery date has slipped by more than two years.

Even with 90,000 requirements, phase one, which is due to go live in October, excludes 70 requirements that are “deemed critical” says a report published today by the National Audit Office.

The NAO report indicates that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has commissioned an old-style large IT system using traditional developing techniques and relying on large companies.

G-Cloud and SMEs have not featured in the Commission’s IT strategy – and it abandoned agile techniques last year on its child maintenance project.

The Commission put the cost of its new child maintenance system at £149m in January 2011. Ten months later it put the cost at £275m, an 85% increase. The Commission was unable to give the NAO a full explanation for the difference.

Lessons from past failures not learned?

Today’s NAO report says there is a risk the Commission will repeat mistakes by the Child Support Agency whose IT system and business processes were criticised in several Parliamentary reports. The Commission takes in the work of the Child Support Agency – and indeed runs its own systems and the Child Support Agency’s in parallel.

Officials at the Commission told the NAO they have a good track record of holding back IT releases until they are satisfied they will work.  “Nevertheless, we found that the Commission is at risk of repeating many of the mistakes of 2003,” said the NAO. Those mistakes include over-optimism and a lack of internal expertise to handle suppliers.

Mixing “agile” and “waterfall” doesn’t work

Initially civil servants at the Commission tried to “mix and match” agile and traditional developing techniques – which Agile advocates say should not be attempted.

In 2011 the Commission gave up on agile and “reverted to a more traditional approach to system development” says the NAO report.

The mix and match approach meant there were two distinct routes for specifying requirements and “resulted in duplicated, conflicting and ambiguous specifications”.  The Commission did not have previous experience of using the agile approach.

The Commission’s child maintenance system was due to go live in April 2010 but the delivery date has slipped three times. Phase one is now due to go live in October 2012 and phase two in July next year but the NAO report raises questions about whether the go-lives will happen successfully. The Commission has not planned in its financial estimates for the failure of the system.

The NAO finds that the Commission has struggled to make its requirements for the new system clear. The Commission’s main developer Tata Consulting Services has had protracted discussions over the meaning and implementation of requirements.

The NAO also hints that IT costs may be out of control. It says the Commission may not secure value for money without properly considering alternative options for restructuring and “adequately controlling its IT development …”

These are some of the NAO’s findings:

IT costs could increase further

“The new system is based on ‘commercial off-the-shelf’ products. However, a recent audit by Oracle identified that the performance, maintainability and adaptability of the new system would be key risks. This could increase the cost of supporting the system. The scheme does not yet include plans for the integration with HM Revenue & Customs’ Real Time Information system due to be implemented in 2013, or introducing Universal Credit because of the differing timescales,” says the NAO which adds:

“Achieving the Commission’s plans without further cost increases or delays appears unlikely. The Commission reported to the audit committee in October 2011 on the high risk that the change programme may not deliver phase two functionality within agreed timescales … The Commission did not develop a benefits realisation plan until November 2011.”

103,000 of Commission’s 1.1m cases are handled manually

“Ongoing technical problems have resulted in a large number of cases being removed from the IT system and managed manually. These are known as clerical cases … The Commission has had to operate the ‘old’ and ‘current’ schemes in parallel.  Due to flaws in the IT systems for each scheme, some 100,000 cases have had to be processe:d separately by clerical staff at a cost of £48 million,” says the NAO. It takes 900 contractors to manage the clerical cases.

Comment

Despite numerous NAO reports on failures of Government IT-based projects over the past 30 years the disasters are still happening, with the same mistakes repeated: over-optimism in every aspect of the project including timetables and financial estimates; excessive complexity and over-specification, no sign of cost-consciousness and, worst of all, an apparent indifference to being held accountable for a major failure.

A glance at the monthly outgoings of the Commission (well done to the coalition for requiring departments and agencies to publish contracts over £25,000) show sizeable and regular payments to familiar names among the large suppliers: HP Enterprise Services (formerly EDS), Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services, BT Global Services and Capita. There is hardly an SME in sight and no sign of imaginative thinking.

Meanwhile some senior officials at the Commission put in monthly expenses for thousands of pounds in travel, accomodation and subsistence for “Commission meetings”. One wonders: to what useful effect?

