Tag Archives: Cabinet Office

FOI team hides already released Universal Credit report

Posted on 27/09/2011 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Universal Credit is one the government’s most important IT-enabled programmes, along with HMRC’s “Real-time Information” scheme, Whitehall Shared Services and the MoD Change Programme.

If the Universal Credit programme goes wrong benefits claimants could have payments held up or receive incorrect amounts.

For this reason it is important that the coalition doesn’t repeat Labour’s mistake of wrapping IT-related projects and programmes in so much secrecy that the public, MPs and the media only discover problems when it is too late to effect a rescue.

Early warning of faltering projects

There is an early-warning of projects and programmes that are likely to falter or are actually faltering: “Starting” gate reviews and “Gateway” reviews, which are independent assessments of big or risky schemes.

The coalition in opposition promised to publish Gateway reviews if they came to power but civil servants have persuaded ministers to drop the proposal: does the minister want opponents and the media picking up authoritative internal information on projects that may be going wrong?

Our FOI request

Because of the continued suppression of the reports Campaign4Change, on 20 May 2011, made a request under the Freedom of Information for the Department for Work and Pensions to release a copy of Gateway reviews on the Universal Credit project.

The reply was nearly helpful. “There have been no Gateway reviews on the Universal Credit programme.  There has been one Starting Gate review on the Universal Credit programme.” The reply, by Jack Goodwin of the DWP’s Universal Credit Briefing Team, did not include a copy of the Starting Gate review report, so we sent a follow-up email.

We pointed that that Public Administration Committee had already requested a copy of the Universal Credit Gateway Zero Review and, in response, the DWP had sent the Committee a copy of the Stating Gate review, though the Committee decided not to publish it.

On 13 July the DWP said it needed extra time to consider our request. Gina Talbot at the DWP’s “Freedom of Information Focal Point” said: “I need to extend the time limit because the information requested must be considered under one of the exemptions to which the public interest test applies. This extra time is needed in order to make a determination as to the public interest. Accordingly, I hope to let you have a response by 10 August 2011.”

DWP wasting public money

This extra time and consideration was unnecessary and a waste of public money because the DWP had already given the report to the Public Administration Select Committee. Indeed the Universal Credit Starting Gate report had also been lodged in the House of Commons library after an MP asked the Cabinet Office’s Ian Watmore for a copy in May 2011.

So the DWP was considering at length whether to release a report that the Department had already released twice – to two separate committees of the House of Commons.

Grounds for appeal

In August the DWP formally refused Campaign4Change’s request, so we appealed. These were some of the reasons we gave:

i) Universal Credit is one of the government’s “mission-critical” projects and its success will be potentially important to tens of millions of benefit claimants.

ii) In the public interest, MPs, the media and public should understand the project’s feasibility risks and chances of success – in short whether it has got off to a good start. The Starting Gate report could help provide such an insight.

iii) The Public Accounts Committee has recommended that Starting Gates be published. The refusal of our request would appear to be a denial of the wishes of the Committee.

iv) Sometimes statements in published Gateway reviews have turned out to be too weak, sometimes too strong. There is no reason to believe that if the reviewers know their reports are for public consumption they will weaken their comments; and if they do weaken them the published reports will allow the quality of advice to be questioned or challenged by what the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude calls armchair auditors.

v) The objection to publishing the reviews is that publication may inhibit candour. Starting Gate reviewers have a public duty to give the best advice they can (and indeed are paid for doing so). If they alter their advice to make it more acceptable to the public, media and Parliament they are failing in their public duty to give the best possible advice in all circumstances. Equally, if they give their advice in the expectation it will be kept confidential and therefore that they will not be held accountable for it, and alter their best advice on this basis, they could be failing in their public duty.

vi) There is no certain means for Parliament, the media or the public to know how large IT-based projects and programmes are progressing. Sometimes the National Audit Office reports on large IT-based projects, sometimes not.  The NAO cannot be relied on to produce the equivalent of a Starting Gate review on a large IT-based project or programme. Gateway reviews are not usually published contemporaneously.

