Category Archives: outsourcing

Top 5 posts on this site in last 12 months

Posted on 02/01/2014 | 1 comment

Below are the top 5 most viewed posts of 2013.  Of other posts the most viewed includes “What exactly is HMRC paying Capgemini billions for?” and “Somerset County Council settles IBM dispute – who wins?“.

1) Big IT suppliers and their Whitehall “hostages”

Mark Thompson is a senior lecturer in information systems at Cambridge Judge Business School, ICT futures advisor to the Cabinet Office and strategy director at consultancy Methods.

Last month he said in a Guardian comment that central government departments are “increasingly being held hostage by a handful of huge, often overseas, suppliers of customised all-or-nothing IT systems”.

Some senior officials are happy to be held captive.

“Unfortunately, hostage and hostage taker have become closely aligned in Stockholm-syndrome fashion.

“Many people in the public sector now design, procure, manage and evaluate these IT systems and ignore the exploitative nature of the relationship,” said Thompson.

The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages bond with their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them.

This month the Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued  a pre-tender notice for Oracle ERP systems. Worth between £250m and £750m, the framework will be open to all central government departments, arms length bodies and agencies and will replace the current “Prism” contract with Capgemini.

It’s an old-style centralised framework that, says Chris Chant, former Executive Director at the Cabinet Office who was its head of G-Cloud, will have Oracle popping champagne corks.

2) Natwest/RBS – what went wrong?

Outsourcing to India and losing IBM mainframe skills in the process? The failure of CA-7 batch scheduling software which had a knock-on effect on multiple feeder systems?

As RBS continues to try and clear the backlog from last week’s crash during a software upgrade, many in the IT industry are asking how it could have happened.

3) Another Universal Credit leader stands down

Universal Credit’s Programme Director, Hilary Reynolds, has stood down after only four months in post. The Department for Work and Pensions says she has been replaced by the interim head of Universal Credit David Pitchford.

Last month the DWP said Pitchford was temporarily leading Universal Credit following the death of Philip Langsdale at Christmas. In November 2012 the DWP confirmed that the then Programme Director for UC, Malcolm Whitehouse, was stepping down – to be replaced by Hilary Reynolds. Steve Dover,  the DWP’s Corporate Director, Universal Credit Programme Business, has also been replaced.

4) The “best implementation of Cerner Millennium yet”?

Edward Donald, the chief executive of Reading-based Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, is reported in the trust’s latest published board papers as saying that a Cerner go-live has been relatively successful.

“The Chief Executive emphasised that, despite these challenges, the ‘go-live’ at the Trust had been more successful than in other Cerner Millennium sites.”

A similar, stronger message appeared was in a separate board paper which was released under FOI.  Royal Berkshire’s EPR [electronic patient record] Executive Governance Committee minutes said:

“… the Committee noted that the Trust’s launch had been considered to be the best implementation of Cerner Millennium yet and that despite staff misgivings, the project was progressing well. This positive message should also be disseminated…”

Royal Berkshire went live in June 2012 with an implementation of Cerner outside the NPfIT.  In mid-2009, the trust signed with University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre to deliver Millennium.

Not everything has gone well – which raises questions, if this was the best Cerner implementation yet,  of what others were like.

5) Universal Credit – the ace up Duncan Smith’s sleeve?

Some people, including those in the know, suspect  Universal Credit will be a failed IT-based project, among them Francis Maude. As Cabinet Office minister Maude is ultimately responsible for the Major Projects Authority which has the job, among other things, of averting major project failures.

But Iain Duncan Smith, the DWP secretary of state, has an ace up his sleeve: the initial go-live of Universal Credit is so limited in scope that claims could be managed by hand, at least in part.

The DWP’s FAQs suggest that Universal Credit will handle, in its first phase due to start in October 2013, only new claims  – and only those from the unemployed.  Under such a light load the system is unlikely to fail, as any particularly complicated claims could managed clerically.

 

1 Comment

Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, Cerner, Cloud, Cloud Computing, CSC, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, G-Cloud, Government IT, health records, HP, IBM, IT projects, IT-related failures, legal disputes, local democracy, local government, LPfIT, Major Projects Authority, NHS, npfit, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, Real-Time Information, SAP, Universal Credit

Tagged , ,

More IT-based megaprojects derail amid claims all is well

Posted on 30/10/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

If one thing unites all failing IT-based megaprojects in the public sector it is the defensive shield of denial that suppliers and their clients hold up when confronted by bad news.

It has happened in the US and UK this week. On the Universal Credit  project, the minister in charge of the scheme, Lord Freud, accepted none of the criticisms in a National Audit Office report “Universal Credit: early progress”.   In a debate in the House of Lords Lord Freud quoted from two tiny parts of the NAO report that could be interpreted as positive comments.

“Spending so far is a small proportion of the total budget … and it is still entirely feasible that [universal credit] goes on to achieve considerable benefits for society,” said Lord Freud, quoting the NAO report.

But he mentioned none of the criticisms in the 55-page NAO report which concluded:

“At this early stage of the Universal Credit programme the Department has not achieved value for money. The Department has delayed rolling out Universal Credit to claimants, has had weak control of the programme, and has been unable to assess the value of the systems it spent over £300 million to develop.

“These problems represent a significant setback to Universal Credit and raise wider concerns about the Department’s ability to deal with weak programme management, over-optimistic timescales, and a lack of openness about progress.”

And a shield of denial went up in the US this week where newspapers on the east and west coast published stories on failing public sector IT-based megaprojects.  The LA [Los Angeles] Times said:

As many as 300,000 jobless affected by state software snags

“California lawmakers want to know why Deloitte’s unemployment benefits system arrived with major bugs and at almost double the cost estimate. The firm says the system is working.”

The LA Times continued:

“Problems are growing worse for the state’s Employment Development Department after a new computer system backfired, leaving some Californians without much-needed benefit cheques for weeks.”

The Department said the problems affected 80,000 claims but the LA Times obtained internal emails that showed the software glitches stopped payment to as many as 300,000 claimants.

Now lawmakers are setting up a hearing to determine what went wrong with a system that cost taxpayers $110m, almost double the original estimate.

Some blame the Department’s slow response to the problems. Others point the finger at a Deloitte Consulting.

The LA Times says that Deloitte has a “history of delivering projects over budget and with problematic results”. Deloitte also has been blamed, in part, for similar troubles with upgrades to unemployment software in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Florida, says the paper.