Officials at the Cabinet Office are trying to change the culture of departments and agencies. They are encouraging departmental heads to do things differently. They advocate the use of  SMEs to show how new ways of working can trounce traditional approaches to projects.

But the Cabinet Office has little influence on the Department of Work and Pensions. Indeed the DWP has lost its impressive chief innovator James Gardner.

We praise the NAO for noting that the Commission risks repeating the IT-related and project management mistakes of the Child Support Agency. But we note with concern that the NAO still puts up with Whitehall’s non-publication of  Gateway reviews, which are independent reports on the progress or otherwise of big and risky IT-based projects.

Would the Commission have been so apparently careless of the risks if it had known that regular Gateway reports on its shortcomings would be published?

How many more government IT-based projects are late, over budget and at risk of failing, their weaknesses hidden by an unwritten agreement between the coalition and civil servants to keep Gateway reviews secret?

NAO report – Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission: cost reduction

Government repeating child support mistakes – ComputerworldUK

3 Comments

Posted in Agile, capacity building, change, change management, CIO, Gateway reviews, Government IT, India, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public sector, public services

Tagged , , , ,

Cerner system “too entrenched to be scrapped”

Posted on 22/02/2012 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

A report by Deloitte on problematic Cerner installations at some hospitals in Australia calls for the government to appoint a chief medical information officer to oversee computer projects across the State.

The Deloitte report is a reminder that new IT in hospitals can have good – and adverse – safety implications for patients.

Obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald under Australia’s Freedom of Information Act, the Deloitte report is said to accept complaints last year that the system put patients’ health at risk by providing insufficient alerts to clinicians when messages did not reach their destination.  Deloitte found no evidence of harm to patients.

Though the Deloitte report is specific to the Cerner “FirstNet”  system as installed at some emergency departments in New South Wales, the idea of a chief medical information officer is arguably a good one for the UK where the Department of Health’s CIO (currently Katie Davis, interim Managing Director, NHS Informatics) is not responsible for the medical implications of IT go-lives in NHS hospitals.

New systems bypass the sort of regulation that helps protects the public against harm from medical devices. After hospital IT disasters there is no requirement for a genuinely independent investigation, as happens after airline crashes.

The Sydney Morning Herald [SMH] reports Deloitte as saying that the FirstNet system, which was installed to help run emergency departments across New South Wales, is chronically underfunded.

Deloitte was asked to report on the system after some hospital staff last year lost confidence in the software and returned to manual record-keeping.

Despite continuing problems and excessive time spent on data entry, the FirstNet system is too entrenched to be scrapped and the government should instead invest in bringing it up to scratch, said Deloitte.

”With some exception, FirstNet reporting is inadequate for effective governance of [emergency department] operations,” said Deloitte as reported by the SMH.

Nurses and doctors had complained that the system increased the amount of time they spent at a screen and reduced contact with patients. But the Deloitte report said more time spent on data entry ”was essential to realise the eventual benefits of an eventual [electronic medical record]”, such as greater accuracy of test results and medicine orders.

Upgrades were improving safety at some hospitals but needed to be across the state.

The government should appoint a chief medical information officer to oversee computing projects across the state, and pay for continuing development and training for FirstNet, said Deloitte.

The Health Minister, Jillian Skinner, said clinicians did not want to scrap FirstNet because they didn’t “want to start anew”.

The list of hospitals that have had serious problems after IT installations is growing, in part because the increasing use of technology in healthcare. Though hospital staff tend to learn in time to manage new systems, the unanswered question is whether patient care and treatment – and potentially their health and safety – should be damaged in an unregulated way until the problems are solved or mitigated.

Below is the UK list where it is known that the installation of new IT has caused serious disruption.  Any effect on individual patients has gone unreported:

Barts and The London

Royal Free Hampstead

Weston Area Health Trust

Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Trust

Worthing and Southlands

Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust

Nuffield Orthopaedic

North Bristol.

St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust

University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust

Birmingham Women’s Foundation Trust

NHS Bury

**

Links:

Does Hospital IT need airline-style certification?