vii) Coalition ministers have made it clear in numerous speeches that the public have a right to know how their money is being spent. Universal Credit is costing, as an IT-based  programme, several hundreds of millions of pounds. It is not in keeping with the spirit of ministerial statements on openness that the DWP keep confidential the Starting Gate review on Universal Credit. It is the only independent report on the feasibility of the project.

viii) Universal Credit is known to be a risky programme which senior civil servants have acknowledged. The Starting Gate review is likely to show whether or not those risks are understood.

ix) In refusing our request the DWP has not given any reasons for stating that it is satisfied that the “public interest in maintaining this exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure”.

DWP rejects our appeal

Our appeal came to nothing. It was refused by the DWP’s David Hodgson Stakeholder Manager, who said in a letter:

“The case has been examined afresh, and guidance has been sought from domain experts to ensure all factors were taken fully into account. I have reviewed the original decision carefully and have decided to uphold the original decision withholding information for the following reason.

“While we recognise that publication of this information would provide an independent assessment of the key issues and risks, we have to balance this against the fact that the review document includes operational details of a sensitive nature whose publication would prejudice effective conduct of public affairs.

“The Department is satisfied that the public interest in maintaining this exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The report was  released months ago

The DWP lodged the report in the House of Commons library months ago so it is in the public domain anyway. The department’s effort and time twice refusing the release of the report wasted public money.

Campaign4Change has now obtained a copy of the report via the House of Commons’ library.  We  will, separately, publish an article on the contents of the Starting Gate review report on Universal Credit.

Comment:

This episode suggests that officials at the DWP default to secrecy whatever the coalition says about openness and transparency. There are many superficially valid reasons officials can give to keep Gateway and Starting Gate reports secret. It is up to ministers to challenge that secrecy. If they don’t, the same mistakes and cycles will be repeated:

a) IT-related projects and programmes will continue to falter in secret, as they did under Labour

b) MPs and the media will try and find out the truth

c) Ministers will go on the defensive

d) The truth will eventually emerge and the coalition will be branded as inept when managing large IT-based projects and programmes – as inept as Labour.

If ministers publish Gateway progress reports now – as early warning reviews – we and others will applaud if early action is taken to stop or rescue a failing project. If ministers continue to pander to civil service secrecy the media and Parliamentarians will be right to criticise the coalition. Ministers have a chance to avoid the stigma of mismanagement of public funds. But will they take it?

1 Comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, Freedom of Information, Government IT, improving communications, managing change, procurement, public sector, public services, reforms, Universal Credit

Tagged , , , , , ,

NPfIT: NHS CE is still positive after all these years

Posted on 26/09/2011 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

 Last week the Department of Health announced the dismantling of the NPfIT. In the Department’s press release the comments of Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, were harsh.

“The National Programme for IT embodies the type of unpopular top-down programme that has been imposed on front-line NHS staff in the past,” said Maude.

Not quite in accord with these sentiments is a letter that has been sent out by the Department of Health’s top civil servant Sir David Nicholson the Chief Executive of the NHS. Nicholson is the Senior Responsible Owner of the NPfIT. The letter sums up the current state of the NPfIT without a word of criticism of the scheme.

“The National Programme has provided us with a foundation, but we now need to move to more local decision making if we are going to truly unlock the potential of information to drive improvements for patients and achieve the efficiency and effectiveness required in today’s health service,” says Nicholson.

Having taken on the job in 2006, Nicholson was not responsible for the NPfIT – which was founded in 2002 – but he was appointed by Labour in part to promote the scheme within the NHS.

His positive view of the NPfIT remains a little out of step with the coalition’s criticisms. But Nicholson is part of the permanent civil service and ministers hold office temporarily. It’s easy to get the impression that senior officials see their ministers this way.

Nicholson’s stance reflects the view of senior civil servants that the NPfIT has been a success. Nicholson was party to a briefing in February 2007 of the then Prime Minister Tony Blair on the state of the NPfIT. The briefing paper was entitled “NPfIT Programme Stocktake and said  “ … much of the programme is complete with software delivered to time and to budget.”

