DWP untouched by MPs’ criticisms over Universal Credit IT project

Posted on 08/11/2013 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Yesterday, while the national media was broadcasting and publishing criticisms of the Universal Credit project by the Public Accounts Committee, tweets by the press office at the Department for Work and Pensions were not exactly contrite.

Some DWP tweets amid the criticisms yesterday afternoon:

@dwppressoffice   The early #UniversalCredit roll-out is going well & we expect to announce more details of delivery plans shortly http://ow.ly/qAeOm 

@dwppressoffice   Head of #UniversalCredit says there is real potential to use much of the existing IT systems http://ow.ly/qAeYc 

@dwppressoffice   We do not recognise the PAC’s £140m write-off figure for #UniversalCredit & expect it to be substantially less http://ow.ly/qzE75 

@dwppressoffice   Today’s PAC report on #UniversalCredit doesn’t take into account our new leadership team or progress in delivery http://ow.ly/qzDvd 

In October the National Audit Office said in its report Universal Credit: early progress:

“Major Projects Authority and supplier-led reviews in mid-2012 identified a ‘fortress’ mentality within the programme team and a ‘good news’ reporting culture.”

The Public Accounts Committee said in its report yesterday:

“The Department only reported good news and denied the problems that had emerged.”

Comment

 The DWP’s tweets yesterday are not the fault of individual press officers who are, no doubt, accurately reflecting the views of senior officials that the Universal Credit IT project is going well, subject to some realignment which is to be expected on a complex and innovative programme.

This is one reason the DWP has had so many big IT-based project failures going back to the “Camelot” benefit computerisation scheme in the 1980s. The department’s perception of itself is that it is uniquely complex and misunderstood by those on the outside: the media, Parliament, the National Audit Office and, in more recent years, the Cabinet Office and the Major Projects Authority.

In some ways the DWP is like a soldier who emerges from a dense European forest in 1965 and is amazed to discover that the Second World War ended two decades before.

If the DWP’s press officers feel a need to keep up the pretence that all is well with the Universal Credit IT project, it probably means the pressure will be on the project director Howard Shiplee to keep up that pretence as well at least until, perhaps, he and Iain Duncan Smith disappear from the department after the general election in 2015.

Until the culture of denial and good news reporting at the DWP gives way to a culture of contrition, intense internal challenge, much greater openness, and an acceptance that some criticisms by Parliament and the National Audit Office may be justified – and an acceptance that the democratic process may be good for the department – Universal Credit seems doomed to follow the path of the last major benefits system change project in the 1990s: Operational Strategy, as it was called, took ten years (much longer than expected), went over budget by more than 300% and did not achieve the estimated savings.

Needless to say Whitehall officials – and the supplier – regarded the project a success.

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Posted in Campaign4Change

Did DWP mislead MPs and media over Universal Credit?

Posted on 07/11/2013 | 2 comments

By T0ny Collins

Today’s report of the all-party Public Accounts Committee “Universal Credit: early progress” goes beyond criticisms of the scheme in a National Audit Office report of the same name on 5 September 2013.

Public Accounts MPs say the Department for Work and Pensions gave “misleading interviews to the press regarding progress after it became aware of difficulties with the programme”.

And as recently as July 2013 the “Department denied that there were problems with the programme’s IT when it gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee”.

These criticisms are against a background of the DWP’s refusal to publish any of the many internal and external reports the department has commissioned on the project’s progress, problems and challenges since 2011.

The Times today says that work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and members of his parliamentary team are “understood to have approached at least three Tory MPs on the cross-party [Public Accounts] committee to ask them to ensure that Robert Devereux, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, was singled out for censure”.  In the end there was only limited criticism in the PAC report of Devereux – under his formal title of “Accounting Officer”.

Comment

If the DWP has been misleading the press, giving incorrect evidence to Parliament, and keeping secret its reports on the problems and challenges facing one of the government’s most important IT-based programmes – all of which seem to be the case – is it an institution that regards itself as uniquely outside the democratic process?

On big IT projects, officials are not motivated by money and concern for their jobs as are private sector boards of directors. When a private company gets it wrong and loses tens of millions on a project, the share price may fall, individual bonuses may be hit, and jobs, including the CEO’s, may be at risk.