Hospital computer system found lacking – Sydney Morning Herald

Jon Patrick’s essay on the effectiveness and impact of Cerner’s FirstNet system in some hospitals in New South Wales.

2 Comments

Posted in Cerner, health, health records, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, NHS, npfit, operational issues, Politics, public sector

Tagged , ,

Veterans Affairs lines up contractors for landmark health records IT project

Posted on 10/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

A US IT project is being developed to provide  US military veterans with instant electronic access to their health and benefits information and other services.

According to Federal Times, the Veterans Affairs Department is now working with companies it already has on a $12 billion information technology contract to help it develop the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Health Record (VLER)

Last July, Veterans Affairs awarded 14 contractors, including CACI, Harris and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services, a place on the department‘s Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology( T4) programme. The 15th and final spot is reported to have gone to SAIC.

Under the “five-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity task-order contracts”, vendors will provide program management and strategy planning, systems and software engineering, and other support.

The T4 contract has already been the subject of multiple bid protests – presumably because it appears so lucrative – including one filed last year Standard Communications in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

According to Federal Times, “nearly 39,000 US military veterans in 12 regions across the country — including Indianapolis, Richmond, and San Diego — have signed up to have their health information shared electronically among the Veterans Affairs, the US Department of Defence (DoD), and private health care providers.

“When participating veterans receive care, their physicians can request their laboratory results and other health data using the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), a project led by the Health and Human Services Department to provide a secure, standards-based method of sharing health information over the Internet. However, veterans must first agree to have their health information shared.”

The next project milestone for VLER will be this summer when Veterans Affairs and DoD decide how to expand health information exchange pilots nationwide.

Will the project succeed? It’s too early to say, although there are already some suggestions that the project has too many mouths to feed. One comment on the story so far argues that (the project) “has way too many contractors and staff involved. As we say, there are too many chiefs and not enough workers. It’s my bet that we will be talking about the 100 million dollar failure of the EMR at the expense of the US Taxpayers with in the year. They aren’t even getting the right type of people involved in the process. This is mainly a group of systems geeks and executives. They are leaving out the Health Information Management Professionals and the Medical providers…. it’s a boon doogle from the start, but at least the contractors are making money.”

Links

VA announces expansion of Virtual Life Electronic Record

10 Lessons Learned from Linking VLER to private health orgs

Veterans Affairs CIO on VLER progress

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, health, health records, IT projects, managing change, procurement, project management

Tagged , , , ,

Bridging the divide: an engineered approach to IT projects

Posted on 06/02/2012 | Leave a comment

The State Auditor in California recently criticised a planned high speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles because the project suffered from critical, on-going oversight problems. In this guest blog, Bob Evans, founder and Managing Director of TestIT Software Assurance, explains why it is critical to have a ‘single source of truth’ for any IT development, to provide the required level of cohesion, discipline, control and transparency that should be expected from any engineering project.

The risks associated with developing or changing IT systems are well documented. IT failures always bring despair and reputational damage to all involved.

Do you remember the scene in Blackadder where General Melchett suggested that walking slowly (again) towards the German machine guns would be “the last thing they’d expect” – and so “that’s what we’re going to do”? This seems to be the attitude found in many IT procurements. What’s needed is a fresh, radical and innovative approach, especially in these changed times where senior management focus is on delivery and cost.

Keeping Control

Establishing and maintaining control of an outsourced project is the single, most important part of IT development; it is imperative for the purchaser to remain in full control at all times. In all of the failure scenarios that we have researched, it is obvious in every case that control has been lost, with always calamitous consequences.

The nature of the procurement process and inevitable time pressure means that the requirements of a new software system aren’t always well-defined at project inception. Typically, specifications are incomplete or ambiguous and put together from a range of disparate sources, with non-existent internal process and control. The “silo” attitude that is often encountered across departmental organisations is usually a key factor here.  Requirements that are not made clear at the start of the project will inevitably lead to confusion, delays, additional cost and even to dispute.