In fact much of the National Programme is incomplete, late and the costs far exceed the original budgets, according to the Public Accounts Committee. Nicholson was knighted in 2009.

This is his letter last week to NHS chief executives on the “National Programme for IT and the latest steps to no longer run it as a centralised programme” …

Dear Colleague

In September 2010, we announced that the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) would no longer be run as a centralised programme and today I am writing to update you about the renewed steps being taken to achieve that change.

A modernised NHS needs information systems that are driven by what patients and clinicians want. Restoring local control over decision-making and enabling greater choice for NHS organisations is key as we continue to use the secure exchange of information to drive up quality and safety.

We are undertaking a review, led by Katie Davis, Managing Director for Informatics, of the full portfolio of Department of Health informatics applications and services to determine how we will take this work forward. I expect this to conclude and report in the Autumn. Alongside this, we are introducing new governance arrangements to support local decision-making, which we expect to be in place in the Autumn.

It is important to be clear that this review will build on the substantial achievements that have now been firmly established and are delivering real benefits to patients. Applications and services such as the Spine, N3 Network, NHSmail, Choose and Book, Secondary Uses Service and Picture Archiving and Communications Service will all carry on providing vital support to the NHS. Similarly, key national applications such as the Summary Care Record and the Electronic Prescription Service will continue to develop in line with our commitment to give patients real information and choice about their care.

We are working in partnership with Intellect, the Technology Trade Association, to develop proposals for how we can stimulate the healthcare IT and technology marketplace in future, to offer greater choice of supplier to local NHS organisations, while still achieving value for money across the service.

The National Programme has provided us with a foundation, but we now need to move to more local decision making if we are going to truly unlock the potential of information to drive improvements for patients and achieve the efficiency and effectiveness required in today’s health service.

Yours sincerely

Sir David

Comment:

There is no doubt that Nicholson’s actions are guided by sincerity and integrity. But his letter is a reminder that it is the civil servants that are in charge of Whitehall, not the ministers. The National Audit Office has exposed the blight on NHS IT of the National Programme for IT, as has the Public Accounts Committee and many others including academics.

Nicholson’s voice is the only one that really counts, though.

His views are in line with the institutional resistance in Whitehall to admit mistakes when anything undertaken by the civil service goes wrong. Senior civil servants who preside over failures and defend them in the face of outside criticism  – particularly criticism from MPs and the media – are much more likely to be knighted than those that share the concerns of outsiders.

Andrew Lansley should take control of his civil servants, which may set a precedent for a secretary of state, Department of Health. If this is beyond Lansley,  Francis Maude and Cameron should seek to exercise more control of the department.

Until ministers run the civil service, not vice-versa, reforms of central government IT, or indeed any major change in the machinery of government will not happen. All the signs are that senior civil servants are biding their time until after the next election when, they hope, reforms of government will have run out of steam. If the reforms fizzle out a great opportunity will have been lost.

NPfIT to be dismantled brick by brick

1 Comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, Government IT, NHS, npfit, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

NPfIT to be “dismantled” – brick by brick

Posted on 22/09/2011 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

A Department of Health press release issued this morning is headlined:

                        Dismantling the NHS National Programme for IT

I asked a senior official at the Department what is new in the announcement. The official’s diplomatic reply was simply: “I am not sure how to answer that.”

There is nothing new. There is no evidence in the press release of the Department’s claim that the NPfIT is being dismantled. Negotiations continue with CSC over its £3bn worth of NPfIT contracts and BT’s deals will remain in place.

Spending on the NPfIT has been about £6.4bn so far – and about £4bn has yet to be spent. The Government has succeeded in persuading some in the general public that the NPfIT is dead. The Daily Mail’s front page has the headline:

                                £12bn NHS Computer System is Scrapped

The online version of the story has had more than 460 comments, which suggests it has been widely read.

The actual announcement gives a hint of the conflicting views among civil service and ministers. The first paragraph of the Department of Health’s press release says the NPfIT is being dismantled and the second paragraph praises the scheme.

