Category Archives: outsourcing

Firecontrol disaster and NPfIT – two of a kind?

Posted on 23/07/2013 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

Today’s report of the Public Account Committee on the Firecontrol project could, in many ways, be a report on the consequences of the failure of the National Programme for IT in the NHS in a few years time.

The Firecontrol project was built along similar lines to the NPfIT but on a smaller scale.

With Firecontrol, Whitehall officials wanted to persuade England’s semi-autonomous 46 local fire authorities to take a centrally-bought  IT system while simplifying and unifying their local working practices to adapt to the new technology.

NPfIT followed the same principle on a bigger scale: Whitehall officials wanted to persuade thousands of semi-autonomous NHS organisations to adopt centrally-bought technologies. But persuasion didn’t work, in either the fire services or the NHS.

More similarities

The Department for Communities and Local Government told
the PAC that the Firecontrol control was “over-specified” – that it was unnecessary to have back-up to an incident from a fire authority from the other side of the country.

Many in the NHS said that NPfIT was over-specified. The gold-plated trimmings, and elaborate attempts at standardisation,  made the patient record systems unnecessarily complicated and costly – and too difficult to deliver in practice.

As with the NPfIT, the Firecontrol system was delayed and local staff  had little or no confidence it would ever work, just as the NHS had little or no faith that NPfIT systems would ever work.

Both projects failed. Firecontrol wasted at least £482m. The Department of Communities and Local Government cancelled it in 2010. The Department of Health announced in 2011 that the NPfIT was being dismantled but the contracts with CSC and BT could not be cancelled and the programme is dragging on.

Now the NHS is buying its own local systems that may or may not be interoperable. [Particularly for the long-term sick, especially those who have to go to different specialist centres, it’s important that full and up-to-date medical records go wherever the patients are treated and don’t at the moment, which increases the risks of mistakes.]

Today’s Firecontrol report expresses concern about a new – local – approach to fire services IT. Will the local fire authorities now end up with a multitude of risky local systems, some of which don’t work properly, and are all incompatible, in other words don’t talk to each other?

This may be exactly the concern of a post-2015 government about NHS IT. With the NPfIT slowly dying NHS trusts are buying their own systems. The coalition wants them to interoperate, but will they?  

Could a post-2015 government introduce a new (and probably disastrous) national NHS IT project – son of NPfIT – and justify it by drawing attention to how very different it is to the original NPfIT eg that this time the programme has the buy-in of clinicians?

The warning signs are there, in the PAC’s report on Firecontrol. The report says there are delays on some local IT projects being implemented in fire authorities, and the systems may not be interoperable. The PAC has 

” serious concerns that there are insufficient skills across all fire authorities to ensure that 22 separate local projects can be procured and delivered efficiently in so far as they involve new IT systems”.

National to local – but one extreme to the other?

The PAC report continues

“There are risks to value for money from multiple local projects. Each of the 22 local projects is now procuring the services and systems they need separately.

“Local teams need to have the right skills to get good deals from suppliers and to monitor contracts effectively. We were sceptical that all the teams had the appropriate procurement and IT skills to secure good value for money.

“National support and coordination can help ensure systems are compatible and fire and rescue authorities learn from each other, but the Department has largely devolved these roles to the individual fire and rescue authorities.

“There is a risk that the Department has swung from an overly prescriptive national approach to one that provides insufficient national oversight and coordination and fails to meet national needs or achieve economies of scale. 

Comment

PAC reports are meant to be critical but perhaps the report on Firecontrol could have been a little more positive about the new local approach that has the overwhelming support of the individual fire and rescue authorities.  

Indeed the PAC quotes fire service officials as saying that the local approach is “producing more capability than was expected from the original FiReControl project”. And at a fraction of the cost of Firecontrol.

But the PAC’s Firecontrol Update Report expresses concern that

– projected savings from the local approach are now less than originally predicted

– seven of the 22 projects are running late and two of these projects have slipped by 12 months

– “We have repeatedly seen failures in project management and are concerned that the skills needed for IT procurement may not be present within the individual fire and rescue authorities, some of which have small management teams,” says the PAC.

On the other hand …

The shortfall in projected savings is small – £124m against £126m and all the local programmes are expected to be delivered by March 2015, only three months later than originally planned.

And, as the PAC says, the Department for Communities and Local Government has told MPs that a central peer review team is in place to help share good practice – mainly made up of members of fire and rescue authorities themselves.

In addition, part of the £82m of grant funding to local fire services has been used by some authorities to buy in procurement expertise.

Whether it is absolutely necessary – and worth the expense – for IT in fire services to link up is open to question, perhaps only necessary in a national emergency.

In the NHS it is absolutely necessary for the medical records of the chronically sick to link up – but that does not justify a son-of-NPfIT programme. Linking can be done cheaply by using existing records and having, say, regional servers pull together records from individual hospitals and other sites.

Perhaps the key lesson from the Firecontrol and the NPfIT projects is that large private companies can force their staff to use unified IT systems whereas Whitehall cannot force semi-autonomous public sector organisations to use whatever IT is bought centrally.

It’s right that the fire services are buying local IT and it’s right that the NHS is now too. If the will is there to do it cheaply, linking up the IT in the NHS can be done without huge central administrative edifices.

Lessons from FireControl (and NPfIT?) 

The National Audit Office identifies these main lessons from the failure of Firecontrol:

– Imposing a single national approach on locally accountable fire and rescue authorities that were reluctant to change how they operated

–  Launching the programme too quickly without applying basic project approval checks and balances

– Over optimism on the deliverability of the IT solution.