And if a contract is awarded on the basis of a flawed specification, the chosen vendor is in a strong position to justify delays and ramp up the costs. When planned schedules are missed and costs spiral out of control, well intended remedial actions can then create new, unforeseen problems, leading to even more rework.

The culture of care and diligence found in many traditional engineering environments is sometimes lacking in the IT industry and in our experience, engineering discipline is usually the first casualty when pressure is applied. Very quickly, the focus shifts to fire-fighting and a project loses sight of its objectives. It’s like building a bridge – but when halfway across, only fitting every other bolt.

 Contrived Tests

It’s no surprise that applications that have seemingly passed an Acceptance Test, when deployed on a live system, prove to be problematic. Validating the effectiveness of an IT system is typically a contrived process – put simply, tests are designed to pass! They would be – they are usually designed, controlled and often even run by the software vendor.

If you were buying a used car from a local garage, you’d get the RAC to come along and check out the mechanics. You wouldn’t even think of asking the mechanic who worked at that garage to do the inspection would you? But invariably this is the case in IT.

As discussed above, it is imperative that full control of the project remains with the purchaser. But without, continual up to date feedback and independent metrics, it’s hard to know what’s really going on. And the critical decision – when to go live – cannot be made with confidence.

Agile Development

The concept of Agile Development has been round for many years. However, it is still to be seen whether this approach can really work on a large, complex project. A properly managed set of sprints – with precise objectives, proper controls and diligent, independent validation at appropriate times may indeed lead to a more rapid and successful conclusion. However, it should be noted that as development continues, the needs of the business will necessarily change. If controls are not adequately maintained, no process – not even “Agile” ones – can keep up. What is delivered is what the vendor believes is required, rather than what is actually required by the business. And no matter what methodology is used for developing software, at the end of the development cycle it is essential to verify, independently and thoroughly, that the product meets the needs of the business.

The Agile Manifesto focuses on “working software over comprehensive documentation”. Documentation is of course often cumbersome. However, minimising the amount of information while maximising the value of the information is what’s really needed.

When it’s too late – and organisations end up mired in a legal dispute, we’ve been called in to play the part of the pathologist. It is soon apparent that the project was doomed from the start – no spec, no metrics, no control, no hope. Suppliers who didn’t listen, purchasers who didn’t actually know what they needed in the first place.

But there is another way. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency recently used independent software assurance to ensure success of its high-profile CERS/SVD project. There was an acknowledgement right from the start that requirements were bound to change and controls put in place to manage this. There were efficient, timely tests – not at the project end, but continuous tests, right from project inception. There was an approach that asked:  “What can we do given the available time and budget?”, rather than the popular “one-shot, whistle and bells” approach. And there was pro-active searching for and identifying issues early on – when the supplier was still on site – which meant that remedial actions were fixed by the supplier, at no additional cost to the project. Independent, constantly updated metrics also meant that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency stayed in complete control.

It isn’t rocket science. But for IT projects, the discipline driven by an engineering-based approach is generally more likely to lead to success. That’s why bridges get built – and IT projects often don’t. 

TestIT Software Assurance

Leave a comment

Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, Government IT, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services

Tagged , , , , , ,

Some success in cutting Whitehall costs

Posted on 02/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The coalition government, Cabinet Office, Treasury, departments and agencies have succeeded in cutting central government costs, according to a National Audit Office report published today.

The NAO found that “in particular, large reductions have been made in spending on consultants, temporary staff, property and information technology” in 2010-11.

Departments cut their spend on consultants by £645m in – a real-terms reduction of 37%, said the NAO which also identified “£537m reduced capital spending on IT-related items”.

Unlike some previous reports of the NAO that have questioned the credibility of officialdom’s claims of savings, the NAO’s latest report “Cost reduction in central government: summary of progress” found that the savings claimed by the Cabinet Office, Treasury and government were usually genuine.

Where departments have cut costs by cancelling IT projects or having contracts renegotiated – as opposed to simplifying and streamlining the way they work – the NAO was unsure whether the savings could be sustained.

Said the NAO

“Central government departments took effective action in 2010-11 to reduce costs and successfully managed within the reduced spending limits announced following the 2010 election.