In the public sector getting it wrong rarely has any implications for officials. They have only the threat of departmental embarrassment as a deterrent to getting it wrong. But they need not fear even embarrassment if they can mislead the press and Parliament and keep secret all their internal and external reports.

If a lack of transparency, culture of denial, and the misleading of Parliament continue to characterize big risky IT-based ventures in central government, one has to ask whether Whitehall is congenitally ill-suited to running such programmes.

The Public Accounts Committee warned in a report in 1984 about the risks of large public sector computer programmes. That report came after a series of project disasters.

So what has been learned in the last 30 years – other than that central departments are poorly equipped managerially – or democratically – to handle big IT-based programmes and projects?

These are some of the Public Accounts Committee’s findings:

MPs try to be positive

“We believe that meeting any specific timetable is less important than delivering the programme successfully. There is still the potential for Universal Credit to deliver significant benefits, but there is no clarity yet on the amount of savings it will achieve.”

Culture of denial

“The programme had also developed a flawed culture of reporting good news and denying that problems had emerged. This culture resulted from the desire of senior staff within the programme to show publically that they were able to push the programme forward, at the expense of ensuring that adequate controls were in place or listening to concerns raised about its delivery.

“Although the Department has tried to tackle this culture, it gave misleading interviews to the press regarding progress after it became aware of difficulties with the programme, and as recently as July 2013 the Department denied that there were problems with the programme’s IT when it gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee.”

Shocking absence of control over suppliers

“There has been a shocking absence of control over suppliers with the Department neglecting to implement basic procedures for monitoring and authorising expenditure…

“The Department recognises its supplier management has been weak, risking value for money.  Four main suppliers – Accenture, IBM, Hewlett Packard and British Telecom – have provided IT systems for Universal Credit, and by March 2013 the Department had paid them £265m out of the £303m spent with suppliers on IT systems.

“In February 2013 the Major Projects Authority found no evidence of the Department actively managing its supplier contracts, resulting in suppliers being out of control and financial controls not being in place.  The Department has yet to provide a comprehensive assessment of how much of this expenditure has proved nugatory, although the Major Projects Authority believes it will be a substantial figure running into hundreds of millions of pounds.”

Lack of oversight

The lack of oversight allowed the Department’s Universal Credit team to become isolated and defensive, undermining its ability to recognise the size of the problems the programme faced and to be candid when reporting progress…

“Oversight has been characterised by a failure to understand properly the nature and enormity of the task, a failure to monitor and challenge progress regularly, and a failure to intervene promptly when problems arose.

“Senior managers only became aware of problems through ad hoc reviews, mostly conducted by external reviewers, as inadequate management information and reporting arrangements had not alerted them that things were amiss.

“Given its huge importance to the Department, the Accounting Officer [Robert Devereux] and his team should have been more alert to identifying and acting on early warning signs that things were going wrong with the programme

Blinkered culture remains?

“Risk was not well managed and the divergence between planned and actual progress could and should have been spotted and acted upon earlier. The Department only reported good news and denied the problems that had emerged. The risk of a similarly blinkered culture remains as the Department will be working to tight timescales to get the programme back on track.”

Problems hidden

“It is extremely disappointing that the litany of problems in the Universal Credit Programme were often hidden by a culture prevalent in the Department which promoted only the telling of ‘good news’.

“For example, officials were aware that a critical report highlighting many of these issues had been discussed internally for months. Indeed, there are real doubts over when officials became aware of these problems and it is difficult to conceive, based on the evidence we were presented with, that officials within the Department did not know of them before July 2012.”

Shocking absence of financial and other controls

“There has been a shocking absence of financial and other internal controls and we are not yet convinced that the Department has robust plans to overcome the problems that have impeded progress.”

Did the DWP do anything well?

“The Department initially adopted a piecemeal approach to delivering the programme.

“In 2011 it identified over a hundred different types of users for Universal Credit, and initially sought to design IT solutions for each set of circumstances individually. It was only in early 2012 that the Department decided to stand back and try to establish a clearer picture of what the programme’s overall shape might look like.

“During the summer of 2012 the Department became aware of the problems that Universal Credit faced. It was first alerted by concerns raised in a supplier-led review, commissioned by the Secretary of State, which reported in July.