– Issues with project management including consultants who made up half of the management team and were not effectively managed

MP Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, today sums up the state of Firecontrol

“The original FiReControl project was one of the worst cases of project failure we have seen and wasted at least £482 million of taxpayers’ money.

“Three years after the project was cancelled, the DCLG still hasn’t decided what it is going to do with many of the specially designed, high-specification facilities and buildings which had been built. Four of the nine regional control centres are still empty and look likely to remain so.

“The Department has now provided fire and rescue authorities with an additional £82 million to implement a new approach based on 22 separate and locally-led projects.

“The new programme has already slipped by three months and projected savings are now less than originally predicted. Seven of the 22 projects are reportedly running late and two have been delayed by 12 months. We are therefore sceptical that projected savings, benefits and timescales will be achieved.

“Relying on multiple local projects risks value for money. We are not confident that local teams have the right IT and procurement skills to get good deals from suppliers and to monitor contracts effectively.

“There is a risk that the DCLG has swung from an overly prescriptive national approach to one that does not provide enough national oversight and coordination and fails to meet national needs or achieve economies of scale.

 “We want the Department to explain to us how individual fire and rescue authorities with varied degrees of local engagement and collaboration can provide the needed level of interoperability and resilience.

“Devolving decision-making and delivery to local bodies does not remove the duty on the Department to account for value for money. It needs to ensure that national objectives, such as the collaboration needed between fire authorities to deal with national disasters and challenges, are achieved.”

Why weren’t NPfIT projects cancelled?

 NPfIT contracts included commitments that the Department of Health and the NHS allegedly did not keep, which weakened their legal position; and some DH officials did not really want to cancel the NPfIT contracts (indeed senior officials at NHS England seem to be trying to keep NPfIT projects alive through the Health and Social Care Information Centre which is responsible for the local service provider contracts with BT and CSC).

PAC report on Firecontrol

What Firecontrol and the NPfIT have in common (2011)

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Posted in BT, BT Health, Campaign4Change, change management, consultants, CSC, data sharing, e-health, efficiency savings, Firecontrol, Government IT, health records, IT-related failures, managing outsourced services, NHS, outsourcing, project management, public sector, public services, shared services, Summary Care Record, supplier relationships

BT gets termination notice on £300m outsourcing contract

Posted on 22/07/2013 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

Sandwell Council has issued BT with a 30-day termination notice on a 15-year £300m outsourcing contract that has yet to reach its half-way point.

The metropolitan borough council says there are various defaults BT needs to resolve. Based at Oldbury, West Midlands, about five miles from Birmingham, Sandwell has been an outsourcing reference site for BT.

The company quoted Sandwell Council in its presentations that formed part of the bidding for Cornwall Council’s planned outsourcing work.

The “guaranteed” savings in Sandwell’s contract with BT appear to be based on a level of spending the council is not maintaining. One point of contention appears to be the council’s wish for BT to reduce its charges to the council in line with the authority’s lower levels of activity.

In June 2012 Sandwell submitted a change request that asked BT to recalculate the annual service charge because the service volumes delivered through the contract had reduced significantly.

The council wanted the recalculation to be based on a reduction in the workforce from around 7,400 in 2007 when the contract with BT was signed to 4,688 in mid 2012.

Government Computing quotes a council document on the dispute as saying

“A reduction in the workforce should have a corresponding reduction in volumes such as the size of the ICT estate, the payroll, HR support and budget holders. There have been volume reductions in invoices, the number of contracts administered and calls to the contact centre for some services.”

Sandwell’s 30-day termination notice to BT was issued on 16 July so it will expire around that time next month. The council says it is prepared to take back staff.

Sandwell council leader, Councillor Darren Cooper, told Government Computing: “Cabinet has approved a recommendation to start the process of ending our contract with BT. That termination will take effect in 30 days’ time unless BT puts right various defaults we have asked them to resolve.

“If we have to, I am confident we will be able to bring the services BT currently supplies to us back to the council and run them in the most effective way in future.”

Guaranteed

In 2007 BT and its joint bidder, outsourcing provider Liberata, had set out to run the council’s back-office functions at what was announced as a “guaranteed” reduced cost over the lifetime of the contract.

The deal was aimed at cutting costs and improving Sandwell’s IT infrastructure, HR, finance, payroll and customer services functions.

There was some success. The BT-led ‘Transform Sandwell’ team won the UK’s Best Customer Services Management Team at the National Customer Services Awards in December 2010.

BT built a 75,000 square foot office block for Transform Sandwell. It accommodated 400 employees of Transform Sandwell and a 300-strong customer service team working for BT.

Massive mistake?

Independent socialist councillor Mick Davies said “Someone somewhere has obviously made a massive mistake and the taxpayers of Sandwell will have to foot the bill… The writing seemed to be on the wall when BT’s partner in the project, Liberata, was dumped unceremoniously a couple of years ago.”

Sandwell Council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for strategic resources Councillor Steve Eling said: “In view of the current climate and public expenditure reductions, the council is engaging with its partner to determine services that are needed over the medium term and to reduce the overall costs in light of public spending reductions.”

Technologies used in the Transform Sandwell contact centre have included Verint Impact 360, Siebel CRM and Nortel Contact Centre 6.0.

A BT spokesman told the Halesowen News

“BT continually looks at ways to improve the service it provides to its customers. The original contract was signed in 2007 and as is normal with long-term partnerships BT constantly looks at ways to service the changing needs of both the council and citizens of Sandwell.”

BT told Government Computing it “has throughout – and remains – fully committed to delivering the commitments it made through the Transform Sandwell Partnership.”