“We keep hiring the same company, and they keep having the same issues,” said Senator Anthony Cannella.  “At some point, it’s on us for hiring the same company. It’s faulty logic, and we’ve got to get better.”

In 2003 California planned to spend $58m upgrading its 30-year-old unemployment benefits system. By the time the state awarded Deloitte the contract in 2010  the cost estimate had grown by more than $30m.

The Department handed out $6.6bn to about 1 million unemployed Californians in 2012. The software was expected to ease the agency’s ability to verify who was eligible to receive benefits.

Problems began when the Department transferred old unemployment data to the new system. The software flagged claims for review — requiring state workers to manually process them.

The LA Times says that officials thought initially the workload would be manageable, but internal emails showed the agency was quickly overwhelmed. Phone lines were jammed. For weeks, the Department’s employees have been working overtime to clear the backlog.

A poor contract?

In a contract amendment signed two months ago California agreed to pay Deloitte $3.5m for five months of maintenance and operations costs. Those costs should have been anticipated in the contract said Michael Krigsman, a software consultant who is an expert on why big IT-based contracts go awry. He told the LA Times:

“It’s a striking oversight that maintenance was not anticipated at the beginning of the contract when the state was at a much stronger negotiation position.”

By the time the middle of a project is reached, the state has no choice but to stick with Deloitte to work out bugs that arise when the system goes live, he said.

System works

Loree Levy, a spokeswoman for the Department, said the system is working, processing 80% of claims on time. As for the troubles, she said, “There is a period of transition or adjustment with any large infrastructure upgrade like this one.”

Deloitte spokeswoman Courtney Flaherty said the new California system is working and that problems are not the result of a “breakdown or flaw in the software Deloitte developed”.

System not working?

While there seems to be no project disaster in the eyes of the Department and Deloitte Consulting, some of the unemployed see things differently. One wrote:

“I am a contract worker who had to fight for my unemployment benefits. I won my case and yet they still cannot pay me… It’s been more than 3 weeks since I won my appeal and as of this moment, I am owed 13 weeks of back payments. To add insult to injury, they cannot send me current weeks to certify and they refuse to even try to help me to get back into the online system.

“I blame Deloitte, but it is California that carries the heaviest burden of fault… We’re nearing November and they still haven’t fixed an issue that began over Labor Day? Nonsense!

“This is untenable for everyone affected …We are owed reparations as well as our money at this point. It’s a funny word, affected. That means families and individuals are going hungry but can’t get food stamps or welfare. It means evictions and repossessed cars. It means destroyed credit, late fees, years of turmoil and shame for people already dealing with unemployment. Shame on you California.”

Another wrote:

“ … Not communicating is NOT an answer. Unemployed individuals caught up in the nightmare were told to be patient.  Rents and other expenses were still accumulating.  But [when you] add on additional fees: late fees, restoral fees, interest fees, etc…….you get the picture.

“Dear Governor Brown,

“Please reimburse me for all additional fees I’ve had to absorb to survive this fiasco.  You are going to make me payback any overpayments, but ignore the cost to the unemployed taxpayer.  This is  appears to unfair.  Perhaps Deloitte should pay us back from their contracted funds before they receive their final payment.  I am saving all of my receipts to deduct from my 2013 tax return.

“BTW Gov Brown – I am still waiting on additional payments as of today and DMV registration for my vehicle was due on 10/20/13.  Are you going to waive the penalty for late payment? Am I the only one with this question?”

Scrutiny

California’s state Assembly has set a date of 6 November 2013 for a hearing into the Department’s system upgrade.

“We’re going to look at EDD, the contractors and others to see how the system broke down so we can avoid this in the future,” said Henry Perea, chair of the Assembly’s Insurance Committee, which has oversight over the jobless benefits program.

On its website Deloitte says:

“Deloitte continues to help EDD [Employment Development Department] transform the level of service it provides to unemployed workers and improve the quality of information collected by EDD. The next time unemployment spikes, California should be ready to meet the increased demand for services.”

Massachutsetts IT disaster?

On the opposite coast the Boston Globe reported on an entirely separate debacle (which also involved Deloitte):

          None admit fault on troubled jobless benefits system

“… even with the possibility that unemployed workers could face months more of difficulties and delays in getting benefits, officials from the Labor Department and contractor, Deloitte Consulting of New York, testified before the Senate Committee on Post Audit that the rollout of the computer system was largely a success.

“‘I am happy with the launch,’ said Joanne F. Goldstein, secretary of Labour and Workforce Development, noting that she would have liked some aspects to have gone better.

“Mark Price, a Deloitte principal in charge of the firm’s Massachusetts business, acknowledged that software has faced challenges during the rollout, but insisted, ‘We have a successful working system today. ‘’’

NPfIT shield

A shield of denial was up for years at the Department of Health whose CIOs and other spokespeople repeatedly claimed that the NPfIT was a success.

Comment

If you didn’t know that Universal Credit IT wasn’t working, or that thousands of people on the east and west coasts of the US hadn’t been paid unemployment benefits because of IT-related problems, and you had to rely on only the public comments of the IT suppliers and government spokespeople, you would have every reason to believe that Universal Credit and the jobless systems in Massachusetts and California were working well.

Why is it that after every failed IT-based megaproject those in charge can simply blow the truth gently away like soap bubbles?

When confronted by bad news, suppliers and their customers tend to join hands behind their defensive shields. On the other side are politicians, members of the public affected by the megaprojects and the press who have all, according to suppliers and officials, got it wrong.

Is this why lessons from public sector IT-based project disasters are not always learned? Because, in the eyes of suppliers and their clients, the disasters don’t really exist?

None admit fault on troubled jobless benefit system

State fired Deloitte

Complaints continue despite claims system is under control

As many as 300,000 affected by California’s software problems

California’s predictable fiasco?

2 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, CIO, consultants, contractors, culture, Deloitte, ERP, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, npfit, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, oversight, private sector lessons for the public sector, public sector, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Who polices police IT reports?

Posted on 24/10/2013 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

The police, and civil and public servants in central government, the NHS and local authorities criticise journalists for biased reporting – taking selected facts out of context.

They’re sometimes right.  Journalists working for national newspapers can draft an article that is diligently balanced only to find, by the time it’s published, it leaves out facts which would have complicated, blunted, or contradicted the main points.

It’s one thing for this to happen in the world of journalism. You don’t expect public bodies to report on their own affairs with a partiality that rivals out-of-context reporting by some newspapers.