“The government today announced an acceleration of the dismantling of the National Programme for IT, following the conclusions of a new review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority (MPA). The programme was created in 2002 under the last government and the MPA has concluded that it is not fit to provide the modern IT services that the NHS needs. In May 2011 the Prime Minister announced in the House of Commons that the MPA would be reviewing the NHS National Programme for IT. 

 “The MPA found that there have been substantial achievements which are now firmly established, such as the Spine, N3 Network, NHSmail, Choose and Book, Secondary Uses Service and Picture Archiving and Communications Service.  Their delivery accounts for around two thirds of the £6.4bn money spent so far and they will continue to provide vital support to the NHS. However, the review reported the National Programme for IT has not and cannot deliver to its original intent.”

The signs are that the scheme will be dismantled brick by brick – and will be almost completely dismantled by the time the NPfIT contracts with BT and CSC expire in 2013 and 2014.  The coalition has achieved a PR coup with the Daily Mail story because the public has the impression that in these austere times a £12bn NHS IT scheme initiated by Labour has been scrapped.

The reality is that nothing has changed.

Department of Health announcement

6 Comments

Posted in Government IT, NHS, npfit, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

End of NPfIT? – Campaign4Change on BBC R4 Today programme

Posted on 22/09/2011 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Link to Campaign4Change audio on BBC R4 Today programme

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning reported a Daily Mail article that the National Programme for IT in the NHS is being scrapped and that a coalition announcement is to be made this morning.

The Mail says that the money spent on the NPfIT would pay for 60,000 nurses for a decade, and that the scheme will be replaced by a “cheaper alternative”.

It says that there will be a new urgency in “dismantling the scheme”. Campaign4Change told the BBC R4 Today programme this morning that the NPfIT is not being scrapped and that about £4bn has yet to be spent on it. It said that trusts have the freedom to buy their own IT systems but using their budgets. The NPfIT will continue to provide Cerner and Lorenzo systems that are subsidised centrally, which gives the NHS an incentive to continue using NPfIT.

There is a difference of opinion within Whitehall over the NPfIT: that the Cabinet Office takes a rigorously independent view of the NPfIT and wants to wind it down. The Department of Health’s civil servants at a press conference last year justified the spend on the programme and said the contracts with CSC and BT would continue.  Campaign4Change told Today that the Cabinet Office should have the final say, not the Department of Health.

The Government clearly wishes it to be known that the NPfIT is being scrapped but that is not what is happening in practice. Contracts with CSC, which at present are worth about £3.2bn, are unlikely to be scrapped because of the compensation that would have to be paid to the supplier. The contracts may be cut back  by about £800m, though the cost of deployments remaining may double. BT’s contracts worth more than £1bn are also likely to remain.

The Daily Mail says the NPfIT will be “replaced with cheaper regional alternatives” and that the Coalition will “today announce it is putting a halt to years of scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money on a system that never worked”.

“Following an official review, the ‘one size fits all’ IT project will be replaced by much cheaper regional initiatives, with hospitals and GPs choosing the IT system they need.

“And a new national watchdog will be established to ensure such huge sums can never again be thrown away on uncosted projects.”

The decision to accelerate the dismantling of the scheme has been made by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, says the Mail.

It quotes from what appears to be a leaked memo from the Major Projects Authority of the Cabinet Office which has been reviewing CSC’s contracts.

“The authority said the IT scheme, set up in 2002, is not fit to provide services to the NHS – which as part of austerity measures has to make savings of £20billion by 2014/15.

It concluded: ‘There can be no confidence that the programme has delivered or can be delivered as originally conceived.’

The report is said to recommend that the Government  “dismember the programme and reconstitute it under new management and organisation arrangements”.

It added: “The project has not delivered in line with the original intent as targets on dates, functionality, usage and levels of benefit have been delayed and reduced.

“It is not possible to identify a documented business case for the whole of the programme.Unless the work is refocused it is hard to see how the perception can ever be shifted from the faults of the past and allowed to progress effectively to support the delivery of effective healthcare.”