The European Services Strategy Unit which has carried out detailed research on outsourcing contracts lists some of the terminated and reduced local authority strategic partnership contracts.

Sandwell has 72 councillors, 67 of which represent Labour.

Comment

At some point in a 10 or 15-year outsourcing contract a major dispute seems almost inevitable because a supplier’s business objectives will rarely change when the council’s priorities change.

BT’s deal with Sandwell was signed in 2007 – as was Southwest One’s deal with IBM – at a pre-austerity period.

Now that councils have been making, and continue to make, radical savings, they want the flexibility to cut their outsourcing costs too. But it may not be in the supplier’s interests to take profits that are much lower than expected.

No such thing as a free lunch

How can the business interests of outsourcing providers and their council clients ever completely align and move in time like synchronised swimmers?

The growing number of disputes in local authority outsourcing deals suggests that councils are not properly weighing up the risks when they sign deals.

Perhaps small groups of ruling councillors – such as those at Barnet – are too easily persuaded by the “guaranteed” savings on offer at the start of a contract.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. But try telling that to council Cabinet councillors who have cartoon-character pound signs in their eyes in the Disney period before a big outsourcing contract is well underway.

Let’s hope BT and Sandwell kiss and make up. It looks like the lawyers are already in the middle of them, though; and at whose expense?

Sandwell and BT consider end of strategic partnership – Government Computing

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Posted in BT, change management, efficiency savings, ERP, IT projects, IT-related failures, law, legal disputes, local government, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, public sector, public services, public-private partnerships, risk, shared services, supplier relationships

Hospitals accuse Capita of failings

Posted on 12/07/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

A nine-page letter written on behalf of eight health trusts is said to criticise Capita for “persistent minor failings” in managing payroll and other work formerly carried out by their human resources departments, says the Liverpool Post which has a copy of the letter.

The failings listed in the letter are said to include:

– overpaying staff, with trusts having problems recovering the monies paid out;

– breaching data protection by sending staff personal details to other employees;

– paying someone due to start work two months’ salary, despite their dropping out of the recruitment process;

 – delays in pre- employment checks, leading to highly valuable candidates withdrawing their application for a job;

– losing sensitive and confidential information

The Post says the letter threatens terminating the contract. “Health trusts stressed, unless they sort the problems out, they will not only deduct the cost incurred to them out of Capita’s payment but continued failure will result in them terminating its contract,” said the paper.

The letter was said to have been written by Debbie Fryer, director of human resources at Aintree UniversityHospitals, Fazakerley, on behalf of several trusts within the North Mersey Framework that have contracted out their payroll and human resources work to Capita.

It represents Fazakerley Hospital, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, the mental health trust Mersey Care NHS Trust, Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust, Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen hospitals, Wirral’s specialist Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and the specialist brain hospital The Walton Centre.

In 2011 the Capita Group announced  that it had been appointed as preferred supplier by a NHS North Mersey collaboration to deliver HR, payroll and recruitment services for up to 12 NHS trusts in Mersey.

The seven-year contract was worth up to £27m, with an option to extend for a further three years.  The contract was  expected to involve the TUPE transfer of up to 150 employees to Capita and the set up of new shared service centre based in Liverpool.

Capita said at the time it was first time NHS trusts had come together in the way they did to collectively outsource their HR, payroll and recruitment functions. 

The Liverpool Post says the letter expresses concern that Capita displayed a “laissez faire” attitude to personal data which had the potential to be “extremely damaging” to the trusts’ reputations and employee morale.

Trusts were said to have had difficulties recovering sums overpaid to employees, particularly former employees. Examples of lost documentation were said to be “almost too numerous to mention”, with documents seemingly disappearing into a “black hole”.

Ms Fryer is said to have been alarmed at some of the content of a report on Capita by auditors Grant Thornton in May. The letter sought concrete proposals on how Capita was going to resolve the situation.

A spokesman for Capita told the Post: “Capita is under contract with 10 trusts in the north west of England as a part of a framework agreement to deliver transactional HR services, including payroll and recruitment.

“As a part of this contract, Capita has been consolidating each trust’s individual HR and recruitment processes moving these to one common process applicable to all trusts under the framework.

“The simpler, improved process will make HR services easier and quicker for staff to use, lightening the administrative burden so trusts can focus on patient care.

“In order to implement these valuable changes, Capita and the trusts are currently undergoing a period of transformation as individual, often paper-based, services move to this common process.

“During this period, some challenges have arisen for both the trusts and Capita. However, Capita is working closely with the trusts involved to overcome those issues identified in order to deliver an enhanced service for trusts and their staff.”

Liverpool Post article

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, change management, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, NHS, operational issues, outsourcing, public sector, shared services, supplier relationships

Universal Credit – good for its IT suppliers?

Posted on 11/07/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The DWP is conceding in its own tangential way that the IT for Universal Credit is not up to scratch; and an article in the Daily Telegraph suggests that Universal Credit this year (and perhaps well beyond) will handle so few claimants that the calculations for the time being could be done by hand, or on a spreadsheet, and not automatically by IT systems. The Register, through anonymous sources, has confirmation of this.

The FT says there will be a progressive national rollout of the coalition’s welfare reform in just six additional jobcentres which it said was the “latest sign the project is falling behind schedule”. It added that a significant shake-up of the IT underpinning universal credit is under way. 

The DWP said David Pitchford, the Whitehall troubleshooter who took over the running of Universal Credit for three months, had been asked to “review” the IT and ministers had “accepted his recommendation that they should explore enhancing the IT for universal credit working with the government digital service”.