But it appears to be happening so regularly that one-sided self-reporting on organisational performance may be becoming the norm in the public sector.

In the NHS subjective, positive reporting in board papers – where managers tell directors what they think they want to hear – could help to explain why Cerner patient record implementations have, for years, gone badly wrong for the same reasons.

In recent months reports without balance have been published on the performance of Avon and Somerset Police’s IT outsourcing contract with IBM. 

Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Police  are minority shareholders in a private company, Southwest One,  which is owned by IBM.

Confusingly, Taunton Deane Borough Council issued positive reports about its successful partnership with Southwest One – and then it decided to take some services back in-house.

Now it has emerged – only as a result of FOI requests by Somerset resident and campaigner Dave Orr – that two independent organisations, the National Audit Office, and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, have commented positively on Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s partnership with Southwest One, based entirely on the unaudited opinions of the police force itself.

SAP

From his FOI requests Orr learned that the Avon and Somerset’s outsourcing deal with Southwest One has not gone entirely as expected. The National Audit Office’s FOI team has released notes of a joint visit by the NAO and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary to Avon and Somerset police in December 2012.  The visit was to find out about how well Southwest One was delivering services to the police force.  

The NAO’s notes are positive in parts. They say that performance has improved considerably since the implementation of the contract.

“Implementation of SAP improving the accounts close-down process, initial issues being resolved and a good quality of service being provided regularly.”

But there is another side to the story that is not reflected in the published accounts of Avon and Somerset’s relationship with Southwest One. The NAO’s [unpublished] field notes say:

“Fewer than expected benefits have been realised from IT due to the considerably different security requirements of the Police compared to the Councils.

“It also took a long time for SAP to be implemented. There has yet to be a duty management system implemented by SWOne which is part of the contract… SAP would have benefited from some pre-launch testing or piloting.”

A letter to Orr from the Home Office appears to confirm that Avon and Somerset Police’s participation in Southwest One is an unequivocal success.

“The private sector can help to deliver police support services better and at lower cost. Every pound saved means more money for the front line, putting officers on the streets…

“In its report “Policing in Austerity: rising to the challenge [2013] Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary identified the Southwest One partnership as being a key element in achieving savings for Avon and Somerset Constabulary while ensuring better procurement, streamlining business support processes, and ensuring better use of police officer time.

“The report also noted that the Southwest One collaboration was the first of its kind for policing in England and Wales and that to date, no other force has delivered this level of partnership with local authorities.”

A little of the other side of the story comes in the last sentence of the Home Office letter to Orr which says: “We understand that Avon and Somerset Constabulary continues to work closely with IBM to resolve any technical difficulties and improve the services provided by Southwest One.”

Indeed a table on page 155 of HMIC ‘s 2013 report Policing in austerity: rising to the challenge indicates that Avon and Somerset Constabulary has one of the worst records of any police force when it comes to savings delivered between 2010/11 and 2012/13. [Table: Key indicators of the challenge – quartile analysis.]

Southwest One began a 10-year contract providing services to Avon and Somerset Police in 2008. The services included enquiry offices, district HR, estates, financial services, site administration, facilities, corporate human resources, information services, purchasing and supply, and reprographics. The contract involves 554 seconded staff.

Comment

Police forces, councils, the NHS and central government departments need  a few Richard Feymans to report on their organisation’s performance. Feynman was a gifted scientist, MIT graduate and noble prize winner who was chosen as a commissioner to report on the cause , or causes, of the Challenger Space Shuttle “O” rings accident on 28 January 1986.

He reported with such independence of mind and diligence that his hard-hitting findings were not considered acceptable to be included in the main report of the Presidential Commission of inquiry into the accident.  Feynman had to be content with having his findings published as an appendix to the Commission’s report – and an edited appendix at that.  

He suggested in his book “What do you care what other people think?” that his appendix was the only genuinely balanced part of the official inquiry report. 

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled,” said Feynman.

One of his questions was whether “organisation weaknesses that contributed to the [Shuttle] accident [was] confined to the solid rocket booster sector, or were they a more general characteristic of NASA.”

One of Feynman’s conclusions:

“It would appear that, for whatever purpose – be it for internal or external consumption – the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product to the point of fantasy.”

If such exaggeration happens at NASA it can happen in UK police force IT reports, and in board papers on the performance of councils and NHS trusts.

When journalists get it wrong it’s usually to their eternal regret. In the public sector positive unbalanced reporting is so “normal” that hardly anyone involved realises it’s a deviant practice. The US author Diane Vaughan coined a phrase for such corporate behaviour.  She called it the normalisation of deviance.  

It’s surely time for public bodies to move away from the norm and start reporting on their performance, and the performance of their outsourcing other private sector contracts, with balance, objectivity and independence of mind.   

If managers knew that reports on the progress of their contracts would be audited for impartiality and competence over organisational self-interest, perhaps they would have a greater incentive to avoid badly thought through outsourcing deals and IT implementations.

Is this why some council and NHS scandals stay hidden for years?

NAO report “Private sector partnering in the police service”

Dave Orr’s HMIC FOI requests and answers

NAO’s FOI responses on Avon and Somerset Police

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Government IT, IT-related failures, local government, NHS, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, oversight, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, SAP, supplier relationships

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Capita has duty to promote success of Barnet contract

Posted on 03/10/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Capita has a contractual duty to promote the success of the “One Barnet” outsourcing deal with Barnet Council – apparently without taking into account facts that may count against success.

Within the 2,400 pages that make up contracts between Capita and Barnet Council, Unison has discovered clauses that appear to put the onus on the service provider to talk up the success of Barnet’s outsourcing deal.

These are excerpts from the contracts:

“The Service Provider shall use its relationships to create advocates of the success of the One Barnet programme by informing the Department of Communities and Local Government and the Local Government Association of key milestones and achievements within the programme thereby supporting increased political awareness of the Authority and the Service Provider shall utilise its corporate and personal networks to support the communication of the success of the Partnership via appropriate case studies.”

The contract points out that the service provider has “frequent meetings across central government at official level and occasional meetings at ministerial level”. It also sits on the Public Services Strategy Board, the Whitehall & Industry Group, Reform, Policy Exchange and Localis.

“The Service Provider shall use its relationships to create opportunities for the successes of the Partnership to be promoted enhancing the profile of the Authority at strategic level across the public sector,” says one of the contractual clauses.

Thank you to Dave Orr, a campaigner for openness over local government outsourcing deals, for drawing my attention to the Barnet Council clauses.