Daily Mail article on the NPfIT today

Department of Health announcement

3 Comments

Posted in change, Government IT, NHS, npfit, procurement, public sector, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Firecontrol: same mistakes repeated on other projects

Posted on 20/09/2011 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

A report published today by the Public Accounts Committee on the £469m Firecontrol project reads much like its others on government IT-enabled project disasters.

Margaret Hodge, chair of the Committee said:

“This is one of the worst cases of project failure that the committee has seen in many years. FiReControl was an ambitious project with the objectives of improving national resilience, efficiency and technology by replacing the control room functions of 46 local Fire and Rescue Services in England with a network of nine purpose-built regional control centres using a national computer system.

“The project was launched in 2004, but following a series of delays and difficulties, was terminated in December 2010 with none of the original objectives achieved and a minimum of £469m being wasted.

“The project was flawed from the outset, as the Department attempted, without sufficient mandatory powers, to impose a single, national approach on locally accountable Fire and Rescue Services who were reluctant to change the way they operated.

“Yet rather than engaging with the Services to persuade them of the project’s merits, the Department excluded them from decisions about the design of the regional control centres and the proposed IT solution, even though these decisions would leave local services with potential long-term costs and residual liabilities to which they had not agreed.

“The Department launched the project too quickly, driven by its wider aims to ensure a better co-ordinated national response to national disasters, such as terrorist attacks, rail crashes or floods. The Department also wanted to encourage and embed regional government in England.

“But it acted without applying basic project approval checks and balances – taking decisions  before a business case, project plan or procurement strategy had been developed and tested amongst Fire Services. The result was hugely unrealistic forecast costs and savings, naïve over-optimism on the deliverability of the IT solution and under- appreciation or mitigation of the risks. The Department demonstrated poor judgement in approving the project and failed to provide appropriate checks and challenge.

“The fundamentals of project management continued to be absent as the project proceeded. So the new fire control centres were constructed and completed whilst there was considerable delay in even awarding the IT contract, let alone developing the essential IT infrastructure.

Consultants made up over half the management team (costing £69m by 2010) but were not managed. The project had convoluted governance arrangements, with a lack of clarity over roles and responsibilities. There was a high turnover of senior managers although none have been held accountable for the failure.  The committee considers this to be an extraordinary failure of leadership. Yet no individuals have been held accountable for the failure and waste associated with this project.”

Comment:

Firecontrol was a politically-motivated project which used  bricks, mortar and IT to try and change the way people worked. The users in the fire service didn’t want a single national approach of nine new regional centres – complete with new hardware and software – just as NHS clinicians, in general, did not want the National Programme for IT [NPfIT]. The Firecontrol regional centres were built anyway and the NPfIT went ahead anyway.

One lesson is that, in the public sector, you cannot engage users who won’t support the scheme. If they want to change, and they want the new IT, they’ll find ways to overcome the technology’s deficiencies. If they don’t want the scheme – and fire personnel did not want Firecontrol – the end-users will be incorrigibly harsh evaluators of what’s delivered, and not delivered.

It’s better to get the support of users, and involve them in the prototype design and test implementations, long before the scheme is finalised. It’s different in the private sector because the support of users is not essential – those who don’t accept business change and the associated IT will be expected to quit.

So what today is the mistake that is being repeated? The Public Accounts Committee touched on it when it said that the Department for Communities and Local Government – which was responsible for Firecontrol –  “failed to provide appropriate checks and challenge”.

During the life of Firecontrol, the Office of Government Commerce carried out “Gateway reviews” which independently assessed progress or otherwise. The reviews  could have provided an early warning of a project that was about to waste hundreds of millions of pounds. But the Gateway review reports were not published. They had a limited internal distribution and, it appears, were ignored.

According to the Public Accounts Committee, a Gateway review in April 2004, near the start of the Firecontrol project, said the scheme was in poor condition overall and at significant risk of failing to deliver.

Why was this Gateway review not published? If it had, Parliament and the media could have held ministers to account – and perhaps have campaigned to stop the project before millions were thrown away.