“The Department subsequently established that the programme’s progress was stalling because there were a number of unresolved issues which had become intractable, particularly relating to the level of security needed for identity assurance and protection against fraud and error and cyber-attack.

“The Department had been previously unaware of the programme’s difficulties because its internal lines of monitoring, intervention and defence, intended to identify and mitigate such problems, were not working properly. Governance arrangements were not remotely adequate, and the Accounting Officer [Robert Devereux] discussed progress with the head of the Universal Credit programme only every two or three weeks.

“The Department had inadequate performance information to scrutinise and challenge the programme’s reports of its progress, so internal reporting arrangements did not flag up that things were amiss. The Department’s corporate finance undertook insufficient work to ensure there was an appropriate control environment in place, and the Department’s process for ministers to sign-off higher-value contracts was weak.

“The Department’s senior management had relied on ad hoc reviews, mostly conducted by external reviewers, which only provided an occasional snapshot of the programme, instead of ensuring effective internal systems were in place to monitor and challenge progress. However, during 2012 the problems surfaced more clearly as the Universal Credit team became unable to respond to recommendations made by such reviews.”

Will Universal Credit ever work?

“The Department remains uncertain about key details of its final plans. It does not know how much can be delivered online, when this will be available, and what activities will continue to require face-to-face meetings.

“ The Department also does not know what the final cost of the IT will be, or the savings the programme is expected to deliver. Nor does it know when it will close down the other benefits that Universal Credit will replace.”

The Department has a target of enrolling 184,000 claimants on Universal Credit by April 2014 and has launched limited pilot schemes.”

Says the PAC report: “The current rate of progress is significantly below target, however. Only around 2,500 claimants were registered at the time of our hearing in September, and the Department was unwilling to speculate what number will be enrolled by next April.”

In a steady state Universal Credit is expected to deal with 10 million people in about 7.5 million households, making 1.6 million changes in circumstances each month.

Security versus usability

“The Department is aware that the system must include suitable security arrangements if Universal Credit is to operate effectively and deliver its intended benefits.  However, the Department has not yet finalised such a solution, and was unable to say when two key components – those countering fraud and error and confirming claimants’ identity- would be completed.

“The Department has found it particularly hard to establish the right balance between security and usability. The development of an effective security system has been hindered by security not being integral to the design of IT components from the outset, but instead being retro-fitted into systems, and suppliers working on different assumptions and to different standards. To address this, the Department told us it has now brought security issues together in one place, with one senior official responsible for overseeing this part of the programme.”

DWP response to PAC report

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson told the BBC

“This report doesn’t take into account our new leadership team, or our progress on delivery,” it said. “We have already taken comprehensive action including strengthening governance, supplier management and financial controls.”

The DWP said it did not accept “the write-off figure quoted by the committee” and expected it to be substantially less”.

A spokesman for Iain Duncan Smith told the BBC that he had “every confidence” in the team now running the programme, including Mr Devereux – whose position  some newspapers have suggested is under threat.

“Both the National Audit Office and the public accounts committee acknowledged a fortress mentality within the Universal Credit programme,” he said.

“Iain was clear back in the summer about how he and the permanent secretary took action to fix those problems.”

PAC report: Universal Credit: early progress

National Audit Office report: Universal Credit: early progress

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, Government IT, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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DWP cover-up over Universal Credit IT project?

Posted on 01/11/2013 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

In March 2012 a contact who was close to the Universal Credit IT project called me about problems on the scheme – using a phone box because of concern that mobile phones were insecure.

The contact said a deadline in April (2012)  to lock-down features in the Universal Credit IT project was not going to be met and that the failure would jeopardise the go-live date of October 2013 for the start of Universal Credit.

The contact also said the Government would make an announcement on the scheme in September which may refer to a write-off of at least £150m on the IT project.  Officials were reluctant to impart the whole truth to ministers, suggested the contact. Oracle was said to be having trouble handling functionality.

It was a difficult conversation to write up at the time because the Department for Work and Pensions claimed without reservations that the IT project was on time and to budget, and the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was making similarly positive statements on the project’s progress.

Even so Campaign4Change published the contact’s claims, in April 2012, under the headline “Time for Truth on Universal Credit IT“.

Now The Guardian says it has 150 pages of leaked documents that show ministers have been presented with a radical plan to put the Universal Credit project back on track by restarting the scheme and writing off £119m of work over the past three years.

Says the Guardian:

“The proposals would create a much more web-based system, reducing the need for jobcentre staff, but putting the whole scheme back to ‘phase one’…”

An alternative plan would be to attempt to improve the existing system and build on the investment already made.

“Both plans were drawn up by civil servants at the direction of Department for Work and Pensions ministers. The documents include a risk assessment of each option, which criticises both plans and warns that a maximum of 25,000 people – just 0.2% of all benefit recipients – will be transferred on to the programme by the next general election, whichever route is taken.

“The risk assessment warns that the plan to start again, the ‘design and build’ web-based scheme, is ‘unproven … at this scale’. It says the plan to fix three years of work on universal credit is still ‘not achievable within the preferred timescales’, describing it as unrealistic.”

The Guardian suggests that Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude favours the new web plan. Duncan Smith and his newly appointed project director, Harold Shiplee, are understood to back fixing what has been created over the past three years.

The risk document says that the option to fix the current system is “not endorsed” by the Cabinet Office, which could have “an adverse impact on delivery timescales” in getting government approvals.

Duncan Smith has said repeatedly that universal credit will be delivered on time and on budget but the 2017 deadline for completion has long been impossible. 

The risk assessment, dated 11 October, says the plan for a faster, more web-based system would involve writing off £119m of previous work, and cost the DWP £96m to develop. However, it warns ministers that they will have no idea if the web-based system will work until the summer of 2014 “when it is live for 100 claimants”.

Fixing the existing system would cost £226m, the report says, and the completed design would still be vulnerable to security flaws. While this option offers a chance for reputational recovery, a smaller write-off cost of £21m and less disruption, the report warns it may ultimately not prove value for money.

Asked about the findings of the risk report, the DWP said its plans remained on track and would ultimately save the country £38bn.

The Guardian says that ministers may order both plans to be pursued at the same time and wait to see what happens after six months.

A DWP spokesman told The Guardian: “Our work on the development of universal credit is ongoing and, as we said back in July, we will be announcing the next stage of rollout later this year. Our plans for delivery, which will ultimately bring a £38bn benefit to society, remain on track.”

Comment

The contact’s call from a phone box in March 2012 indicates that the Department for Work and Pensions knew of the chaotic state of the Universal Credit IT project more than a year before there was any public admission of any problems.

The contact was right about plans for a possible large write-off, and that the scheme would not start in October 2013 as planned. The contact was wrong about the government making an announcement about the write-off. That didn’t happen. It still isn’t happening. It looks like IDS wants to try and repair the project, which is likely to throw good money after bad, though it is likely to delay the large write-offs until after the next general election.

Meanwhile the DWP is continuing to refuse to publish any of its reports and assessments on the IT for Universal Credit. The secret reports include:

–   A Project Assessment Review in November 2011

– Universal Credit Delivery Model Assessment Two (McKinsey and Partners)

– Universal Credit end-to-end Technical Review (IBM).

The DWP’s cover-up on Universal Credit IT may be more instinctive than systematic or conspiratorial. But it’s a cover-up nonetheless. Isn’t it time Parliament was told the truth when government IT projects go wrong, and not a year or more later?

Is Parliament still not being told the truth about the inevitability of huge write-offs?

Time for Truth on Universal Credit IT – April 2012

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Posted in Campaign4Change

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?

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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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Does outsourcing make corruption more likely?

Posted on 17/10/2013 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

Few journalists want to write about corruption in local government unless they have specific evidence from a court case. Which helps to explain why a well-researched report on the subject last week attracted little mainstream publicity, although there was a piece in the Professional section of The Guardian .

Journalists assume, perhaps like many people, that local government doesn’t have a problem with corruption. But by its nature a subtle exploitation of the opportunities provided by a lack of oversight and accountability – at worst indifference – will remain hidden.

Who would say anything to the police – and if the police were informed would they act? – if officers or councillors shaped policy or a decision in favour of a certain company, with a view to opening up a path to future employment? Could such subtle deviance be proven?

“The temptation might be exacerbated by the risk of redundancy, providing a greater incentive for officers to use their position to build a network with a view to future employment,” says last week’s report Corruption in UK local government – the mounting risks.

The report was not written by a marginal organisation. It was researched and drafted for Transparency International by Elizabeth David-Barrett, Research Fellow at Said Business School and Director, Corruption and Transparency Research Centre, Kellogg College, Oxford University. Funding was from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

Transparency International defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. David-Barrett says a disturbing picture emerges of conditions in which corruption is likely to thrive, what she calls:

“low levels of transparency, poor external scrutiny, networks of cronyism, reluctance or lack of resource to investigate, outsourcing of public services, significant sums of money at play and perhaps a denial that corruption is an issue at all”.

High standards in public life are the norm but David-Barrett notes that a “feature of researching this report has been the lack of agreement among the many experts we consulted about the scale and prevalence of corruption in UK local government”.

Some argued that the cases that have come to light represent the tip of the iceberg. Others said the small number of obvious corruption cases, and their disclosure by existing oversight structures, indicated there was no iceberg.

The report makes no comment on current levels of corruption but points out that, by its nature, it will usually remain hidden. Corruption in local government does exist, says the report, and it gives a few examples that have been publicised.

Outsourcing

“If local authority employees abuse their access to insider information or their ability to shape policy or contracts whilst in office in order to create opportunities for themselves, their friends, or for private-sector companies for which they will later work, this is corrupt,” says the report.

Such corruption could manifest itself in poor services and value for money. It may shut out companies of unquestionable integrity that could offer better deals.

That said, some suppliers may be concerned about the risks to their reputation of hiring through the revolving door. One unnamed interviewee quoted in the report says:

“We’ve been approached by individuals who are retiring from local government but don’t want to stop working. They come to us and say they can help us, they have a lot of experience. We look at it very carefully and err on the side of caution if we are going to be working with that council.”

But another interviewee is quoted in the report as saying

“There are situations where local authority staff end up working for contractors and implicit agreements to scratch backs in return for contracts will arise.”

The report claims that a council officer who had written the specification for a tender for a particular contract resigned from the council and successfully bid for the contract as a private-sector supplier.

Undue influence

“Research conducted for this report suggested that revolving-door type corruption is difficult to prove, but may not be uncommon and is certainly creating suspicions which, in themselves, undermine public confidence.”

Change requests

An interviewee is quoted in the report as saying

“…the number of variations – that’s where people make money. The profit is often determined by the award of work under the framework contracts, particularly where the pricing basis is not clearly defined, so that you can end up with charging for extra work by hourly rates.”

Another interviewee said

“The sharp operator in terms of the outsourcing contractor company will have agreed a contract based on a lump sum, invariably based on a local authority which, at the time that the contract was let, was much larger.

“If you have a company which provides HR, IT and admin, where can it make its savings? If they are prepared to make the investment, they can usually make significant savings for themselves, that’s where they are legitimately making some of their profit, but if the local authority has downsized over the years, then there is less to provide.

“So if it’s a 20-year contract, every 5 years there is a review and renegotiation based around head count. But normally councils are not very good at negotiating soft-side deliverables.”

The report says that corruption can arise if favoured sub-contractors are not held accountable, or the use of sub-standard goods is overlooked, or if a corrupt company and corrupt supervising official collude to agree on price increases or changes in specifications.

“There is a key weakness in the governance of this area because the contract implementation phase is often managed by the local authority department which uses the procured goods or services, rather than by the central procurement function. This department may be unaware of the precise terms of the contract and may not notice if corners are cut.”

A procurement expert is quoted in the report as saying

“There might be a disconnect between a procurement department that does this first part [pre-tender and tender] and the ‘client’, for example, the council’s IT dept. It is the IT department that is supposed to monitor the contract, and see how it is performing, but the disconnect reduces accountability. The supplier might be able to provide sweeteners to the IT department to re-negotiate the contract without going back through the procurement department.”

Another procurement specialist said that relatively few resources are devoted to contract management.

“The central functions in local authorities often focus on contract letting and not contract management. Many of the same skills are involved, but less [sic] resources are devoted to contract management. And departments are often left to manage contracts – raising risks not just of corruption but also of inefficiency.”

Does outsourcing reduce accountability?

“When services are outsourced, local authorities retain a statutory obligation to ensure that all of the rules that would have applied to them are equally followed by the external providers. However, the extent to which that obligation is fulfilled varies… there are concerns that local government officers do not adequately monitor contract performance or respond to complaints. Councils sometimes seek to claim that decisions made by contractors on long-term contracts are beyond their control.

“Without the Audit Commission to exert pressure and with the decline of local investigative journalism, there is a risk that corruption in this area will become more common.

“The Institute for Government’s 2012 report, Commissioning for Success, argues that decisions about when to outsource need to be made on a more robust basis, that monitoring and stewardship of outsourced services needs to be strengthened, and that accountability arrangements need to be clarified.”

Auditors enfeebled?

The report says

“The system of checks and balances that previously existed to limit corruption has been eroded or deliberately removed.

“These changes include the removal of independent public audit of local authorities, the withdrawal of a universal national code of conduct, the reduced capacity of the local press and a reduced potential scope to apply for freedom of information requests. We have identified 16 areas in which we find a marked decline in the robustness of local government to resist corruption…”

The lack of independent audits is a particular concern. Audits are carried out by companies that can be sacked if they’re too critical.

“We believe that the new system – in which local authorities themselves are solely responsible for awarding their audit contracts and where there is no back-stop support for auditors who are challenging the local authority – will narrow the scope and effectiveness of local audits, while increasing potential conflicts of interest…”

External auditors risk being sued if they try to highlight suspected corruption in a report, even if they have the appetite to do it “which is less likely given their commercial priorities and the expected relative reduction in the scope of audits”.

The report goes further and says that external auditors “may face incentives to avoid undertaking investigations or raising concerns about suspicions of fraud or corruption”.

Audit professionals interviewed for this report saw these as serious concerns. One commented, “If you come down tough on a client, and it creates ruffles, you’ve got an eye to what will happen when it goes to open competition.”

Another said “external auditors now have nominal independence but they will probably feel pressure to keep their clients happy so as to avoid losing this contract, future contracts, or non-audit contracts with the local authority.”

Risks

Particular risks of corruption include:

1. public procurement at needs assessment stage;

2. public procurement at bid design stage;

3. public procurement at award stage;

4. public procurement at contract implementation stage;

5. control and accountability over outsourced services;

6. the revolving door of personnel between local authorities and private companies bidding to provide services;

7. planning discretion and influence regarding ‘permissions to build’ decisions;

8. planning discretion and influence regarding ‘changes of use’ decisions;

The report says:

“We feel it is important to emphasise, as has been noted in a number of public consultations and inquiries, that the majority of local councillors and council officers observe high standards of conduct and very few misuse their positions to further their own ends.

“There is no substitute for a commitment to ethics and integrity in public service. However, when accountability is absent, public officials may exercise their power for private ends unchecked by scrutiny, complaint, or the threat of punishment.

“Clear opportunities exist for unethical officers and members to exploit public trust for private gain. In any sector, corruption tends to increase as oversight and enforcement are weakened…

“Irrespective of how much corruption currently occurs, we believe that under the new and proposed arrangements for local government, corruption is likely to increase and there will be less reporting of that corruption.”

Media enfeebled?

The report says there is little scrutiny of local authority work by a “largely emasculated local media”; and the ballot box “provides only feeble discipline given that turnout is low and in many areas one party dominates or seats go uncontested”.

Corruption scandals over the years have revealed that individuals are sometimes able to capture local politics, exercising informal power over the local party and their political group as well as council officers, “so that they can shape policy to serve their own interests unchallenged by their peers”.

Countering corruption

The report highlights a need for:

–  Effective assessment of corruption risks;

–  Independence of the units or authorities whose duty is to prevent or investigate corruption;

–  Visible and effective whistleblowing mechanisms.  “Whistleblowing has been more effective than audit, internal monitoring, or police investigations in revealing corruption in local government … Suitable mechanisms should be established to provide an easy-to-use and confidential channel for reporting corruption suspicions or incidents.”

– The institutional will to mount effective investigation and prosecution of corruption;

– A nominated individual in every local authority who is responsible for counter-corruption and who conducts a regular corruption risk assessment and liaises closely with law enforcement authorities.

– Strong sanctions implemented against those who are caught – both legal and other;

– A commitment to transparency.

– Firms providing an audit function for local authorities not being allowed to provide other commercial and consultancy services to the same local authority.

–  Internal investigations being adequately resourced and sufficiently independent. “Internal audit teams are vulnerable to manipulation by the corrupt, and this vulnerability increases if they are under-resourced, unsupported by the leadership or have their terms of reference and freedom to investigate curtailed.”

– Strict procedures requiring officers always to report (i) major price discrepancies among procurement bids and (ii) details of contract variations to the council’s Audit Committee and senior management.

– Greater monitoring of elected officials’ interests

–  Private companies, when operating services in the public interest, to be required to comply with the Freedom of Information Act with regards to those services. Specifically audit reports from local authorities should be covered under the Freedom of Information Act or published directly as public documents.

Thank you to openness campaigner Dave Orr for drawing my attention to the Transparency International report.

Comment

Lack of firm oversight, and a tolerance of bad practice contributed to the financial crisis of 2007/8. It was normal to give mortgages to people who had no means of paying them back. Only when the crisis became manifest did people realise that what had been regarded as normal behaviour was in fact deviant.

Is there a danger of tolerance in local government to aberrant behaviour such as the shaping of policy to favour outsourcing which could later benefit some individuals?

Those who claim corruption hardly exists can point to the strong ethos of public service in many councils – and indeed countless councillors do important public work for very little money – but that doesn’t remove concerns about what may remain hidden.

Transparency International’s report rings alarm bells. It points out that auditors, the media and whistleblowers are unlikely to expose deviant practices, and are even less likely to in the future. The report suggests that local government provides unprecedented opportunities for corruption.

“The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.”  – Bess Myerson, columnist. 1974.

Corruption in UK local government – the mounting risks.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, local government, managing outsourced services, oversight, public services, public-private partnerships

Are Whitehall IT business cases largely fictional?

Posted on 09/10/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Today’s report on the e-Borders programme by John Vine, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, is a reminder that central government business cases for major IT-based projects can be largely fictional.

Says the Vine report:

“The failure to identify these risks in the 2007 business plan meant that the original data collection targets, set out in the e-Borders delivery plan, were unrealistic and were always likely to be missed.”

It adds:

“The e-Borders programme business case indicated that e-Borders would allow foreign national passengers to be counted in and counted out of the UK, providing more reliable data for the purposes of migration and population statistics, and in planning the provision of public services. However, we found that the data set collected by e-Borders was not extensive enough for these purposes.”

And:

“Management information shows that between January and September 2012, 2,200 arrests took place as a direct result of the identification of wanted persons. This was less than the original estimate provided in the 2007 business case, which had anticipated 8,200 arrests per year based on the Semaphore pilot.”

One Whitehall insider said that experts are employed to write business cases to a template.  But do any of the promises in the business cases have to be fulfilled? It seems not.  Do business cases have to be realistic? The history of IT-based projects and programmes in central government shows that they don’t have to be.  

Business cases make promises on targets, any savings and costs.  When the targets in the business prove unachievable a new business case is written, and when the revised targets also prove unachievable another is written and so forth.

By the time assumptions in the business case have been properly tested the writers of the business cases are likely to have moved to other departments. Nobody is ever held responsible for writing a business case that proves to have been fictional. And why should they be? The writers of the business cases are in no way responsible for delivering the results.

The National Programme for IT in the NHS – NPfIT –had so many revised business cases nobody counted them.  Perhaps officials at the Department of Health knew they were largely fictional or, to put it more politely, aspirational. But the Treasury requires tick-box business cases to be written to justify money allocated to a project. Is there any point in a business case that’s not realistic? Perhaps. It allows money to be spent on a project that, based on realistic assumptions, would probably not be approved.

Below are the results of the e-Borders business case of 2007. Most of the promises haven’t been fulfilled.

The e-Borders system was based on Project Semaphore which was delivered by IBM in 2004 and it’s clear from the Vine report that the system  has been a success. Project Semaphore is still used because its replacement, which was commissioned in 2007, has been a standard government IT-based disaster with suppliers claiming that government kept changing its mind and the requirements, and the government saying milestones were not met.  In July 2010 the e-borders contract with “Trusted Borders” was terminated.

Vine’s report today,  Exporting the border’? An inspection of e-Borders October 2012 – March 2013, has a table (figure 18) that shows how much the Border Force has been able to meet the promises in the 2007 business case for the e-borders programme:  

1. Improved security by supporting the security and intelligence agencies to track and analyse the activities of terrorists and other national security targets across the border. Delivered? Partially.

2. Increased ability to identify and arrest those of interest to the police. Delivered? Yes.

3. Improved effectiveness and efficiency of border control activity by providing a risk assessment of passengers, facilitating expedited processing of passengers at the border and providing a platform for automated clearance services. Delivered? No.

4. Benefits will accrue from process cost savings as a result of the phasing
out of landing cards and the ability to access electronic movement
records when determining applications for extensions of stay. Delivered? No.

5. Enable the identification of those involved in excise duty avoidance and
impact on the market penetration of smuggled goods. Delivered? Partially.

6. Enable HMRC and DWP to establish the length of time spent in the
UK by an individual permitting easy identification of benefit claimants
living outside the UK and those falsely claiming non domicile status for
income tax purposes. Delivered? No.

7. Benefits to ports and carriers such as:
• reductions in removal and detention costs of those refused entry
(subject to implementation of an authority to carry scheme);
• more effective use of detention space at ports, provided free of
rent to control agencies; and
• remove requirement to procure and administer landing cards.

Delivered? No.

8. The ability to count all foreign national passengers into and out of the
UK enabling the provision of accurate statistical data to support the
provision of services. Delivered? No.

**

The Home Office is now writing a further business case for a new e-Borders programme, and will appoint a new IT supplier. Are its business case  authors expecting their work to be published under fiction or non-fiction? History, it seems, will provide the answer.

[The Home Office said its e-Borders technology was the most advanced in Europe – which says much for the 2004 IBM Semaphore system.]

John Vine’s report.

JohnVine “surprised” by findings

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, Government IT, IBM, IT-related failures, legal disputes, npfit, project management

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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.

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

Glasgow’s “major” health IT problem – a welcome openness

Posted on 02/10/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

On its website this morning NHS Glasgow and Clyde, Scotland’s largest health board, has published an update about IT problems that technical staff have been unable to resolve. It says:

“Despite the best efforts of our IT technical staff who have worked throughout the night we have as yet been unable to resolve the problem. We have however been able to put in place a fix which we believe will ensure that chemotherapy patients are not affected by the continued IT issue.

“Unfortunately however there will still be some patients whose planned appointments today will be affected and we are currently in the process of assessing which patients this will impact upon. As soon as this has been identified we will contact the patients direct. Emergency care services are unaffected.

“We are continuing to work to get the system back on line as soon as possible and would like to apologise again to those patients who have been inconvenienced. A further update will be issued later this morning.”

The board issued its first bulletin yesterday evening.

“NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde experienced a major IT problem this morning. Our technical staff are working flat out resolve this. However as a result, we have had to postpone a number of operations, chemotherapy sessions and outpatient appointments.

“There was also some delay in calls to our switchboard being answered. The problem relates to our networks and the way staff can connect to some of our clinical and administrative systems.

“We can reassure patients affected that their care will be rescheduled at the earliest opportunity. We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused and we are doing everything possible to return services to normal as quickly as possible.”

The board issued statistics on those affected.

“In total we have postponed: 288 outpatient appointments, four planned inpatient procedures, 23 day cases and 40 chemotherapy treatments.”

The board told the BBC that the problems might have affected up to 10 major hospitals.

Comment

NHS Glasgow and Clyde’s timely statements over its problems would suggest that Scotland is much more open about IT-related difficulties than any trust in England where web bulletins, when there are any after IT problems, are usually about patients who have not been affected.

Scottish Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw is right to say that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde “has been quick to admit to a serious problem”.

Trusts in England could learn something from NHS Glasgow and Clyde about openness and sound crisis management.

Croydon trust plans Cerner go-live in secret

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Posted in Campaign4Change, health, health records, IT-related failures, managing change, openness and transparency, operational issues

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.”

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