“This resulted in a 2.3% real-terms reduction in spending within departments’ control, compared with 2009-10. Some £3.75bn or around half the reduction was in areas targeted by the Efficiency and Reform Group for cuts in back‑office and avoidable costs.”

Are IT cuts sustainable without a change in working practices?

The NAO said:

 “The fall of 35 per cent in IT capital spend is partly the result of decisions to permanently halt or reduce spending on specific projects, and partly the result of action to reduce the costs of IT products and services including through contract renegotiation.

“However, it is unlikely that IT capital spending will remain at this lower level in total, given the key role of IT and online services in increasing productivity.”

The NAO mentioned the actions of some departments by name.

–          The Home Office cut costs in part by “significant reductions in IT, estates and consultancy spending”.

– HM Revenue & Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Defence aimed to secure the bulk of cost reductions from within their organisations. HM Revenue & Customs has established comprehensive governance arrangements to reduce costs, with a central team and programme management infrastructure. The Department for Work and Pensions put in place a transformation programme board in May 2011 to oversee the redesign of its corporate centre and broader cultural change. “However, it cannot finalise plans beyond 2011-12 as they depend on the future business model after the introduction of Universal Credit,” said the NAO. The DWP’s finance team has provided ‘What the Future Holds’ updates and interactive briefings for staff.

– The NAO said it “identified strong leadership as a key factor in the success of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s cost reduction efforts”.

– The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Services within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs “held sufficiently detailed information to be able to challenge its project managers to reduce costs without affecting services”. The NAO said the “resulting savings identified from some 200 projects made up 30 per cent of the Agency’s efforts to meet their efficiency savings target”.

In July 2011, the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group reported to the Public Accounts Committee that it had helped save some £3.75bn through various initiatives. “Our analysis of the audited accounts of the 17 main departments confirms that spending in the areas targeted was reduced on this scale”, said the NAO.

Comment

The NAO report shows that within some departments officials are cutting costs by simply reducing grants but some parts of central government are making an effort to do things differently.

We hope the coalition and Cabinet Office keep up the pressure for cost-cutting because, in IT alone, the potential savings are in the billions. The NAO report shows there has been a good start. We hope that the officials who are achieving lasting success will pass on their learning experiences to those who are struggling to make cuts sustainable.

NAO report Cost reduction in central government – a summary of progress

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, Government IT, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, operational issues, recruitment freeze, reducing cost strategically, reforms, Universal Credit

Tagged , , , , ,

Understanding the politics of ‘stepping out’ to create a public sector mutual

Posted on 02/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

I just read an excellent piece by Craig Dearden-Philips in the Guardian today about the politics involved in the spinning out of a public sector mutual.

He argues that if you, as a public manager, want to ‘step out’, you’ve not only got to do the numbers, you’ve also got to do the politics.

He suggests that politicians, or very senior executives, need three things. Firstly, they need to know if this fits in with the general tenor of where they see things going more widely in the organisation. Secondly, they want to know that the numbers add up.

And finally, and perhaps the most interesting, “politicians and senior managers need to know that they can influence the new body. For councillors and top executives, who are used to directly managing services, a spin-out can present a big operational and financial threat. They can no longer just recover a deficit elsewhere by plundering your budget. Nor, if they are no longer in charge, can they, in the event of a bad headline, tell voters they are putting a rocket under you! Again, the answer here lies in giving them a place at the table and moving the relationship from one governed by command and control to one where influence is exercised through a contract.”

Guardian Public Services Summit

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, managing change, mutualisation, mutuals, Politics, private sector, public sector, public services

Tagged , , , ,

DWP civil servants get ready for MyCSP mutual leap

Posted on 01/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

An article  published yesterday in the Financial Times has focused on the move of 500 civil servants to form a mutual.

The 500 staff, currently in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), will leave the public sector in March and become stakeholders in MyCSP, a privately held company that will handle the retirement funds of 1.5m civil servants.

The FT calls the move to create a so-called John Lewis-style mutual, “one of the biggest experiments in public sector reform.”

It writes that under the MyCSP model, profits will be shared between a private sector provider, which will hold a 42 per cent stake; the government, with 33 per cent; and employees, who will own 25 per cent of the shares. 