There was indeed a media campaign in 2004 – and before – to have Gateway reviews published, but ministers – and particularly civil servants – said no.

Now the same thing is happening. The civil service has persuaded the coalition government to carry on Labour’s tradition of keeping Gateway reviews secret. So Parliament and the media will continue to be kept in the dark on whether a major project is going wrong.

By the time details of the reviews are published, perhaps years later in a report of the National Audit Office,  it may be too late to rescue the scheme. By then tens or hundreds of millions may have been wasted. Gateway reviews should be published around the time they are written, not years later.

Ministers do not have to pander to civil servants. They are paid to stand up to them. They receive a premium over the salary of MPs in part to be independent voices – to provide a challenge.

Subservient ministers in the DWP are among those who continue to allow Gateway reviews to remain hidden. If you ask the DWP under the Freedom of Information Act for the release of the Starting Gate report on Universal Credit (which I am told is not the same as a Gateway review report) the DWP will refuse your request. It refused mine.

So we have to accept the word of civil servants that the Universal Credit programme is going well; but haven’t there been enough IT-related disasters in government for all to know that the word of civil servants on whether things are going well needs to be tested independently? The publication of Gateway reviews – and Starting Gate reviews – could help outsiders hold a department to account. It’s time ministers began to realise this.

Are ministers such as Iain Duncan Smith in control of their departments – or are their civil servants in control of them?

Links:

Margaret Hodge on BBC “Today” programme 20/9/11 – “what could go wrong did go wrong” – did PA Consulting get away without blame?

What the NPfIT and Firecontrol have in common.

Firecontrol:  should PA Consulting share some responsibility for what happened?

2 Comments

Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, Government IT, managing change, npfit, procurement, public sector, public services, risk, supplier relationships

Tagged , , , ,

Cabinet Office tells mutuals future is bright despite Central Surrey Health struggles over NHS deal

Posted on 20/09/2011 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

The Cabinet Office has encouraged would-be mutual and social enterprises to see the government’s plans to open up public services as a positive move that yields new opportunities despite a flagship mutual reportedly losing out on a major contract to a commercial organisation for NHS services.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that Assura Medical has been named as preferred bidder for a five- year contract worth about £90m a year for community health services in Surrey, beating a bid by Central Surrey Health, the flagship social enterprise that runs services in the neighbouring area.

A Cabinet Office spokesman was quoted as saying: “This is not the end for Central Surrey Health; they continue to provide critical services for the people of Surrey. Across the public sector we have started to see the emergence of a new wave of mutuals.

“The government has ambitious plans to support front-line staff who want to form mutual organisations and take control of the services they provide. We are working to ensure that all organisations bid for contracts on a level playing field. We are currently conducting a listening exercise on the Open Public Services white paper, it’s vital that mutual organisations contribute to the discussion.”

The government wants to see the fledgling mutual and social enterprise sector grow to encourage a million staff to leave the public sector and sell services back to local government and the NHS.

In a press release issued by Social Enterprise UK, Peter Holbrook, the organisation’s chief executive encouraged the government to create a financial level playing field and give mutual and social enterprises the chance to gain a foothold in the commercial world:

“If Central Surrey Health, the government’s flagship mutual social enterprise, which has demonstrated considerable success in transforming health services and increasing productivity can’t win, what does this say for the future of the mutuals agenda?

“Central Surrey Health reinvests all the profits it makes locally. It is difficult to imagine how Assura, with shareholders expecting a financial return, could do more to benefit people in Surrey.

“It is not enough for government to open up markets; it needs to create fair markets that benefit society. Some of the financial criteria used in contracts create an unequal playing field in which social enterprises are unable to compete because they may not have the same financial backing as private sector providers.  Unless swift action is taken to address this we will see social enterprises and mutuals lose out to the private sector.

“Public sector workers will be understandably anxious about spinning out from the NHS and setting up a social enterprise on the back of this news. The government needs to take action to reassure them that they will not be operating in markets weighted against them.