Comment

It now seems to be official – that outsourcing deals in local government have to be perceived as successful. Perhaps these sorts of clauses in local government outsourcing contracts help to explain why the public don’t learn of failing “partnerships” and joint ventures until what has gone wrong can be hidden no longer.

This is not open government. This is a contractual expectation that the supplier’s representatives should smile, and smile broadly, whenever the subject of an outsourcing deal with Barnet is discussed, or there is an opportunity to discuss it.

Which rather undermines the credibility of the Public Services Strategy Board, the Whitehall & Industry Group, Reform, Policy Exchange and Localis if supplier’s representatives are there to pass on PR messages about their outsourcing deals, whatever the truth.

“Smile and others will smile back. Smile to show how transparent, how candid you are. Smile if you have nothing to say. Most of all, do not hide the fact you have nothing to say nor your total indifference to others. Let this emptiness, this profound indifference, shine out spontaneously in your smile.” Jean Baudrillard.

3 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, Freedom of Information, local democracy, local government, outsourcing, Politics, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships

Taunton council to bring some outsourced services back in-house?

Posted on 27/09/2013 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

A week after praising the Southwest One joint venture with IBM, officers at Taunton Deane Borough Council are recommending bringing some services back in-house.

Last week a report to councillors said:

 “Service delivery for TDBC, viewed in the round, is broadly on track. The majority of services perform well or extremely well (eg Customer Services). We do have concerns in some areas and we are working closely with the services in question to remedy the issues.”

Now Penny James, Chief Executive of the council, has written to staff about bringing services back in-house.

“Dear All

The Corporate & Client Services Team has over the past few months with the assistance of Southwest One (SWO) reviewed the services being provided to TDBC under our contract with SWO.

“The review has considered whether, in the light of the decisions taken by Somerset County Council to remove a number of their services from SWO and by Avon and Somerset Police to remove Property Services, TDBC [Taunton Deane Borough Council] should also consider whether services should be removed…

“The review concludes that it would be prudent for TDBC to bring back in-house the following service areas: Corporate Administration, Design & Print, Facilities Management, Finance Advisory, HR Advisory (including Learning and Development) and Property Services.  These are all services where TDBC has largely lost the benefit of shared service delivery.”

James says a formal decision will require the agreement of councillors after consultation with staff directly affected by the potential changes. The consultation will end on 31 October and a decision will be taken by the full council on 12 November 2013.

“Should the members agree to the return of these services the necessary changes are likely to be implemented early in 2014,” says James.

In a statement to Taunton’s Corporate Scrutiny Committee last week, local resident Dave Orr, who has campaigned for the full truth over the Southwest One venture to be made public, told Taunton’s councillors that the council had borrowed £3.65m in 2008 to buy SAP from IBM and Southwest One.

“That debt was to be paid out of procurement savings and should have been paid off 18 months ago. Instead, almost £1m of the debt for SAP is left, incurring interest charges that are reducing funding for our Council services.”

Orr said in the statement that Southwest One has continued to make losses and IBM has disposed of its global customer service business which adds to uncertainty over the future of the joint venture.

“Will Southwest One survive to the end of contract in 2017 or will parent company actions by IBM from the USA bring about an earlier demise? What is Taunton Deane’s response to this added uncertainty and risk?

He concluded: “Don’t throw any more money away in South West One – we can’t afford it.”

5 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, IBM, local government, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, SAP, supplier relationships

Is this a reason some council and NHS scandals stay hidden for years?

Posted on 19/09/2013 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Six years into Southwest One’s joint venture between IBM and three public authorities, the outsourced service is not a big success.  

Somerset County Council, one of the joint venture’s partners, has been in dispute with IBM, the major shareholder in Southwest One. It cost the county council £5.9m to settle, including £800,000 in costs when bringing back staff who had been outsourced.

The joint venture’s SAP-based “transformation” led to complaints of poor quality of service by some of Somerset’s finance users; the venture has consistently made losses and on the matter of savings, Somerset Cabinet member for resources, David Huxtable, said there have been some but added:

“It was a very complex contract and lots of the savings were predicated on an ever-increasing amount of money being put into public services and we know in the last four years that has gone into reverse.”

Now IBM has sold its low-margin customer care outsourcing unit which could affect the future of Southwest One.

Yet a smaller partner in Southwest One, Taunton Deane Borough Council, describes the relationship as a “success”. Reports to Taunton Deane’s councillors on Southwest One are remarkably positive.

Dave Orr an IT specialist who used to be work for Somerset County Council and has kept a close eye on Southwest One since it was formed in 2007 has drawn my attention to Taunton’s latest reports on the joint venture. When read quickly Taunton’s reports are upbeat, almost breathless with praise for the joint venture.

Below are excerpts from two reports that have been written for today’s meeting of Taunton Deane’s Corporate Scrutiny Committee.  The first is a “Procurement Transformation Update”, report to the council by Southwest One’s Chief Procurement Officer.

There are no hints of any difficulties on the contract except a comment that cutting spending will make it harder to achieve procurement savings. From Southwest One’s report to Taunton:

“Executive Summary

“As at 31/07/13, in excess of £1.8m [report’s emphasis] savings have been delivered to the Council through signed-off procurement-related initiatives brought about by Southwest One’s Strategic Procurement Service. This is up from £1.59m when last reported in January 2013.

“A further £1.364m of savings are scheduled to be delivered from these signed-off initiatives during the life of the current Southwest One contract, which expires in 2017.

“Multiple projects continue to be progressed by Southwest One Strategic Procurement Service which are expected to significantly add to the pipeline of savings. These Include initiatives for a new pool & spa at Blackbrook; Waste; Insurance; various small scale initiatives within the DLO/HPS areas .”

A second report for Taunton’s Corporate Scrutiny Committee “SouthwestOne Partnership Update report” is written jointly by a team at Taunton council and the CEO of Southwest One. Again it’s upbeat and summarises Southwest One’s performance over the last six months.

“Service delivery for TDBC, viewed in the round, is broadly on track. The majority of services perform well or extremely well (eg Customer Services). We do have concerns in some areas and we are working closely with the services in question to remedy the issues. “

The report says that the shared service model in conjunction with larger authorities provides Taunton with “much needed resilience” (report’s underlining) in service delivery, although “this has been impacted to a certain extent by changes made recently to the contract by the other partners”.

Additionally, “our secondee staff to SWO benefit from ‘assured employment’, which was offered by IBM”.

A survey of staff in June 2013 “saw marked improvements in staff morale and communication”.

Sickness absence for the financial year to the end of March 2013 was slightly down to about 9 days per full-time employee though up a little more recently.

Appendices – now for the problems

It’s only when councillors come to the report’s appendices that they will see some detail of the problems. But how many councillors will scrutinise a report’s appendices? From the Taunton report’s appendices:

“There are service and capacity issues. The helpdesk move caused significant problems, leading to an increased number of issues being raised with the Client Team from TDBC [Taunton Deane Borough Council] staff. We are closely monitoring the plan SWO [Southwest One] have put in place to fix these issues.

“Project delivery capacity and project scheduling continues to cause concern, with improved governance within TDBC highlighting this problem more acutely. Our issue tracker is currently tracking 11 escalated issues with SWOne, 6 of them with a Red RAG status.

“ SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) performance in SAP continues to be well below the required level despite the amount of focus it is receiving from SWOne. Work on a revised governance process for the SAP system is underway and looks likely to deliver a more controlled SAP Change process.”

The most serious problem – and it is not mentioned until the penultimate page of the report’s appendices – is that savings will be nowhere near the original target of £10m.

“This is red, tracked against the original [savings] £10m target. To date £2.8m has been signed-off and it is not yet clear how the lower target of £5.7m will be achieved as there are fewer savings opportunities and initiatives emanating from SWO…”

From the small print of Taunton Deane’s report it is possible to work out that the cost of the council’s SAP implementation was supposed to have been paid off by savings but hasn’t. Indeed a debt of nearly £1m is still incurring interest.

Comment

Perhaps it’s unfair to pick on Taunton Deane’s reports to councillors. The positive tone is little different to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of NHS, council and central government board reports I have read over two decades.

If you’re a director of a public authority your job is probably made harder if you’re getting self-vindicating internal reports on the organisation’s progress. It would be more helpful if management reports were neutral and objective, framed by unvarnished facts.

When you hire a roofing company and it reports back on the finished job, you want to know about the tiles that leave a gap or are loose, not the ones that fit nicely.

NHS trust reports can often be particularly one-sided, often of the type that say:

“We had 3 fatalities on the main staircase last month because of a ruptured floor lining but the overall accident rate in that part of the building is down over the last 3 years and our falls rate overall is 3% below the average for the NHS as a whole.

“Our contractor confirms that the floor lining is within KPI requirements and a repair will be effected shortly.”

It appears that those who write board reports for public authorities feel an obligation to motivate and inspire, to leave the reader feeling good, to clothe bad news in layers of good news, omit it altogether or put it in the appendix hardly anyone reads.

Is this one reason so many outsourcing and NHS scandals stay hidden for years? 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, cost reduction, decision-making, excessive secrecy, IBM, legal disputes, local democracy, local government, NHS, openness and transparency, outsourcing, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships

IT suppliers out of control of DWP on Universal Credit?

Posted on 13/09/2013 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions is investigating with consultants PwC whether poor financial controls on payments to IT suppliers have “materialised into cash that should not have been spent”.

If there is evidence the DWP’s permanent secretary Robert Devereux says the DWP will raise the matter with suppliers.

It’s rare for details of central government’s relationship with specific suppliers to come into the public domain but this has happened to some extent on the Universal Credit IT project, thanks mainly to the National Audit Office.

Last week the NAO published a summary of a PwC report into the financial management of UC’s IT suppliers. PwC’s report was circulated to MPs on the Public Accounts Committee who read out some of its contents at a hearing this week.

The Committee’s MPs questioned Devereux, his Finance Director Mike Driver, and Dr Norma Wood, Interim Director General at the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

Wood said the Major Projects Authority noticed that suppliers, in doing user acceptance testing, were increasing their average daily rates from £500 to about £800.

Said Wood:

“We came back down to about £500, in round figures. That could mean that you have much greater quality, so one has to be careful. We didn’t have an evidence base really to be able to probe this, which is why we recommended to the accounting officer that he undertake this [PwC] investigation.”

Wood agreed with Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, that financial control of the IT companies was a “shambles”.

Hodge said: “The PwC report reads more shockingly than the NAO report in terms of the lack of financial control.” She said that the DWP had sat on the PwC report for six months [before releasing it internally], a point the department has not denied.

Hodge said the PwC report referred to:
– incomplete contracts
– incomplete evidence to support contracts
– inappropriate authorisations
– insufficient information supporting contract management
– delegated authority given to a personal assistant to authorise purchase orders on the behalf of the chair of the strategic design authority

“This is a shambles,” said Hodge. “The fear that one has is that money was clearly paid out to the four big ones—Accenture, IBM, HP and BT—which they claimed on a time basis. It was not a tight contract; it was on a time-and-materials basis, which could well have paid out for no work being done.”

Wood: “I agree with you…it is quite clear that suppliers were out of control and that financial controls were not in place. As we did the reset, we ensured that everything was properly negotiated and contracted for, so that is very tight in terms of the reset going forward, but there are definitely questions about how it was handled… As with any payments you should have a proper audit trail and they should be properly governed. They should have been properly contracted for…”

Wood said that she would use the same suppliers again. “Under proper control why not?”

Hodge said the DWP appeared to have given suppliers a blank cheque. “Last night Mr Driver [DWP Finance Director] kindly sent me a copy of the PwC report, which is even more damning in my view [than the NAO report Universal Credit: early progress], particularly on the blank cheque that you appear to have given to suppliers and the failure to keep Ministers properly informed.”

Conservative MP Richard Bacon said the findings in the PwC report were “extraordinary”. Reading from the report he said there was:
– Limited cost control
– Ineffective end-to-end accounts payable processing
– Limited control over receipting against purchase orders
– Accenture and IBM accounted for almost 65% of total IT supplier spend, as at February 2013.
– Purchase orders for Accenture and IBM do not allow for granular verification of expenditure as they are raised and approved by value only. Thus, they cannot
be linked to individual delivery and grades of staff use. Receipting is completed by reference to time sheets. However, this confirmation is not complete and/or accurate as the majority of those individuals receipting do not have the capability and capacity to verify all time recording. This constraint has resulted in expenditure being approved with a nil return in many cases. As a result, payments may be made with no verification.

Bacon added:

“After all the history that we have had of IT projects going wrong, how can this
extraordinarily loose control—it is probably wrong to use the word “control”—how can this extraordinarily loose arrangement exist?”

Devereux, who was criticised by Hodge on several occasions for not answering questions directly, replied: “I will try at least to explain what was going on. Let me take you back to the process that we were operating. The process we were operating was seeking to work through, in the space of a four-week period -”

Hodge: “You are doing it again, Mr Devereux.”

Devereux: “I am afraid that I cannot answer the question without giving some facts.”

Hodge: “So is PwC wrong?”

Devereux: No, no. PwC is correct, but I am about to explain what else was going on. I have just had a long set of sessions with PwC, who as we speak, are doing further work for me to establish one particular, critical thing that you will want to know, which is that other things were being checked in the background here that enabled PwC to go back and do some ex post calculations about exactly how much was being paid for each of the outputs we had. It is absolutely right to say-”

Bacon “… Is it not utterly elementary that when you are paying a supplier for having given you something, you know what it is you are paying and what you are getting for it? This is basic!”

Devereux said his department had a resource plan agreed with Accenture (the main UC IT supplier) which was based on a computer model on what a piece of work would involve.

“The contract …in any one month was being based on that calculation of how much work we were likely to put into it in advance. Then the signing off of invoices was indeed based on looking at monthly time sheets. I agree with you that that is not a satisfactory position.”

Bacon: “What is amazing is that you said you did not know any of this until the supplier-led review brought it to you in the summer of 2012. This had been going on for quite a while. There was apparently nothing going on in the Department that was flagging this up. Internal assurance, internal audit—where was it?”

Devereux: “… I conclude this, and it is my responsibility—that more than one line of defence has gone wrong. We have talked so far about whether the programme was properly managing itself.”

Bacon: “This is extraordinary, and it is horribly familiar…it is absolutely central to your job as accounting officer to be sure that you have got lines of defence that are operating effectively. That is part of your job, isn’t it?”

Devereux: “It is part of my job.”

Bacon: “So to be surprised by this is an extraordinary admission, is it not?”

Devereux: “I can only be surprised by this if I am not getting signals from my second line of defence—my financial controllers—that they are worried about what is going on.”

Bacon: “You do sound as though you are blaming everybody underneath you, I am afraid.”

Devereux: “I do not intend to do that, but you are asking me what I knew and what I didn’t know. I am trying to take you through the process by which I am aware of things, and the action I have taken on them.”

Bacon: “But my point is that it was your job to know. It is your job to manage this. You are effectively the chief executive of the DWP.”

Devereux: “I am the chief executive of the DWP, I am the accounting officer, and I am accountable for it. Correct.”

Bacon: “But you didn’t know, did you?

Devereux: “I didn’t know on this, no.”

Hodge revealed that one of the conclusions of the PwC report was that there was a lack of evidence of ministerial sign-off of some contracts. PwC tested 25 contracts over £25,000, and only 11 could be traced with approval; and evidence of value for money provided to the Minister was limited in some cases.

Hodge said: “Basically it [PwC] found that you failed to consult properly with Ministers in signing off the IT contracts.”

Driver: “I think we had a weakness in the process that was operating…It has not always been possible to find all of the paper evidence to confirm a decision. We hold our hands up; we need to improve that. We have now significantly improved the control arrangements that operate within the Department ahead of ministerial sign-off.

“We have also significantly improved the arrangements that apply to any sign-off with the Cabinet Office. I personally chair what is called a star chamber group, which looks at all contracts before we seek authority from the Cabinet Office to go forward…”

Devereux: The work that I was trying to describe to the Chair earlier, which PwC is doing now, is to establish whether the risks we have been running, given this lack of control, have actually materialised into cash that should not have been spent…

“In the event that there is evidence of that, we will go back to the suppliers, obviously. I do not want to run this argument too hard, but there is a set of control weaknesses here which gives rise to a risk of loss of value for money. I accept that.”

MPs dig hard for truth on Universal Credit IT

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, DWP, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, outsourcing, oversight, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, PWC, Universal Credit

A reason many govt IT-enabled projects fail?

Posted on 11/09/2013 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Last week’s highly critical National Audit Office report on Universal Credit was well publicised but a table in the last section that showed how the Department for Work and Pensions had, in essence, passed control of its cheque-book to its IT suppliers, was little noticed.

The NAO  in 2009 reported that the Home Office had handed over £161m to IT suppliers without knowing where the money had gone.

Now something similar has happened again, on a much bigger scale, with Universal Credit. The National Audit Office said last week that the Department for Work and Pensions has handed over £303m to IT suppliers. The NAO found that the DWP was unclear on what the £303m was providing. Said the NAO

“The Department does not yet know to what extent its new IT systems will support national roll-out … The Department will have to scale back its original delivery ambition and is reassessing what it must do to roll-out Universal Credit to claimants.”

After paying £303m, the “current programme team is developing new plans for Universal Credit,” said the NAO.

Surprising?

More surprising, perhaps, are the findings by PWC on its investigations into the financial management of Universal Credit IT. I and others in the media little noticed the summary of PWC’s work when I first read the NAO report.

PWC’s findings in the NAO’s report are in figure 15 on page 36. The table summarises PWC’s work on Linking outcomes to supplier payments and financial management. This is some of what the NAO says

– Insufficient challenge of supplier-driven changes in costs and forecasts because the programme team did not fully understand the assumptions driving changes.

– Inadequate controls over what would be supplied, when and at what cost because deliverables were not always defined before contracts were signed.

– Over-reliance on performance information that was provided by suppliers without Department validation.

– The Department did not enforce all the key terms and conditions of its standard contract management framework, inhibiting its ability to hold suppliers to account.

– Insufficient review of contractor performance before making payments – on average six project leads were given three days to check 1,500 individual timesheets, with payments only stopped if a challenge was raised.

– 94% of spending was approved by just four people but there is limited evidence that this was reviewed and challenged.

– Inadequate internal challenge of purchase decisions; ministers had insufficient information to assess the value for money of contracts before approving them.

– the presentation of financial management information risked being misleading and reducing accountability.

– Limited IT capability and ‘intelligent client’ function leading to a risk of supplier self-review.

– Charges were on the basis of time and materials, leaving the majority of risks with the Department.

Comment

How can civil servants knowingly, or through pressure of other work, effectively give their suppliers responsibility for the sums they are paid? This is a little like asking a builder to provide and install a platinum-lined roof, then giving it the authority to submit invoices up to the value of its needs, which you pay with little or no validation.

On BBC Newsnight this week, Michael Grade, a past chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, told Jeremy Paxman about the Corporation’s corporate culture. 

“I think the BBC suffers more and more from a lack of understanding of the value of money. A cheque comes in every April – for £3.5bn – and if you don’t have to earn the money, and you have that quantity of money, it is very hard to keep to keep a grip on the reality of the value of money.

“If you run a business, if you own a business, you switch the lights out at 6 O’Clock. Everybody’s gone. You walk around yourself. You own the business. It’s your money. You have earned it the hard way. The culture of the BBC of late has been, definitely, a loss of the sense of the value of money.”

Does this help to explain why so many government IT-enabled change programmes fail to meet expectations? One can talk about poor and changing specifications, over-ambitious timescales, poor leadership and inadequate accountability as reasons that contribute to failures of public sector IT-enabled change programmes.

But, at bottom, is there simply too much public money available and too few people supervising payments to suppliers? Is it asking too much of senior civil servants and ministers to treat public money as their own? Is there a lack of the reality of the true value of money, as Michael Grade says when he refers to the BBC?

It is perhaps inconceivable that any private company would spend £303m and not be sure exactly what it is getting for the money.

It may also be inconceivable that a private company would accept supplier-driven changes in costs and forecasts without fully understanding the assumptions driving those changes.

And would a private company not control what is to be supplied, when it is to be delivered and at what cost? Would it not define what is to be delivered before contracts are signed?

Would a private company not check properly whether submitted invoices are fully justified before making payments?

Perhaps central government is congenitally ill-suited to huge IT-based projects and programmes and should avoid them – unless ministers and their officials are prepared to accept the likelihood of delays of many years and costs that are many times the amounts in the early business cases. They would also need to accept that success, even then, is not guaranteed, as we know from the NPfIT.

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government IT, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, npfit, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, PWC, supplier relationships, Universal Credit

Sandwell Council and BT to agree “exit plan” on outsourcing contract

Posted on 28/08/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Sandwell council and BT have agreed to work out an exit plan to their “partnership”, in which services will transfer back to the council in March 2014.

The 15-year £300m deal, which was signed in 2007, is being cut short by seven years. The outsourcing deal includes ICT, HR, project management, finance, procurement, and customer service.

The Express and Star reports a memo to council staff saying

“Discussions between the council and BT have been taking place to determine the way in which the current contractual arrangements will be brought to a close to both parties’ mutual satisfaction.

“As the 30-day notice period ends [Sandwell served a termination notice on BT on 16 July 2013], we will be entering into a transitional period.

“During this time, BT will continue to manage Transform Sandwell and deliver services. Also during this period, BT and the council will work on an agreed exit plan which will prepare all relevant services for handover in March 2014.”

The memo said that it would be at that point that any arrangements for staff working for Transform Sandwell to legally transfer their contracts would take effect.

The council’s ruling cabinet decided to begin the process to end the BT contract because it now has fewer workers, due to redundancies prompted by government cuts.

The authority wanted to pay BT less to reflect the reduced volume of work. It has also been unhappy with BT’s service and began dispute proceedings last September.

Forward-looking

On its website BT describes Sandwell as a “forward-looking” council. BT has used its “Transform Sandwell” partnership as a reference site for prospective outsourcing customers.

 BT’s website publicity about Transform Sandwell reads much like the statements made by other councils and their outsourcing supplier in the early years of a partnership.  

BT says the  council saw “leading edge CRM technology as crucial in enacting all elements of the Sandwell formula”. 

BT’s website continues:

“A thriving, sustainable, optimistic and forward-looking community – that’s where Sandwell Council aims to be in 2020.

“Powering that journey is one of the UK’s most exciting regeneration programmes, with well over £1 billion of inward investment. It’s a significant undertaking. Nearly 300,000 citizens give Sandwell the fourth highest population density of 34 districts in the West Midlands.

“Against that backdrop, Transform Sandwell is a 15-year strategic partnership between BT and Sandwell Council. It seeks to revolutionise how Sandwell does business and delivers public services – with a remit that includes ICT, HR, project management, finance, procurement, and customer service.

“The Transform Sandwell partnership has delivered a £45 million investment in technology, a new regional business centre, and the creation of hundreds of new jobs.

“Not only having to meet the needs of Sandwell and its citizens, Transform Sandwell also needs to fulfil government demands. One example of the latter is for councils to meet citizens’ needs as far as possible the first time they call, in pursuit of cost savings and better use of resources.

“Meanwhile the move from comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) to comprehensive area assessment (CAA) requires councils to gather more customer feedback on their performance. In both cases, the contact centre holds the key.

“The key is to ensure that more of people’s needs are met in a single interaction, while making better use of self-service and electronic channels. Similarly, gathering customer feedback means making the most of day-to-day interactions rather than labour-intensively creating new ones.”

Local government has moved on

Council leader Darren Cooper said it was in both organisations’ interests to end the Transform Sandwell partnership. He said

“The world of local government has moved on significantly since 2007. We now need a different plan.”

TechMarketView’s John O’Brien said BT will now be doing all it can to salvage the situation and the potential reputational harm.

“This case shows the complexities of managing long-term IT/BPO deals, where client requirements can change so dramatically during the course of the programme. Local government will be particularly challenging right now because of the ongoing cutbacks to public spending.

“Such large, long-term deals are increasingly out of favour in local government today. Instead councils are moving  towards smaller more select sourcing of services from a variety of suppliers, particularly as their first generation deals come up for renewal.”

Comment

Clearly Sandwell has done its sums and decided it will be better off without BT. 

Could any 15-year outsourcing deal cope with all major changes over that period? HMRC’s outsourcing deals with HP and then Capgemini have coped well over 19 years so far – with no catastrophic lapses in service and the suppliers’ being able to help handle much policy-based change. But HMRC has had the money to spend vastly more than it originally intended.  

Sandwell needs to spend as a little as it can and BT is not a charity. At the start of  big local authority outsourcing deals it is usual for both sides to gush publicly about savings,  investment in transformation, and new jobs. But at some point the supplier needs to make money.

However the contract is configured, perhaps with council staff working more efficiently on the supplier’s other contracts, the outsourcing deal needs to turn in a profit – even if the pre-contract PowerPoint graph shows costs reducing over the whole term of the deal. 

The danger with single-supplier long-term outsourcing deals is that the council, in essence, receives a loan from the supplier to enable, almost from the start, a simultaneous service transformation, cost cutting and new jobs. But the supplier must recoup the money at some point.      