A shortlist of 16 private sector providers has been whittled down to four – Xafinity, Capita, JLT and Wipro – with the winner due to be announced next month.

In light of the ongoing row over executive pay, the FT points out that the chief executive’s compensation will be capped at 8 per cent above the average employee’s salary while 1 per cent of net profits will be paid to charities and a further 1 per cent used to create apprenticeships.

You can read the full FT article here (subscription required)

Stephen Kelly – the man at the coalface of the Big Society

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, managing change, mutualisation, mutuals, public sector, social enterprise

Tagged , , , , ,

The challenges of shifting US Government IT into the Cloud

Posted on 28/01/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Good piece from Federal Computer Week (FCW) in the US about the challenges of shifting Government IT systems towards Cloud delivery.

Alan Joch’s piece, ‘Is government procurement ready for the Cloud?‘ points out that although cloud computing will offer speed and agility with agencies anble to take IT services up or down as necessary to quickly support new mission plans or workload changes, the reality – for now –  has yet to hit procurement practices.

As Joch says, “Many IT procurement practices and contracting vehicles were designed to help managers provision hardware and software, not on-demand services. Can the current acquisition practices translate easily to the dynamic world of cloud computing?”

Not really, says Barry Brown, executive director of the Enterprise Data Management and Engineering Division at Customs and Border Protection. He echoed a view shared by others in the federal government, and told FCW that for cloud computing, “The technology delivery model has changed. What has not changed is the procurement model.”

The US government has a Cloud-first policy which seeks to reduce costs and increase IT acquisition flexibility by pushing federal IT systems towards cloud environments. Each agency has until May to identify three IT resources that it will move to the Cloud.

But, reports FCW,  the move is straining traditional procurement departments. Rather than promoting speed and agility, in some cases Cloud initiatives are spawning extended contract negotiations and legal challenges that are making it take even longer for agencies to get the resources they need.

US Government Cloud First Policy

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Cloud, Cloud Computing, G-Cloud, government, Government IT, managing change, procurement, US Government

Tagged , , , , ,

DWP defends £316m HP contract

Posted on 27/01/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions could lead the public sector in technical innovations. It has had some success in cutting its IT-related costs. It has also had some success so far with Universal Credit, which is based on agile principles.

It has further launched an imaginative welfare-to-work scheme , the so-called Work Programme, which seeks to get benefit claimants into jobs they keep.

Despite media criticism of the way the scheme has been set up – especially in the FT – a report by the NAO this week made it clear that the DWP has, for the most part, taken on risks that officials understand.

Some central government departments have updated business cases as they went through a major business-change programme and not submitted the final case until years into the scheme, as in parts of the NPfIT.

But the DWP has implemented the Work Programme unusually quickly, in a little more than a year, by taking sensible risks.  The NAO report on the scheme said the business case and essential justification for the Work Programme were drawn up after key decisions had already been made. But the NAO also picked out some innovations:

– some of the Work Programme is being done manually rather than rush the IT

– suppliers get paid by results, when they secure jobs that would not have occurred without their intervention. And suppliers get more money if the former claimant stays in the job.

– the scheme is cost-justified in part on the wider non-DWP societal benefits of getting the long-term unemployed into jobs such as reduced crime and improved health.

So the DWP is not frightened of innovation. But while Universal Credit and welfare-to-work scheme are centre stage, the DWP is, behind the safety curtain, awarding big old-style contracts to the same suppliers that have monopolised government IT for decades.

Rather than lead by example and change internal ways of working – and thus take Bunyan’s steep and cragged paths – the DWP is taking the easy road.

It is making sure that HP, Accenture, IBM and CapGemini are safe in its hands. Indeed the DWP this week announced a £316m desktop deal with HP.  EDS, which HP acquired in 2008, has been a main DWP supplier for decades.

DWP responds to questions on £316m HP deal 

I put it to the DWP that the £316m HP deal was olde worlde, a big contract from a former era. These were its responses. Thank you to DWP press officer Sandra Roach who obtained the following responses from officials. A DWP spokesperson said:

“This new contract will deliver considerable financial savings and a range of modern technologies to support DWP’s strategic objectives and major initiatives such as Universal Credit.