It has been argued by unions that mutualisation hides a privatisation agenda with mutuals at risk of losing out to commercial operators as contracts come up for renewal. Central Surrey’s own contract is reported to be up for renewal next year.

Central Surrey Health was the UK’s first social enterprise to leave the NHS and set up as an employee-owned business four years ago. Central Surrey Health is contracted to deliver community nursing and therapy services on behalf of the NHS and other organisations (e.g. Surrey County Council) to the 280,000 population of central Surrey. It is owned by the nurses and therapists it employs, who each own a 1p, not-for-dividend share.

It has been selected by the Cabinet Office to help mentor employee-owned organisations coming out of the public sector. Twelve fledgling public service spin-offs have been chosen by the Cabinet Office to be ‘Pathfinders’ for the rest of the public sector. As mentors, Central Surrey Health will work with and support staff on Pathfinder projects to help them develop sustainable, efficient and pioneering employee-led services. Last November it was also named as the Prime Minister’s first Big Society Award winner.

Hammersmith& Fulham Pathfinder to launch in 2012

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, mutualisation, mutuals, NHS, public sector, public services, social enterprise

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Agile – a series of London Tea Parties

Posted on 15/09/2011 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Anyone interested in agile techniques  – users and suppliers, public and private sectors – is invited to share ideas at a London Tea Party on 22 September at the Cafe Zest, 2nd Floor of the House of Fraser on Victoria Street, from 4pm – 6pm.

It is arranged by Abby Peel who has recently joined Mark O’Neill in the Innovation and Delivery team within the Government Digital Service. Peel is Head of Community.

Peel says that “AgileTea”  is an informal get-together for those who work with agile methods, are interested in it, or who know nothing about it but want to know more.

An example of agile in government is the Government e-petitions website which was launched recently to much public interest after being developed by the Innovation team in six weeks.

AgileTea will be the first of a regular series of informal, BarCamp style events that will bring together like-minded people to hear, contribute and engage in discussion of agile methods.

Each meeting will have guest speakers. Anyone can ask to give a short presentation of up to 10 minutes.  At the first AgileTea speakers will be Richard Pawson  from Naked Objects who’ll talk on “Experience of very large scale agile development at the Irish Department of Social Protection” and Mark Foden of Foden Grealy who’ll speak on “Where agile fits”.

Leave a comment

Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change, change management, collaboration, Government IT, innovation, Lean, managing change, SME, Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

CSC optimistic on new NPfIT deal – officials less so

Posted on 24/08/2011 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

CSC is due to meet officials from the Cabinet Office next month to discuss a possible new deal over the company’s £3bn worth of NHS IT contracts. Proposals from the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group have gone to the Department of Health and Downing Street for approval.

Nobody seems to know yet what the ERG has proposed but CSC remains confident that a new NPfIT deal will be signed that is good for the supplier’s finances and for the NHS.  Not all Whitehall officials share CSC’s confidence, however.

A new deal may be signed – but perhaps without the exclusive arrangements in the original contracts and the NHS commitments to place a minimum amount of business with the company.

1 Comment

Posted in NHS, npfit, outsourcing, procurement, public sector, public services, risk

Tagged , , , , ,

Some ways to change government practices

Posted on 23/08/2011 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

Mark Foden, a consultant to the public sector, says that transformation is much more likely to come about through collaboration and small incremental changes than strong-arm tactics such as mandation and regulation.

He also suggests that rather than pay high-cost contractors, government should pay more for talented specialists – and possibly pay them much more than their managers.

Foden has worked within government for many years and has seen some of what works and doesn’t. He advocates the use of internal social networks within and across departments.

He sets out his views in a critique of a report of the Public Accounts Committee on Information Communications and Technology in government.

Foden’s views are to some extent in line with the so-called “nudge” non-regulatory approach to behaviour change. Nudge was used originally by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein who define it as:

“… any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting the fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not”.

These are some of the points Foden makes:

– Systemic change. It isn’t enough to change policy, process and structure and hope that deeper, more systemic, changes will naturally follow.