“Advancements in technology since the current system was developed have meant that a more responsive system that is more flexible and secure could potentially be built,” said the DWP.

The FT quoted Howard Shiplee, who has led the Universal Credit  project since May, as denying claims from MPs that the original IT had been dumped because it had not delivered. “The existing systems that we have are working, and working effectively,” he said.

He added that he had set aside 100 days not to stop the programme, but to reflect on where it has got to and start to look at the entire total plan.

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, doesn’t concede that the  timetable for the implementation of Universal Credit has changed. He told the work and pensions committee on Wednesday that numbers of claimants would ramp up during 2014 and he insisted that all claimants would be on the system by 2017, as originally planned.

“We get fixated on things like IT; the reality is it’s about a cultural shift,” Duncan Smith told MPs.

Comment

Iain Duncan Smith makes it clear that his DWP staff and suppliers, with the help of HMRC, are implementing Universal Credit with extreme care. Labour’s  work and pensions spokesman Liam Byrne says the Universal Credit project is a shambles. The truth is hard to fathom.

For years the DWP has rejected press reports that the IT for Universal Credit was in trouble. It is able to do without fear of authoritative contradiction because it keeps secret all its consultancy reports on the state of the Universal Credit project, despite FOI requests.

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and his officials talk much about the need for openness and transparency. Isn’t it time they persuaded DWP officials to release their internal and external reports on the detailed challenges faced by suppliers and civil servants on Universal Credit and other major government IT projects?

All big government IT projects are characterised by secrecy and defensiveness, although a little information about them is in the vague and subjectively-worded Major Projects Authority annual report.

One by-product of departmental defensiveness and secrecy is that the IT suppliers – in Universal Credit’s case HP, IBM and Accenture – are likely to continue to be paid even if the project is halted and redesigned. It’s probable the suppliers would argue that they have successfully done what they were asked to do in the contract. Who knows what the truth is?

The DWP is in effect protecting its suppliers from public and parliamentary scrutiny. It has been this way for decades and nothing has changed.

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, oversight, project management, public sector, public services, software quality, supplier relationships

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EC probes IBM CIO secondment at the Met Office

Posted on 08/07/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

A part of the European Commission is investigating a decision by the Met Office to appoint an IBM executive as CIO while he worked at the same time for IBM, the organisation’s main IT supplier.

The investigation was prompted by concerns of campaigner Dave Orr who wrote to the EC about the Met Office’s appointment of an IBM secondee David Young as CIO for two years between 2010 and December 2012.

Now Michel Barnier, the EC Commissioner responsible for internal market and services, says in a letter to Orr’s MEP Sir Graham Watson that the EC’s Directorate-General for Internal Market and Financial Services has been carrying out “an in-depth analysis” of the facts presented by Orr.

As part of this, the EC has written to the UK government seeking clarification on a number of points.

Some of Orr’s concerns arise from the Met Office’s responses – and non-responses – to his freedom of information requests. One of his concerns is of a potentially cosy relationship between the Met Office as a publicly-funded organisation and its principal IT supplier IBM; and he has wanted to know why the job of Met Office CIO was not openly advertised in a competitive recruitment process and whether its appointment of an IBM secondee had the potential for a possible conflict of interest.

Orr said that the secondment had the potential to confer a unique and significant intelligence and relationship advantage for IBM that other supercomputer suppliers could not hope to match. “In my view, that is anti-competitive and may in spirit at least, fail the EU procurement rules,” said Orr.

Barnier said that the existence of a conflict of interest would “depend on a number of factors such as the precise role and responsibilities the position entails, in particular whether it includes formulating and preparing technical specifications or tender documents for future IT contracts that the Met Office may put out to tender”.

It is also relevant, said Barnier, whether the terms and conditions of the secondment “impose any obligations or restrictions on the head of the department to prevent conflicts of interest, both during the secondment and afterwards”. He also wanted to know if internal rules were in place to prevent conflicts of interest in the course of tendering procedures.

The Met Office and ministers said that Young was not involved in procurement decisions relating to existing supercomputer facilities. Norman Lamb, then minister at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, said last year:

“Any potential conflicts of interest regarding David Young’s appointment were fully considered prior to his appointment and his terms of engagement specifically cover these …

“David Young had no involvement in the procurement process for existing supercomputing facilities, either for IBM or the Met Office, and he will have completed his secondment and left the Met Office prior to the selection of replacement supercomputer facilities.”

A wise decision?

The decision to second an IBM employee to run the 300-strong IT department, which is based at the Met Office’s supercomputer site in Exeter, raises questions that may go beyond the potential for a conflict of interest.

As Young was unable to be involved in some buying decisions and was unable to attend the technology strategy board to avoid any potential for a conflict of interest, did the Met Office restrict itself unnecessarily in hiring a CIO who faced these constraints?

Did the Met Office waste money – and a precious two years – hiring a lifeguard whose terms of employment required him to wear handcuffs?

The secondment of Young came at a difficult time for the Met Office – and some of the main difficulties it faced in 2010 are largely the same today.

Responses to Orr’s FOI requests and a report by the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee highlight some of the Met Office’s challenges:

– A need for modernised software that will take advantage of next-generation supercomputers.

– A need for a replacement supercomputer that has twice the power of the existing one which operates close to one petaflop (one thousand million million floating point operations per second).

– Funding a new supercomputer (with optimised software) at a time of cut-backs in government spending.

A Met Office Executive Board paper said that its executives have had “soft” negotiations with various suppliers about next generation supercomputer technology. They spoke to Bull, Cray, Microsoft, NEC and SGI.

“Vendor presentations indicate that performance increases will come from increasing the number of processors and/or adding co processors designed to process arrays of data efficiently, rather than increasing the speed of individual processors,” said the Met Office paper.

The Met Office says that “significant optimisation work will be needed [on the code] and, if this is not completed around 2014, a delay in the launch of the procurement may be unavoidable.” It has been seeking software engineers with experience of Fortran (which was originally developed by IBM) or C, Unix or Linux and Perl.

A House of Commons report in 2012 emphasised the need for new technology at the Met Office. The report of the Science and Technology Committee “Met Office Science” said in February 2012:

“It is of great concern to us that these scientific advances in weather forecasting and the associated public benefits (particularly in regard to severe weather warnings) are ready and waiting but are being held back by insufficient supercomputing capacity. We consider that a step-change in supercomputing capacity is required in the UK.”

MPs acknowledged that “affordability is an issue.”

The Met Office declined to answer Orr’s FOI requests about the cost to the taxpayer of employing Young.

Since Young’s  secondment ended in December 2012 the Met Office has hired one of its own employees as CIO. Charles Ewen has worked for the Met Office since 2008. He works with science teams to operate the Met Office’s high performance computing facilities. He is responsible for the development and implementation of the Met Office’s ICT Strategy and for the internal technical teams within the Technology Information Services Directorate.

Comment:

The Met Office hired Young for the best of reasons: after a succession of internal management changes it wanted a highly professional, stabilising CIO. But did it need a CIO from IBM, its principal IT supplier?

That the Met Office was sheepish about the appointment of an IBM secondee was, perhaps, revealed by its website which, in giving a profile of Young, did not mention – at first – that he was seconded from IBM. After Dave Orr’s FOI requests the Met Office corrected its website omission, making clear that Young was on secondment from IBM.

The Met Office has been in existence nearly 16o years. It was founded by Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy in 1854 as the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade. It is highly regarded internationally. A testament to the quality of its computer models  – which are used for daily forecasts – is that its “Unified Model” is licensed in Norway, Australia, South Korea, South Africa, India, New Zealand and the US Air Force.

Scientists say that a three-day forecast today is as accurate as a one-day forecast was 20 years ago. But in the UK the Met Office gets a bad press – not always unjustifiably.  There is a perception that the accuracy of forecasting is not improving. Sometimes it seems poor.

The algorithms that form the basis of weather and climate models place huge demands on supercomputing architectures. The models produce exceptionally large volumes of data. Although the Met Office had a new IBM supercomputer in 2008 it soon needed more powerful hardware and modernised software.

So was it a good idea, with all the challenges the Met Office faced in 2010 – including the need to persuade the government of the need to fund  new supercomputer facilities – to appoint a CIO for two years who, because he was an IBM secondee, had understandable restrictions on his freedom to do his job, restrictions the Met Office has been reluctant to reveal, despite Dave Orr’s FOI requests?

Hole in the head

The Met Office may regard an EC inquiry into its appointment of an IBM secondee as the last thing it needs now. But accountability should not be left to the occasional scrutiny by a Commons committee – or to Dave Orr’s FOI requests.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, EU procurement, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, IBM, innovation, managing outsourced services, Met Office, outsourcing, procurement, technology

Somerset County Council settles IBM dispute – who wins?

Posted on 28/03/2013 | 10 comments

By Tony Collins

Somerset County Council has settled a High Court legal dispute with IBM-led Southwest One. It will bring some services back in-house.

The Conservative leader of Somerset council John Osman said, “This agreement will save Somerset residents millions of pounds and will make the contract fit for the future.”

Osman added that the agreement involves settlement of Southwest One fees, which the council had been withholding, for a mutually- agreed sum.

“Most importantly the cancelling of the gainshare agreement will save Somerset County Council residents millions of pounds in the future as those sums can now be kept by the Council,” said Osman.

But as the deal includes payment of an undisclosed sum by the council to Southwest One it is unclear which side is the beneficiary in the dispute. [See Dave Orr comment on this post.]

The council says the settlement will bring benefits for the council including securing “greater strategic control and capacity back with SCC  in terms of Procurement, Property and ICT”.

The agreement also “removes some barriers to ensure successful delivery of our Change Programme – with greater alignment to the operating model, commissioning capacity, service reviews, and technology enablers.”

And the settlement allows officers to focus on improving services rather than on a series of disputes.

Southwest One had issued a writ against the council – what the authority calls a “substantial claim” – and a date for a High Court hearing was set provisionally for November 2013.  Yesterday [March 27 2013] the council agreed to settle the High Court claim, and an unspecified number of other disputes.   

IBM, Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council, and Avon and Somerset Police set up Southwest One as a joint venture company in 2007.  IBM  owns 75% of the company.

Somerset’s officers said in a report yesterday:

“Following a series of discussions between the Council and Southwest One we are now in a position to settle the disputes and the Procurement legal proceedings against SCC will cease.

“The agreement includes a settlement payment to SWO which is substantially lower than the claim against SCC and releases payments to SWO that were held by SCC as part of the dispute.”

Somerset County Council will take back several services and about 100 people who had been seconded to Southwest One. The council says that taking back staff and services will “reduce the potential for further disputes and align those services much closer to the operating model the Council has adopted”.

Services returning to SCC include:

• Strategic and Operational Procurement
• Property Services
• Estates Management
• ICT Strategic Management including some web management posts
• Some business support posts for the above functions

The council says there will be little change in day to day activities and no changes to locations of staff. Somerset’s staff will have their secondments terminated and revert to the council’s terms and conditions.

The High Court action was because of a disagreement  about the quality of Southwest One’s procurement service and what payments Southwest One was entitled to as a result of savings made through the joint venture.

Secrecy

Whereas a High Court hearing would have been open to the public, the sum paid by Somerset to IBM as part of the settlement,  and the risks of bringing staff and services back in-house, are being kept confidential because of what the council calls “commercial sensitivity”.

Risks

Some of the settlement’s main risks for the council are listed in yesterday’s report:

• The confidential nature of the discussions held to secure an agreement has
meant that full consultation with a wide range of officers and partners has not
been possible.
• The transfers of staff and functions will take place during the new financial
year. The proposed transfers create some risk due to SAP changes required.
• There will be some risks in the hand-over of programmes of work.
• Despite all efforts to mitigate risks to services, it is possible that some
disruption may occur. Transition workshops are planned to identify and preempt such instances, which significantly reduces the risk.
• Implications for partners have also been estimated. It is possible that partners
may take a different view of the implications for them.

Blame

Osman blamed the previous Liberal Democrat administration for the problems which he said were owing to the way the contract was worded, the actions of the previous Lib Dem administration transferring services to Southwest One that should never have transferred and the failure to clarify the savings sharing element of the agreement. Osman said this was the “equivalent of the Lib Dems writing a blank cheque”.

The 10-year joint venture, which started in 2007, will continue. 

Comment:

As the terms of the settlement and the risks associated with transferring staff and services back in-house are being kept secret nobody outside an inner circle of the council can know how bad the joint venture and the dispute have been for Somerset council’s taxpayers.

If anything is clear it is that IBM held the dominant legal hand all along. It issued a High Court claim, and now it has received a payment from the council.

It seems to be a feature of big council outsourcing deals and joint ventures that councillors are easily swayed by promises of enormous savings, often upfront savings, and are not too concerned about the risk of things going wrong because they won’t be in office when or if any mud hits the fan.

Yesterday Cornwall Council’s Interim CEO, along with the Chairman of Cornwall Partnership Foundation Trust and the Director of Finance at Peninsula Community Health signed a contract for a joint venture with BT.

As Andrew Wallis, an independent councillor in Cornwall, says

“Lets hope the Council does not regret this day.”

The Southwest One joint venture was flawed joint venture from the time a rushed contract riddled with literals was signed in the early hours of a Saturday morning in 2007.  For years afterwards, Somerset Council has been trying to dig itself out of a hole. It is now near the surface – except that yesterday’s council report says there is a potential for further disputes. 

Will other councils learn from Somerset’s experiences? Cornwall’s deal shows that any learning will be very limited.

And the secrecy that tends to go with big outsourcing deals and joint ventures means that a small group of councillors can sign joint ventures and outsourcing contracts without proper accountability  – and can settle any legal disputes later without accountability, and indeed with impunity.

Whenever a  major supplier offers a council large upfront savings from an outsourcing deal or a joint venture why would the authority’s inner circle of councillors say no?

Thank you to campaigning Somerset resident and former county council employee Dave Orr who provided the links and information that made this post possible.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, IBM, IT projects, IT-related failures, law, legal disputes, local government, managing change, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, SAP, supplier relationships

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Cornwall Council’s cabinet approves BT deal after hurried talks

Posted on 13/03/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Independent Cornwall councillor Andrew Wallis has revealed on his blog that the councils’s cabinet has approved a tender from BT which involves the transfer of 132 staff in information services, 76 in shared services, 46 in document management and 28 in telecare.

Cornwall Council has rushed through agreement of a deal with BT – whether deliberate or not – ahead of the voting in of a new council in May. A formal consultation with the staff affected will begin next month.

All cabinet members apart from one, independent Bert Biscoe, approved the tender. Wallis says that a meeting today has brought to an end a “long, emotive, and fraught process”.

He adds: “I am pleased the Cabinet meeting today, and the information surrounding the bid, was all done in open session. It might bring some confidence back in to the process of partnership working.”

Cornwall’s cabinet ratified the recommendation that

“…  award of the contract to BT plc for the Strategic Partnership for Support Services, as set out in the Invitation to Submit Final Tender issued by the Council on 4 March 2013, be approved.”

The cabinet also gave authority for the signing of the contract to the Interim Chief Executive in consultation with the Leader, the Corporate Director of Resources, the Head of Legal, Democratic and Procurement Services and the Head of Finance.

Wallis says the deal guarantees the creation of 197 new jobs by end of year 4 and 313 new jobs to be delivered through reasonable endeavours by end of year 5.

“I am told the term reasonable endeavours has legal meeting, but for me, it still sounds wishy-washy,” says Wallis. “I am there will be some nervous staff wanting to know how they will fit into this new utopia.

Fifty two jobs have been identified to go by the end of year 4. There is a contractual commitment for most of the affected staff to be re-deployed.

Says Wallis: “The deed is done, and I just hope it will not turn into the disaster like so many other councils’ joint ventures up and down the land.”

There is a warning in a report to the cabinet about the risks of not signing a deal with BT. The report implies that BT would have to receive compensation for its bidding costs.

“If Cabinet chooses not to award a contract the Council will face a different set of risks (when compared to the risks of signing a contract).

“These risks would be higher in relation to finance and similar in relation to legal and delivery. As the bid meets the requirements as set out in the Evaluation Guidance … there are financial and legal risks in deciding not to award a contract.

“The ‘in-scope’ services have developed proposals with bidders over the past 12 months and if a contract is not awarded, work will need to be undertaken to ensure a level of continued service delivery in these areas in light of recent budget decisions.”

The report to the cabinet gives no projected cost of the deal. Officers are expected to sign a contract anytime after 24 March 2013.

Comment

BT’s promises, contractual commitments and guarantees are built into a concrete frame. Except that the frame can be broken apart by any legal dispute that throws clauses in the contract into doubt.

Let us hope Cornwall Council understands that its failure to keep its contractual commitments may bring BT’s litigation lawyers into play – and BT has more experience in outsourcing legal disputes than Cornwall Council.

Councillors will assume that Cornwall’s officers will be monitoring BT’s performance from day one of the contract. They may not realise that, perhaps with impressive diligence,  BT will be monitoring Cornwall Council’s performance from day one.

But not all councillors will need care how the contract progresses – for there will be a new council in May and some councillors may not stand or be re-elected.

If things go sour the new council could claim it wasn’t in any way responsible for the BT contract. All of this is within the context of rushed talks and a rushed agreement to sign the contract.

As Churchill said in the House of Commons in 1947:

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Things run well and efficiently now at Cornwall Council. How can BT guarantee  197 jobs, invest more (Trading investment in bidding for new work – £1.9m plus £7.8m investment in transformation), make savings (£17.4m over 10 years) and run services more efficiently – and make a profit?

The Council says that BT will invest £157.5m in the partnership over 10 years, excluding an additional £16m spent outside Cornwall trying to win bids. The cabinet was told in a report that BT has made an “excellent offer”. But is it too good to be true? Indeed the one figure the report to the cabinet doesn’t give is the projected cost to Cornwall’s council taxpayers.

With the prices charged by BT for inevitable and as yet unforeseen changes, could the costs to the council more than wipe out savings?

It may be that all but one of Cornwall’s cabinet councillors, perhaps encouraged by council officers, have been naive. I hope I am proved wrong.

Andrew Wallis’s blog

Cornwall Council rushes to sign BT deal ahead of elections

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, local democracy, local government, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, public services, public-private partnerships

Another Universal Credit leader stands down

Posted on 11/03/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

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.

A DWP spokesman said today (11 March 2013),

“David Pitchford’s role as Chief Executive for Universal Credit effectively combines the Senior Responsible Officer and Programme Director roles.  As a result, Hilary Reynolds will now move onto other work.” She will no longer work on UC but will stay at the DWP, said the spokesman.

Raised in New Zealand, Reynolds is straight-talking. When she wrote to local authority chief executives in December 2012, introducing herself as the new Director for the Universal Credit Programme, her letter was free of the sort of jargon and vague management-speak that often characterises civil service communications.  It is a pity she is standing down.

Some believe that Universal Credit will be launched in such a small way it could be managed manually. The bulk of the roll-out will be after the next general election, which means the plan would be subject to change. Each limited phase will have to prove itself before the next roll-out starts.

Reynolds’ letter to local authorities suggests that the roll-out of UC will, initially, be limited.  She said in her letter,

“For the majority of local authorities, the impact of UC during the financial year 2013/14 will be limited. .. Initially, UC will replace new claims from single jobseekers of working age in certain defined postcode areas.

“From October 2013 we plan to extend the service to include jobseekers with children, couples and owner-occupiers, gradually expanding the service to locations across Great Britain and making it available to the full range of eligible working age claimants …by the end of 2017.”

Some IT work halted? 

Accenture, Atos Origin, Oracle, Red Hat, CACI and IBM UK have all been asked to stop work on UC, according to shadow minister Liam Byrne MP, as reported on consultant Brian Wernham’s blog.

Wernham says that Minister Mark Hoban did not rebut Byrne’s statement but said that HP was committed to carrying on with the project. HP is responsible for deployment of a solution, not development, says Wernham’s agile government blog.

Comment

The DWP says that Pitchford has taken over from Reynolds – but separately the DWP had confirmed that Pitchford was leading UC temporarily and that Reynolds had a permanent job on the programme. Pitchford’s usual job is running the Major Projects Authority in the Cabinet Office.

All the changes at the DWP, and the reported halting of work by IT contractors, imply that the UC project is proving more involved, and moving more slowly,  than initially thought. It’s also a reason for the DWP to continue to refuse FOI requests for internal reports that assess the project’s progress.

Perhaps the DWP doesn’t want people to know that the project is on track for such a limited roll-out in October that it could be managed, in the main, by hand. With the bulk of the roll-out planned for after the next general election Labour may be denied the use of UC as an effective electoral weapon against the Conservatives. In other words, the riskiest stage of UC is being put off until 2016/17.

 Francis Maude, who is worried that UC will prove an IT and electoral disaster, has his own man, David Pitchford, leading the project, if only temporarily. Meanwhile UC project leaders from the DWP continue to last an extraordinarily short time. Reynolds had been UC programme director for only four months when she stood down. Pitchford is in a temporary role as the programme’s head, and Andy Nelson has recently become the DWP’s Chief Information Officer.

So much for UC’s continuity of leadership.

The truth about the project hasn’t been told. Isn’t it time someone told Iain Duncan Smith what’s really happening – Francis Maude perhaps?

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, Atos, DWP, FOI, Government IT, IBM, local government, openness and transparency, Oracle, outsourcing, Politics, Universal Credit

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Cornwall Council – a model of local democracy

Posted on 12/12/2012 | 1 comment

Cornwall Council yesterday debated in an open and informed way proposals to set up a major joint venture with BT, keep services in-house or have a limited “strategic partnership”.

The debate was webcast and councillors voted on the basis of a wealth of information published by the council on its website. On the specific potential benefits of a joint venture the council had information from BT and Kevin Lavery, the council’s chief executive. Lavery also produced a useful “pros and cons” summary of the options available to councillors.

On the risks of a joint venture, and the experiences of other authorities, councillors had invaluable information from Cornwall Council’s independent “Single Issue Panel” of councillors, and from Dave Orr who has a deep understanding of Southwest One, the failed joint venture in Somerset with IBM.

In the end the full council rejected proposals for in-house services, and also decided against setting up a major joint venture with BT. Councillors voted for a limited strategic partnership which includes telehealth and telecare, ICT and document management.  How this will work, whether BT will want to run it, and whether it will need a new competitive tender are questions yet to be answered.

Jim Currie, the council leader, and a sceptic of a major joint venture, warned councillors about the dangers of making a decision under pressure of fear.

“The doom and gloom is just not sustainable,” he said. “The fear that has been put in us has to be modified by reality. The reality is that the vast majority of councils will go under before we do.”

He added that the council has expertise, pensions, and trading contacts that would be given away in a joint venture or outsourcing deal. A costly SAP system would also be transferred. The council, he said, would be “giving away the ERP that cost us so much money and lots of IT updates that go with it”.

Comment:

Cornwall Council has emerged from the debate over the proposed joint venture with BT as an exemplar of local democracy. Alec Robertson, the former council leader, who was ousted because of his strong support for a joint venture, comes out of the debate with credit.

There was pressure to do so but Robertson decided that the future of council services should be a decision taken by the full council and not by an inner circle of cabinet councillors. This was a bold step but a critical one in favour of local democracy.

Jim Currie who was voted Cornwall’s leader after Robertson was ousted, also emerges from the debate with credit. Like Robertson Currie is a conviction politician.

But the clear winner of the debate is Cornwall Council. Its reports on the options available to councillors are not perfect but at least they make clear what is and is not being published; and a great deal has been published. Everything Cornwall Council has done is in marked contrast to the partnership decision of Barnet Council which kept its decision on a partnership deal to an inner circle of cabinet councillors. Barnet was entitled to do so, but it was a macho stance given the strength of local opposition. Barnet published little information on its proposals compared to Cornwall.

It would be a pity, though, to shine a light on Cornwall’s democratic strengths by putting Barnet in the shadows. Democracy has its flaws, but Cornwall Council has shown how those weaknesses can be tackled by more democracy, not less.

Cornwall Council – middle way agreed.

The biggest cause of shared services failure?

Shared services in the public sector – Tim Manning.

Jude’s Blog (local councillor)

Very thin joint venture is supported – Andrew Wallis (local councillor)

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, local democracy, local government, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, SAP, shared services

Barnet’s inner circle ratifies Capita deal – now the challenge begins

Posted on 07/12/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Conservative-led Barnet Borough Council’s inner circle of “cabinet” members  agreed  unanimously last night to confirm Capita as the supplier for a 10-year £320m back-office services contract, subject to financial reports.

The deal was agreed despite widespread opposition, without a vote of the full council, and without a political consensus.  A report published by Cornwall Council’s Support Services Single Issue Panel has said that a political consensus is critical to the success of partnership deals.

Capita promises to save £120m over the 10 years, and make an £8m investment in new technology. Up to 200 jobs could go. Capita will run:

  • Estates
  • Finance and Payroll
  • Human Resources
  • IT Infrastructure and Support
  • Corporate Procurement
  • Revenues and Benefits
  • Commercial Services.

About 100 people gathered outside the Town Hall in The Burroughs, Hendon, to voice their opposition to the contract.

Standing on chairs and holding banners, members of Barnet Alliance for Public Services called on the cabinet members to listen to residents’ concerns.

Councillors vacated the room and continued their meeting next door. Speaking at the meeting, Labour councillor Alison Moore said: “This is an end to democracy as we know it… There is no such thing as guaranteed savings.”

Council leader Richard Cornelius said:

“I look forward to getting the savings we desperately need. This is not a gamble. This is not a quick fix – we have been talking about this for a long time. If we were to reject these proposals we would have to find savings elsewhere, which would be very unpleasant.”

Cornelius said the combination of a saving to the taxpayer of a million pounds a month and an £8m investment in technology by Capita made it a “very, very good deal for the Barnet taxpayer”.

The council will set up a monitoring committee in the next couple of months to scrutinise the contract.

Capita’s New Support and Customer Services Organisation deal will be the first of two major contracts awarded under the Barnet council’s One Barnet outsourcing programme. Capita’s contract is due to start in April 2013.

Comment:

Barnet’s cabinet has made an important and controversial decision about the council’s future without a vote of the full council, which is a snub to local democracy.

Somerset County Council’s joint venture with IBM has failed in part because the staff were opposed to it,  the promises were over-optimistic, the finances were on fragile foundations, and the political leadership changed.

In Barnet the opposition to the deal with Capita is more pronounced than at Somerset, particularly among staff. Can the contract survive so much animus, and will opposition to Barnet’s cabinet grow now that local democracy has been flouted in such a macho way?

Cornwall is putting its joint venture decision to a vote of the full council, on 11 December. Whatever the outcome one thing is clear. Cornwall Council’s approach to local democracy puts Barnet to shame.

Barnet approves outsourcing plan

Political consensus key to success in outsourcing

Capita contract approved despite protests

Resident seeks judicial review 

Barnet’s fire-sale

A day Capita will rue?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Capita, change management, cost reduction, IBM, local democracy, local government, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, public-private partnerships