“The DWP has nearly 100,000 staff, processing benefits and pensions, delivering services to 22 million people.

“DWP is on schedule to make savings of over £100m in this financial year for it’s Baseline IT operational costs, including the main IT contracts with BT and HPES [Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services].

“All contracts have benchmarking clauses to ensure best value for money in the marketplace.

“The five year contract was awarded through the Government Procurement framework and has been scrutinised to ensure value for money.”

My questions and the DWP’s answers:

Why has the DWP awarded HP a £316m contract when the coalition has a presumption against awarding contracts larger than £100m?

DWP spokesperson: “The Government IT Strategy says (page 10) ‘Where possible the Government will move away from large and expensive ICT projects, with a presumption that no project will be greater than £100m. Moving to smaller and more manageable projects will improve project delivery timelines and reduce the risk of project failure’.

“HM Treasury, Cabinet Office and DWP’s commercial and finance teams have scrutinised the DWP Desktop Service contract to ensure that it represents the most economically advantageous proposition.”

What is the role, if any for SMEs ?

DWP: “There are a number of SMEs whose products or services will form part of or contribute to the DWP Desktop Service being delivered by HP, for example ActivIdentity, Anixter, AppSense, Azlan, Click Stream, Cortado, Juniper Networks, Quest Software, Repliweb Inc, Scientific Computers Limited (SCL), Westcon etc.”

Why is there no mention of G-Cloud?

DWP: “Both the new contract and the new technical solution are constructed in such a way as to support full or partial moves to cloud services at DWP’s discretion.”

Comment:

For the bulk of its IT the DWP is trapped by a legacy of complexity. It is arguably too welcoming of the safety and emollients offered by its big suppliers.

The department is not frightened by risk – hence the innovative Work Programme which the NAO is to be commended on for monitoring at an early stage of the scheme. So if the DWP is willing to take on sensible risks, why does it continue to bathe its major IT suppliers in soothingly-large payments, a tradition that dates back decades? What about G-Cloud?

DWP reappoints HP on £316m desktop deal

DWP signs fifth large deal with HP

“DWP awards Accenture seven year application services deal”

“DWP awards IT deals to IBM and Capgemini”

1 Comment

Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, Cloud, Cloud Computing, G-Cloud, Government IT, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, reducing cost strategically, reforms, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Tagged , , , , , ,

Any point in today’s IT report by Public Administration Committee?

Posted on 26/01/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

We congratulate the Public Administration Committee for following up its excellent Government and IT – “A recipe for rip-offs: time for a new approach” which was published in July 2011.

Too often MPs on Parliamentary committees, including those on the Public Accounts Committee, issue reports then forget about them.

Today’s report of the Public Administration Committee is disappointing though. It’s a fog of well-meant words. It comments in detail on the government’s response to the “recipe for rip-offs” report and for the most part uses civil service language. Last year’s report had specific, hard-hitting messages. Today’s is like a marshmallow sandwich: nothing much to bite on.

There is not even a mention of the need to publish progress reports on the government’s biggest IT-related projects.

If Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, forced the civil service to publish these “Gateway” review reports, it would make departments accountable in a unprecedented way for the success or otherwise of projects and programmes while the schemes are running.

As it is, the government is being let off the hook in not publishing Gateway reports on Universal Credit or HM Revenue and Customs’ Real-Time Information programmes. These are two of the largest and riskiest of coalition schemes. Their monthly or quarterly progress, or lack of, will continue to go unreported.

Who cares? Certainly not the Public Administration Committee.

The Committee rightly describes the money wasted on IT in govermment as “obscene”. But its cloud of vague messages will do little more than indulge some civil servants who enjoy playing intellectually with ambiguous words and phrases to render them more uncertain.

Today’s Public Administration Committee report will change nothing. Fortunately Maude knows what needs to be done, with or without the Committee’s help.

Whitehall refuses to probe cartel claims, say MPs

1 Comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, Gateway reviews, Government IT, managing change, procurement, public sector, public services, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Tagged , , ,