A single-supplier outsourcing deal can seem to get a council out of a hole. It offers savings and transformation at a time the council most needs them. Who cares about the latter period of an outsourcing deal when none of the original participants are likely to be around to be answerable for a poor deal?

It would take an extraordinarily strong public service ethos for councillors and officers to reject a supplier’s promises that look so attractive in the early years.

It is unclear what costs Sandwell will have to pay to end the deal. Will it have to pay BT compensation for its investments in the contract, as well as exit costs? 

 

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, CRM, legal disputes, local government, managing outsourced services, operational issues, outsourcing, public-private partnerships

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Has 2 decades of outsourcing cut costs at HMRC?

Posted on 12/08/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

If HMRC’s experience is anything to go by, outsourcing can, in the long-term, at least triple an organisation’s IT costs.

When Inland Revenue contracted out its 2,000-strong IT department to EDS, now HP, in 1994 it was the first major outsourcing deal in central government.

Costing a projected £1.03bn over 10 years the outsourcing was a success, according to the National Audit Office in a report in March 2000. The deal  enabled Inland Revenue to bring about changes in tax policy to a tight timetable, said the NAO’s Inland Revenue/EDS Strategic Partnership – Award of New Work.

But costs soared for vague reasons. Something called “post-contract verification” added £203m to the £1.03bn projected cost over 10 years. A further increase of £533m was because of “workload increases including new work”. Another increase of £248m was put down to inflation.

By now the deal with HP had risen from £1.03bn to about £2bn.

When the contract expired in 2004, HM Revenue and Customs and HP successfully transferred the IT staff to Capgemini. The new 10-year contract from 2004 to 2014 (which was later extended 2017) had a winning bid price of £2.83bn over 10 years.

So by 2004 the costs of outsourcing had risen from £1.03bn to £2.83bn.

The new contract in 2004 was called ASPIRE – Acquiring Strategic Partners for Inland Revenue. HMRC then added £900m to the ASPIRE contract for Fujitsu’s running of Customs & Excise systems. By now there were about 3,800 staff working on the contract.

The NAO said in its report in July 2006  – ASPIRE, the re-competition of outsourced IT services – that Gateway reviews had identified the need for a range of improvements in the management of the contract and projects.

Now costing £7.7bn over 10 years

The latest outsourcing costs have been obtained by Computing. It found that annual fees paid to Capgemini under ASPIRE were:

  • 2008/09:  £777.1m
  • 2009/10:  £728.9m
  • 2010/11:  £757.8m
  • 2011/12:  £735.5m
  • 2012/13:  £773.5m

So IT outsourcing costs have soared again. The original 10-year costs of outsourcing in 1994 were put at £1.03bn. Then the figure became about £2bn, then £2.83bn, then £3.7bn when Fujitsu’s contract was added to ASPIRE. Now annual IT outsourcing costs are running at about £770m a year – £7.7bn over 10 years.

So the original IT running costs of Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise have, under outsourcing contracts, more than tripled in about two decades.

Comment:

What happened to the prevailing notion that IT costs fall over the long-term, and that outsourcing brings down costs even further?

Shouldn’t HMRC’s IT costs be falling anyway because of reduced reliance on costly Fujitsu VME mainframes, reductions in data centres, modernisation of PAYE, and the clearance of time-consuming unreconciled items on more than 10 million tax files?

HMRC knows how much profit Capgemini makes under “open book” accounting. It’s a margin of about 10-15% says the NAO. Lower margins are for value-added service lines and higher margins for riskier projects. If the overall target profit margin of 12.3% is exceeded, HMRC can obtain an equal share of the extra profits.

There were 10 failures costing £3.25m in the first 15 months. Capgemini refunded £2.67m in service credits in the first year of the contract.

It’s also worth mentioning that Capgemini doesn’t get all the ASPIRE fees. It is the lead supplier in which there are around 300 subcontractors – including Fujitsu and BT.  Capgemini pays 65% of its fees to its subcontractors.

The outsourcing has helped to enable HMRC to bring in self-assessment online and other changes in tax policy. But HMRC’s quality of service generally (and not exclusively IT) is mixed, to put it politely.

The adjudicator for HMRC who intervenes in particularly difficult complaints identifies as particular problems the giving out of inaccurate information and recording information incorrectly.

She says in her 2013 annual report:

“I am disappointed at the number of complaints HMRC customers feel they need to refer to me in order to get resolution. My role should be to consider the difficult exceptions, not handle routine matters that are well within the capability of departmental staff to resolve successfully. At a time of austerity it is also important to note that the cost of dealing with customer dissatisfaction increases exponentially with every additional level of handling.”

RTI

There are complaints among payroll companies and specialists that real-time information  is not working as well as HMRC has claimed. There seems to be growing irritation with, for example, HMRC’s saying that companies owe much more than they do actually owe. And HMRC has been sending out thousands of tax codes that are wrong or change frequently – or both.

HMRC says it has made improvements but the helpline is appalling. It’s not unusual for callers to wait 30 minutes or more for an answer – or to hang on through multifarious automated messages only to be cut off.

That said there are signs HMRC is, in general, improving slowly. Chief executive of HMRC since 2012 Lin Homer is more down-to-earth and slightly more willing to own up to HMRC’s mistakes than her predecessors, and the fact that RTI and the modernisation of PAYE has got as far as it has is creditable.

But is HMRC a shining example of outsourcing at its best, of outsourcing that cuts costs in the long term? No. A decade of HP and a decade of Capgemini has shown that with outsourcing HMRC can cope, just about, with major changes in tax policy to demanding timetables. But the costs of the outsourcing contracts in the two decades since 1994 have more than tripled.

What about G-Cloud? We look forward to a change in direction from the incoming head of IT Mark Dearnley (if he has much say).

**

A Deloitte survey “The trend of bringing IT back in-house” dated February 2013, said that 48% of respondents in its Global Outsourcing and Insourcing survey 2012 reported that they had terminated an outsourcing agreement early, or for cause, or convenience. Those that took IT services back in-house mentioned cost reduction as a factor. Deloitte said factors included:

– the need for additional internal quality control due to poor quality from the outsourcer

– an increase in the price of service delivery through scope creep and excessive change orders.

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Posted in Accenture, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, CIO, Fujitsu, G-Cloud, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, IT projects, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, operational issues, outsourcing, oversight, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, supplier relationships

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