Targets. There is a deep-grained, almost unquestioned, culture of using targets to control performance. “Often, targets drive target-meeting behaviours rather than performance-improving ones…Measuring, on the other hand, is crucial; but it must be used in the spirit of learning and developing rather than explicitly for controlling…”

Language. Be careful how you use expressions such as “buy-in” and “deliver”.  Buy-in suggests something that is decided by one group of people then ‘sold’ to another. This is just not a great model for helping civil servants feel involved and empowered. “If people are going to play an important part in achieving something then they must be, and feel, involved from the beginning. Just using terms like this creates the wrong dynamic. Rather than cautioning about not achieving buy-in the Public Accounts Committee should be encouraging more-open, more-inclusive behaviours.” Deliver, says Foden, is too transactional. “I just can’t get the ‘deliver a parcel’ sense out of my head: something neatly packaged then sent to a recipient at a specific time. Managing change is just not about this.”

SMEs. “To get benefit from working with SMEs Government will need to bend, in perhaps significant ways; and people will need to behave differently. This is new territory: time should be taken to experiment and find out what approaches flourish. The useful approaches should be developed – incrementally – in much the same way the strategy proposes IT be developed. And this may take years.

Lean. “Change cannot be made by feeding new policy into an old machine. “Government will need to reshape (and that’s not ‘reorganise’) itself dramatically – perhaps using ideas like Lean – and, to do that, it will need to foster new behaviours; like being more open, being naturally collaborative and being more entrepeneurial. The Efficiency and Reform Group [of the Cabinet Office] should attend explicitly to nurturing such new behaviours.

Pay specialists more than their managers? “If government wants more talent, then it must be able pay the market rate for the people it needs and then provide them with hugely satisfying work in an affirming, supportive environment so that they stay around. This will be far cheaper and, in most cases, better than hiring long-term contractors. If this means paying specialists (sometimes considerably) more than their managers, so be it. There’s a real cultural hump to be got over here.”

More on Mark Foden’s views

1 Comment

Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change, change management, collaboration, Government IT, innovation, Lean, managing change, public sector, public services, reforms, SME

Tagged , , , , , ,

Open Government? Up to a point Lord Copper

Posted on 11/08/2011 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

There is much we know about Universal Credit.

Ian Watmore, the permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, has told MPs that the project is built on agile methods: it is split into two-to-three-week drops of code. The coding is divided into customer types  – and there are several thousand different types of customer. The simplest cases are those who have lost their job and the complicated ones are people who are in and out of work.

For each customer type the whole IT solution is being developed and is then tested with benefits claimants. Following agile principles, the problems encountered during testing are understood and the software re-coded.

The plan is to go live  with selected customer types by October 2013  – and it’s probably right that nobody in government will guarantee the deadline will be met.

This all sounds impressive but there’s one big drawback:  officials are refusing to release the “starting gate” review on the Universal Credit project.

Every major project now has to undergo a starting gate review to check it’s feasible before money is committed. It’s a good idea – and all credit to the team led by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude for enforcing it.

But officials are doing their best to stop starting gate reviews being published, even under the FOI Act. Officialdom  has even ignored an MP’s request for the starting gate report on Universal Credit. That MP, Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the Public Accounts Committee, will pursue the matter.

Why the secrecy? 

It is likely that the civil service doesn’t want to publish starting gate reports for the reasons they don’t want to publish Gateway reviews: they’d rather not be accountable for what they say. If the advice is wrong it can be known years later when those involved have moved on. But the civil service would prefer that assessments of projects are not published while the advice is contemporaneous.

Hence the Department of Health has published Gateway review reports that are several years old. More recent reviews are published in a form that’s so heavily redacted – edited – that they contain no useful information.

Without the publication Gateway reviews,  the media, MPs and the public have no independent information on the progress or otherwise of large IT-based projects and programmes, unless they are scrutinised by the National Audit Office which has only limited resources. Without the publication of starting gates there’s no independent information in the public domain on the feasibility of big public sector projects and programmes.

So much for open government.

Links:

What is a starting gate?

The DH documents that mock open government

Leave a comment

Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change, openness and transparency, public sector, public services, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , ,