Tag Archives: Cabinet Office

DWP “evasive” and “selective” with information on Universal Credit programme

Posted on 03/02/2016 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Has the Department for Work and Pensions put itself, to some extent, beyond the scrutiny  of Parliament on the Universal Credit IT programme?

Today’s report of the Public Accounts Committee Universal Credit progress update was drafted by the National Audit Office. All of the committee’s reports are effectively more strongly-worded NAO reports.

If the Department for Work and Pensions cannot be open with its own auditors – the National Audit Office audits the department’s annual accounts – are the DWP’s most senior officials in the happy position of being accountable to nobody on the Universal Credit IT programme?

The National Audit Office and the committee found the Department for Work and Pensions “selective or even inaccurate” when giving some information to the committee.

In answering some questions, the committee found officials “evasive”.

Today’s PAC report says:

“We remain disappointed by the persistent lack of clarity and evasive responses by the Department to our inquiries, particularly about the extent and impact of delays. The Department’s response to the previous Committee’s recommendations in the February 2015 report Universal Credit: progress update do not convince us that it is committed to improving transparency about the programme’s progress.”

On the basis of the limited information supplied by the DWP to Parliament the committee’s MPs believe that the Universal Credit has stabilised and made progress since the committee first reported on the programme in 2013, but there “remains a long way to go”.

So far the roll-out has largely involved the simplest of cases, and the ineligibility list for potential UC claimants is long.  By 10 December 2015, fewer than 200,000 people were on the DWP’s UC “caseload” list.

The actual number could be far fewer because the exact number recorded by the DWP by 10 December 2015 (175, 505)  does not include people whose claims have terminated because they have become ineligible by for example having capital more than £16,000 or earning more so that their benefits are reduced to zero.

The plan is to have more than seven million on the benefit, and the timetable for completion of the roll-out has stretched from 2017 originally to 2021,  although some independent experts believe the roll-out will not complete before 2023.

Meanwhile the DWP appears to be controlling carefully the information it gives to Parliament on progress. The committee accuses the DWP in today’s report of making it difficult for Parliament and taxpayers to hold the department to account. Says the report,

“The programme’s lack of clear and specific milestones creates uncertainty for claimants, advisers, and local authorities, and makes it difficult for Parliament and taxpayers to hold the Department to account.”

These are more excerpts from the report:

“In February 2015 the previous Committee of Public Accounts published Universal Credit: progress update … The Department accepted the Committee’s recommendations.

“However, we felt that the Department’s responses were rather weak and lacked specifics, and we were not convinced that it is committed to ensuring there is real clarity on this important programme’s progress.

“As a result, we recalled both the Department and HM Treasury to discuss a number of issues that concerned us, particularly around the business case, the continuing risks of delay, and the lack of transparency and clear milestones.

“Recommendation: The Department should set out clearly how it is tracking the costs of continuing delays, and who is responsible for ensuring benefits are maximised.

“The Department does not publish accessible information about plans and milestones and we are concerned by the lack of detail in the public domain about its expected progress.

“For proper accountability, this information should be published so that the Committee, the National Audit Office and the general public can be clear about progress…

“… the Department did not acknowledge that the slower roll-out affects two other milestones, because it delays the date when existing claimants start to be moved onto Universal Credit and reduces the number of Universal Credit claimants at the end of 2019.

“The flexible adaptation of milestones to circumstances is sensible, but the Department should be open about when this occurs and what the effects are. Instead, the Department’s continued lack of transparency makes it very difficult for us and the public to understand precisely how its plans are shifting.

“Claimants need to know more than just their benefits will change ‘soon’; local authorities need time to prepare additional support; and advisers need to be able to help people that come to them with concerns…

“Recommendation: By May 2016, the Department should set out and report publicly against a wider set of clearly stated milestones, based on ones it currently uses as internal measures, including plans for different claimant groups, local authority areas and for the development and use of new systems. We have set out the areas we expect these milestones to cover in an appendix to this report…

“The Department was selective or even inaccurate when highlighting the findings of its evaluation to us.”

The DWP has two IT projects to deliver UC, one based on its existing major suppliers delivering systems that integrate the simplest of new claims with legacy IT.

The other and more promising solution is a far cheaper “digital service” that is based on agile principles and is, in effect, entirely new IT that could eventually replace legacy systems. It is on trial in a small number of jobcentres.

The DWP’s slowly slowly approach to roll-out means it is reluctant to publish milestones, and it has reached only an early stage of the business case. The final business case is not expected before 2017 and could be later.

The committee has asked the DWP to be more transparent over the business case. It wants detail on:

  • Projected spending, including both investment and running costs for:
  • Live service (split between ‘staff and non staff costs’ and ‘external supplier costs’)
  • Digital service (split between ‘staff and non staff costs’ and ‘external supplier costs’)
  • Rest of programme (split between ‘staff and non staff costs’ and ‘External supplier costs’)
  • Net benefits realised versus forecasts.

Meanwhile the DWP’s response to those who criticise the slow roll-out is to give impressive statistics on the number of jobcentres now processing UC claims, without acknowledging that nearly all of them are processing only the simplest of claims.

Comment

To whom is the DWP accountable on the Universal Credit IT programme? To judge from today’s report it is not the all-party Public Accounts Committee or its own auditors the National Audit Office.

No government has been willing to force Whitehall departments to be properly accountable for their major IT-enabled projects or programmes. Sir Humphrey remains in control.

The last government with Francis Maude at the helm at the Cabinet Office came close to introducing real reforms (his campaign began too forcefully but settled into a good strategy of pragmatic compromise) but his departure has meant that open government and greater accountability for central departments have drifted into the shadows.

The DWP is not only beyond the ability of Parliament to hold it accountable it is spending undisclosed of public money sums on an FOI case to stop three ageing reports on the Universal Credit IT programme being published. The reports are nearly four years old.

Would that senior officials at the DWP could begin to understand a connection between openness and Lincoln’s famous phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

Public Accounts Committee report Universal Credit, progress update

DWP gives out “selective” information on welfare reform even to its auditors (a similar story in 2015)

Department for Work and Pensions “evasive” – Civil Service World (This article is aimed at its readers who are mostly civil servants. It is likely it will find favour with senior DWP IT staff who will probably mostly agree with the Public Accounts Committee’s view that the DWP hierarchy is, perhaps because of culture, evasive and selective with the information it gives to Parliament and the public.)

 

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, Campaign4Change, consultants, contractors, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Fujitsu, Gateway reviews, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, Institute for Government, IT projects, Legacy ICT, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Universal Credit

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DWP fraud and mistakes cost an estimated £3.2bn – despite new HMRC data links

Posted on 16/07/2015 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions’ auditors have qualified the department’s latest accounts for the 26th year in a row because of “unacceptably high” fraud and mistakes.

The high level of fraud and error is despite the DWP’s now being able to check every claimant’s benefit entitlements – particularly inconsistencies in earnings – through HMRC’s real-time information [RTI] tax system.

In 2014-15, the DWP carried out a bulk exercise to match RTI data against the DWP’s benefits information. The DWP uses RTI data to provide information on earnings as part of the calculation of claimants’ Universal Credit entitlement.

The National Audit Office, in today’s report on the DWP’s 2014-15 accounts, says that misreporting and incorrect processing of income and are responsible for estimated losses in 2014-15 of £1.12bn

A further £340m is lost through undisclosed and incorrect processing of data on living arrangements.

The DWP is the same department that’s pouring money into a protracted FOI legal battle to stop four reports on Universal Credit being published on the basis that their disclosure could affect the DWP’s “effective management of public affairs”.

The DWP publishes none of the reports on the progress or otherwise of its major projects and programmes.

One question is, in the light of the DWP’s repeatedly qualified accounts, whether the department’s officials are better or worse off running their affairs in an atmosphere of great secrecy.

Would the DWP’s senior management be able to manage the business better – and particularly the Universal Credit IT programme – if they had to publish their commissioned reports on major projects?

The added external scrutiny of business partners – including local authorities – plus MPs, journalists and the public could give extra force to attempts within the department to manage affairs more professionally.

Such is the DWP’s detachment from external scrutiny that its managers are legitimately able to decide to avoid measuring the Personal Independence Payment for fraud and error until 2016-17.

Some may wonder how any major organisation can delay measuring a major part of its business for fraud and error.

Says Amyas Morse, head of the NAO:

“We believe that the absence of up-to-date information on error rates in such a large benefit stream creates a risk that the Department is making decisions based on out-of-date measurements.”

He adds:

“Furthermore, some smaller value benefits have never undergone a (fraud and error) measurement exercise.”

Morse says the accounts DWP’s have been qualified because of the “unacceptably high level of fraud and error in benefit expenditure, other than State Pension where the level of fraud and error is lower”.

He says the accounts of the DWP and those of predecessor departments administering welfare spending, have been similarly qualified each year since 1988-89.

The DWP estimates total overpayments due to fraud and error in 2014-15 to be £3.2bn, which is 1.9%  of the total forecast benefit spending of £168.1bn.

The Department estimates the total underpayments in 2014-15 to be £1.4bn.

Morse says the DWP is not on track to achieve its target to reduce fraud and internal mistakes.

“Furthermore, the Department has reduced the pace of the roll out of Universal Credit. As a result, Universal Credit has not yet realized the £200m annual fraud and error savings originally expected by March 2015…”

This failure to meet savings targets on Universal Credit highlights the speculative nature of central government’s business case estimates of programme and project savings.

Morse said: “Issuing an audit qualification is a serious matter, and the fact that similar qualifications have been in place for such a long period of time does not lessen that seriousness.”

Fraud and error is defined as

– Official error, which arises when a benefit is paid incorrectly due to inaction, delay or a mistaken assessment by the Department, a local authority or HM Revenue and Customs;

– Claimant error, which occurs when claimants make inadvertent mistakes with no fraudulent intent; and

– Fraud, which arises when claimants deliberately seek to mislead the DWP or local authorities which administer benefits on the department’s behalf to claim money to which they are not entitled.

The DWP’s managers say the largest proportion of error enters the benefits system due to changes in claimants’ circumstances after a correct initial award.

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HMRC, Universal Credit

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FOI hearing today on DWP’s refusal to publish Universal Credit reports

Posted on 15/07/2015 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

External lawyers acting for the Department for Work and Pensions are due to appear before an FOI Upper Tribunal judge in London today to argue why four reports on Universal Credit should not be published.

It’s the latest step in a costly legal battle that has lasted two years so far.

A first-tier FOI tribunal judge in 2014 ordered the four reports to be published. The DWP asked for permission to appeal that decision and lost its case.  The DWP then asked an Upper Tribunal for permission to appeal and lost that case as well.

Then it asked a different Upper Tribunal judge for permission to appeal .  As a result, a 1 day hearing is taking place today.

The case takes in evidence from the DWP, the Information Commissioner, John Slater who requested 3 of the reports in question and me. Slater requested in 2012 a Universal Credit risks register, milestone schedule and issues register (which set out problems that had materialised with the Universal Credit programme).  I requested a project assessment review carried out in 2011 on the Universal Credit programme by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

The DWP has refused to publish the four reports – and millions of pounds worth of other similar reports.

Today the DWP will argue that the judge in an earlier Upper FOI Tribunal did not fully consider the “chilling effect” that disclosure of the reports would have on the behaviours of civil servants or consultants who helped to write the reports in question.

In essence the DWP’s lawyers are asking the judge to accept the arguments put forward against disclosure by Sarah Cox, the DWP’s main witness in the case. Cox is a former programme assurance director for Universal Credit.

Cox submitted 49 pages of evidence – plus secret evidence during a closed hearing – on why the UC reports should not be published.  She said that civil servants must be able to think the unthinkable and record the outcome of these thoughts without hesitation or fear of disclosure.

If contributors feared the reports would be routinely disclosed the documents could become “bland records” prepared with half an eye to how they would be received in the public domain.

She said the danger of damage to the public interest cannot be overstated.

Disclosure could adversely affect management of the Universal Credit programme – and “failure of proper programme management may be catastrophic”.

Emphasising the importance of effective management of risk, she referred to the banking system prior to the credit crunch and the stability of the Bank of England in that period.

“Inappropriate or premature disclosure of the information in the risk registers or the issues registers could lead to those failures occurring in government risk management with broader parallels for other project management tools.”

She then referred to “disaster myopia” – a phenomenon she said was well established in cognitive psychology.  It referred to “an underestimation of the likelihood of low frequency but high risk damage risks”.

She added: “This can result in a lack of appropriate mitigating actions, increasing the likelihood of the risk becoming an issue. In this case fear of disclosure and misinterpretation can exacerbate this myopia, leading to the toning down of the direct and forceful language used to describe risks, or worse, risks not being identified at all”.

If civil servants or consultants writing reports on projects were to downplay the risks because of a fear of disclosure, problems may be overlooked, solutions not found, or not found promptly. “Such an outcome would be seriously detrimental to the delivery of major projects.”

Cox’s evidence could appear to some to suggest the DWP was preoccupied with its image, and the image of the Universal Credit programme, in the media, and among MPs and the public. She said routine disclosure of such reports as those in question “will distract civil servants from their tasks at a crucial point in the process of programme management.

“Instead of concentrating on implementing the changes, they will be required to address stakeholder, press or wider public concerns which have been provoked by the premature disclosure of material.”

It would be unhelpful if “attention is focused on clarifying positions with stakeholders and addressing the concerns of media, opposition and interest groups in order to correct the often misleading impression created by premature disclosure”.

This issue is “magnified in a programme with as many delivery partners as Universal Credit, covering both central and local government, with implications for all territories in the UK”.

That is because of the “implications of issues for different partners are often slightly different, so that each partner may need to be given a slightly different, and tailored, response”.

This concern should not be understated, she said.

“From my experience of high profile matters which emerge with little warning, I can say that ministers and senior officials are likely to be forced to clear their diaries, cancelling planned meetings, events and other important engagements, to attend rapidly-convened meetings to discuss the handling of the premature disclosure.

“Officials in the relevant policy areas (and lawyers as appropriate) would need to set aside other essential and pressing work to prepare briefings on the likely impact of disclosure and options for next steps. ‘Lines to take’ and a stakeholder and media-handling strategy would need to be discussed, agreed and signed off by ministers.

“Ministers could also be called to respond to urgent questions tabled in Parliament, especially where the disclosure  is made in respect of a high-profile policy area. The media might press for interviews with ministers and/or senior officials, which require careful preparation…”

But, as the Information Commissioner has pointed out, disclosure of the documents under FOI is not the same as a leak to the media.

And the reports in question are now four years old and so massive media interest is unlikely. Any media interest could be managed by DWP press officers without distracting project managers.

Cox said disclosure could harm rather than assist public debate.

“Material that requires civil servants to think the unthinkable, or to consider unusual or highly unlikely events, using intentionally vivid and forceful language, at a single point in time, potentially pre-dating attempts to mitigate the position could easily distort the public perception of the real or likely situation and encourage sensationalist rather than responsible and balanced reporting.”

She said that officials may have to release further information to counteract any misunderstandings (from a misreading of the disclosed reports). But the “world of media” may ignore this further information.

Lawyers for the Information Commissioner, in their submission to today’s hearing, will argue that an earlier tribunal had not found any existence of a “chilling effect” in this case. The tribunal had not been persuaded by what the DWP had said.

The earlier tribunal had not dismissed all of the DWP’s concerns as entirely without merit. It accepted that disclosure of the documents in question “may not be a painless process for the DWP” and that there “may be some prejudice to the conduct of government of one or more of the kinds asserted by the DWP”. The tribunal was simply unpersuaded by the extent of those prejudices.

The Commissioner’s lawyers will say the earlier tribunal gave due weight to the evidence of Ms Cox but it was not obliged to agree with her.

There was no observable chilling effect from disclosures in the past where a chilling effect had been envisaged. The DWP had not provided any evidence that a chilling effect existed.

Indeed a Starting Gate Review on the Universal Credit project had been published (by Campaign4Change) after the DWP refused to release the document under FOI. The DWP had refused to publish the Starting Gate Review because of the chilling effect it would have on the contributors to such reports.

But there was no chilling effect in consequence of publication of the Starting Gate review, say the Information Commissioner’s lawyers.

The incident “illustrates that it is perfectly within the bounds of reason to be sceptical about the DWP’s assertions about the chilling effect and the like,” says the Information Commissioner’s submission to today’s hearing.

On Ms Cox’s point that disclosure of the reports in question would change behaviours of civil servants and consultants compiling the documents, the earlier tribunal had concluded that the public was entitled to expect from senior officials – and no doubt generally gets – a large measure of courage, frankness and independence in their assessments of risk and provision of advice.

The Information  Commissioner’s lawyers will today ask the judge to dismiss the DWP’s appeal.

Comment

The DWP’s evidence suggests that the reports in question today are critical to the effective delivery of Universal Credit. The reality is that excessive secrecy can make bureaucracies complacent and, in the the DWP’s case, somewhat chaotic.

When Campaign4Change asked the DWP under FOI for two Universal Credit reports – an end to end technical review carried out by IBM at a cost of £49,240 and a “delivery model assessment phases one and two” carried by McKinsey and Partners at a cost of £350,000 – the DWP mistakenly denied that the reports existed.

When we provided evidence the reports did exist the DWP said eventually that it had found them.  The DWP said in essence that the documents had been held so securely nobody knew until searching for them that they existed.

So much for the DWP’s argument that such reports are critical to the effective management of major projects.

And when Campaign4Change asked the DWP, under FOI, to supply a project assessment review report on the Universal Credit programme, officials mistakenly supplied an incorrect version of the report (a draft) to an FOI tribunal.  Officials later apologised for their mistake.

National Audit Office reports on Universal Credit do little to portray the DWP as a professional, competent and well-managed organisation.

Which all suggests that excessive secrecy within the DWP has made officials complacent and disorganised.

Continued excessive secrecy within the department could reinforce a suspicion, justified or not, that the department may not be in a strong position to run a programme as large and complex as Universal Credit.

 

 

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Posted in change management, consultants, contractors, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, procurement, project management, public sector, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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Yet another NHS IT mess?

Posted on 09/07/2015 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Last week the National Audit Office reported on the failure of the GP Extraction Service. Health officials  had signed off and paid for a contract even though the system was unfit for use.

The officials worked for organisations that have become part of the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

An unapologetic HSCIC issued a statement on its website in response to the Audit Office report. It said, in essence, that the problems with the GP Extraction Service were not the fault of the HSCIC but rather its predecessor organisations (ignoring the fact that many of the officials and contractors from those defunct organisations moved to the HSCIC).

Now it transpires that the HSCIC may have a new IT-related mess on its hands, this time one that is entirely of its own making – the e-Referral Service.

Last month the HSCIC went live with its e-Referral service without testing the system properly. It says it tested for thousands of hours but still the system went live with 9 pages of known problems.

Problems are continuing. Each time in their routine bulletins officials suggest that an upgrade will solve e-Referral’s problems. But each remedial upgrade is followed by another that does not appear to solve the problems.

The system went live on 15 June, replacing Choose and Book which was part of an earlier NHS IT disaster the £10bn National Programme for IT.

Problems more than teething?

Nobody expects a major new IT system to work perfectly first time but regular outages of the NHS e-Referral Service may suggest that it has more than teething problems.

It’s a common factor in IT-based project failures that those responsible have commissioned tests for many hours but with inadequately designed tests that did not always reflect real-world use of the system. They might also have underestimated loads on the available hardware and networks.

This means that after the system goes live it is brought down for regular hardware and software fixes that don’t solve the problems.  End-users lose faith in the system – as many GPs did with the Choose and Book system – and a misplaced optimism takes the place of realism in the thinking of managers who don’t want to admit the system may need a fundamental redesign.

On the day the e-Referral Service launched, a Monday, doctors had difficulties logging in. Software “fixes” that day made little difference. By the next day HSCIC’s optimism has set in. Its website said:

“The NHS e-Referral Service has been used by patients and professionals today to complete bookings and referrals comparable with the number on a typical Tuesday but we were continuing to see on-going performance and stability issues after yesterday’s fixes.

“We suspend access to the system at lunchtime today to implement another fix and this improved performance and stability in the afternoon.”

The “fix” also made little apparent difference. The next day, Wednesday 17 June, the entire system was “unavailable until further notice” said the HSCIC’s website.

By early evening all was apparently well. An HSCIC bulletin said:

“The NHS e-Referrals Service is now available again. We apologise for the disruption caused to users and thank everyone for their patience.”

In fact, by the next day, Thursday 18 June, all was not well. Said another bulletin:

“Yesterday’s outage enabled us to implement a number of improvements and hopefully this is reflected in your user experience today.

“This morning users reported that there were ongoing performance issues so work has now taken place to implement changes to the configuration to the NHS e-Referral Service hardware and we are currently monitoring closely to see if this resolved the issue.”

About 2 weeks later, on 30 June, HSCIC’s officials said there were ongoing problems, because of system performance in provider organisations that were processing referrals.

Was this HSCIC’s way of, again, blaming other organisations – as they did after the NAO report’s on the failure of the GP Extraction Service project? Said a statement on the HSCIC’s website on 30 June 2015:

“Since transition to the NHS e-Referral Service on Monday 15th June, we have unfortunately experienced a number of problems… Although most of the initial problems were related to poor performance of the system, some residual functional and performance issues persist and continue to affect some of our colleagues in their day-to-day working.

“Most of these on-going problems relate to the performance of the system in provider organisations that are processing referrals, though this does of course have a knock-on effect for referrers.

“Please be assured that the team are working to identify root causes and fixes for these issues.”

By last week – 2 July 2015 – HSCIC warned that it will require a “period of planned downtime on the NHS e-Referral Service tonight which is currently scheduled for between 21:00 and 23:00 for some essential maintenance to fix a high priority functional Incident.”

The fix worked – or did it? HSCIC told Government Computing: “An update was applied to the system overnight from Thursday (July 2) into Friday (July 3) which was successful.”

But …

Monday 6 July 2015 4.15pm. HSCIC e-Referral Service bulletin:

“We would like to apologise for the interruption to service between 13:15 and 13:54 today.  This was not a planned outage and we are investigating the root cause.  If any remedial activity is required we will give notice to all users. Once again please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this caused.”

Why was testing inadequate?

Did senior managers go live without testing how the system would work in the real world, or did they select as test end-users only IT enthusiasts?

Perhaps managers avoided challenging the test system too much in case it gave poor results that could force a redesign.

We probably won’t know what has gone wrong unless the National Audit Office investigates. Even then it could be a year or more before a report is published. A further complicating factor is that the HSCIC itself may not know yet what has gone wrong and may be receiving conflicting reports on the cause or causes of the problems.

An IT failure? – change the organisation’s name

What’s certain is that the NHS has a history of national IT project failures which cause organisational embarrassment that’s soon assuaged by changing the name of the organisation, though the officials and contractors just switch from one to the next.

NHS Connecting for Health, which was largely responsible for the NPfIT disaster, was blended into the Department of Health’s informatics function which was then blended into the HSCIC.

Similarly the NHS Information Centre which was largely responsible for the GP Extraction Service disaster was closed in 2013 and its staff and contractors blended into the HSCIC.

Now, with the e-Referral Service, the HSCIC at least has a potential IT project mess that can be legitimately regarded as its own.

When will a centrally-run national NHS IT-based turn out to be a success? … care.data?

New SRO

Meanwhile NHS England is looking for a senior responsible owner for e-Referral Service on a salary of up to £98,453.

Usually in central government, SROs do the job as an adjunct to their normal work. It’s unusual for the NHS to employ a full-time project SRO which the NAO will probably welcome as a positive step.

But the job description is vague. NHS England says that the SRO for NHS e-Referrals programme will help with a switch from paper to digital for 100% of referrals in England by March 2018.

“The SRO … will have responsibility for the strategic and operational development of the digital journey, fulfilment of the patient and clinical process and the performance of the service. Plans to achieve the strategy will be underpinned by the delivery of short to medium term objectives, currently commissioned from HSCIC and other third party suppliers.”

Key aspects of this role will be to:-

– Ensure the strategy is formulated, understood by all stakeholders and is delivered utilising all available resources efficiently and effectively.

– Ensure the development and management of plans.

– Ensure appropriate system and processes are in place to enable the uptake and on-going use of digital referrals by GP’s, hospitals, patients and commissioners.

– Proactively manage the key risks and issues associated with ensuring appropriate actions are taken to mitigate or respond.

– Monitor and establish accountability on the overall progress of the strategy to ensure completion within agreed timescales.

– Manage the budgetary implications of activity.

– Avoid the destabilisation of business as usual.

– Manage and actively promote the relationships with key stakeholders.

The job will be fixed-term until 31/03/2017 and interviews will be held in London on the 20th July 2015.

The big challenge will be to avoid the destabilisation of business as usual – a challenge beyond the ability of one person?

Government Computing. 

Another fine NHS IT mess

Why was e-Referral Service launched with 9 pages of known problems?

National e-Referral Service unavailable until further notice

 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, consultants, e-health, e-Referral Service, Government IT, HSCIC, IT-related failures, National Audit Office, NHS, npfit, operational issues

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Another fine NHS IT mess

Posted on 02/07/2015 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Today the National Audit Office reports on the General Practice Extraction Service, an IT system that allows patient data to be extracted from all GP practices in England.

The report says that Department of Health officials – who were then working for the NHS Information Centre – signed off and paid for a contract even though the system was unfit for use. The original business case for the system grossly underestimated costs.

And the system was developed using the highest-risk approach for new IT – a combination of agile principles and traditional fixed-price contract.

Some of the officials involved appear to be those who worked for NHS Connecting for Health – the organisation responsible for what has become the UK’s biggest IT-related failure, the £10bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

As with the NPfIT it is unlikely anyone responsible for the latest failure will be held accountable or suffer any damage to their career.

The NAO says officials made mistakes in the original procurement. “Contract management contributed to losses of public funds, through asset write-offs and settlements with suppliers.” More public money is needed to improve or replace the system.

Labour MP Meg Hillier MP, the new chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, sums up today’s NAO’s report:

“Failed government IT projects have long been an expensive cliché and, sadly for the taxpayer and service user, this is no exception.

“The expected cost of the General Practice Extraction Service ballooned from £14m to £40m, with at least £5.5m wasted on write-offs and delay costs.

“GPES has managed to provide data for just one customer – NHS England – and the data was received 4 years later than originally planned.

“While taxpayers are left picking up the tab for this failure, customers who could benefit, such as research and clinical audit organisations, are waiting around for the system to deliver what they need to improve our health service.”

Some GPs who do not want patient data to be extracted from their systems – they believe it could compromise their bond of confidentiality with patients – may be pleased the extraction system has failed to work properly.

But their concern about patient confidentiality being compromised will not make the failure of the extraction service any more palatable.

The NAO says it only learned of the failure of the extraction system through its financial audit of the Health and Social Care Information Centre. It learned that the system was not working as expected and that HSCIC had agreed to pay additional charges through a settlement with one of the main suppliers, Atos IT Services UK Ltd.

An NHS Connecting for Health legacy?

Work on the GP Extraction Service project began in 2007, first by the NHS Information Centre, and then by the HSCIC.

The NHS Information Centre closed in 2013 and responsibility transferred to the HSCIC which combines the Department of Health’s informatics functions – previously known as NHS Connecting for Health or CFH – and the former NHS Information Centre.

What went wrong 

The original business case said the extraction service would start in 2009-10, but it took until April 2014 for HSCIC to provide the first data extract to a customer.

Meanwhile other potential users of the system have found alternative sources of patient data in the absence of the HSCIC system.

The NAO says that officials changed the procurement strategy and technical design for the GPES extraction systems during the project. “This contributed to GPES being unable to provide the planned number and range of data extracts.”

The NHS Information Centre contracted with Atos to develop a tool to manage data extraction. In March 2013, the Centre accepted delivery of this system from Atos.

But officials at the HSCIC who took over the system on 1 April 2013 found that it had fundamental design flaws and did not work. “The system test did not reflect the complexity of a ‘real life’ data extract and was not comprehensive enough to identify these problems”.

To work in a ‘real life’ situation, the GPES query system needed to communicate accurately with the four separate extraction systems and other systems relying on its data.  The test officials and Atos agreed was less complex. It did not examine extractions from multiple extraction systems at once.

Nor did the test assess the complete process of extracting and then passing GPES data to third-party systems.

Fixed price and agile – a bad combination

Officials began procuring the GPES query tool in April 2009, using a fixed-price contractual model with ‘agile’ parts. The supplier and officials would agree some of the detailed needs in workshops, after they signed the contract.

But the NAO says there was already evidence in central government at this time that the contractual approach – combining agile with a fixed price – was high risk.

The NAO’s report “Shared Services in the Research Councils”reviewed how research councils had created a shared service centre, where a similarly structured IT contract failed.

In the report, Fujitsu and the shared service centre told the NAO that: “the fixed-rate contract awarded by the project proved to be unsuitable when the customers’ requirements were still unclear.”

The court case of De Beers vs. Atos Origin highlighted a similar failure.

To make matters worse officials relied too heavily on contractors for development and procurement expertise.  And 10 project managers were responsible for GPES between 2008 and 2013.

Once health officials and Atos had signed the query tool contract, they found it difficult to agree the detailed requirements. This delayed development, with Atos needing to start development work while some requirements had yet to be agreed. Officials and Atos agreed to remove some minor components. Others were built but never used by HSCIC.

A Department of Health Gateway 4 review in December 2012 found that difficulties with deciding requirements were possibly exacerbated by development being offshore.

They raised concerns about the project management approach:

“The GPET-Q [query tool] delivery is being project managed using a traditional ‘waterfall’ methodology. Given the degree of bespoke development required and the difficulties with translation of requirements during the elaboration parts of R1, the Review Team considers that, with hindsight, it might have been beneficial to have adopted an Agile Project Management approach instead.”

General Practice Extraction Service – an investigation. NAO report. 

Latest healthcare IT disaster is a reminder of how vital government digital transformation is.

 

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Posted in Atos, Campaign4Change, Department of Health, Government IT, India, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, NHS, npfit, project management

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Do IDS and Universal Credit deserve such good publicity?

Posted on 24/06/2015 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

Iain DuncanSmith

One of the unwritten conventions in journalism is that is you don’t give bad publicity to a minister who gives you an exclusive interview.

Iain Duncan Smith has given an exclusive interview to the Huffington Post, one of the world’s top-ranking news websites, and it is, perhaps, no surprise that the subsequent headline says:

“Iain Duncan Smith Welcomes Record Universal Credit Applications.”

That’s great news. Is the UC programme out of trouble? Are the IT
problems that were imposing artificially low limits on the number and type of claimants – such as incorrect calculations of payments – confined to history?

At one point you could not claim UC as a single person or a couple if you received Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payment.

universal creditYou could not claim if you owned, or partly owned, your home, were homeless, or in supported or temporary accommodation.  You could not claim if you worked but earned more than £330 a month. You could not claim if pregnant,  had disabled, adopted or fostered children.

So are the brakes off now?

The Huffington Post said:

“According to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), in May over 3,800 new applications were made a week for the government’s new benefit system.”

That sounds a lot. A record indeed. But a close analysis of the numbers successfully claiming UC shows that since a national roll-out of UC began in February 2015 – amid much good publicity – the increase has been small.

It appears that the UC programme’s costly IT – an investment of £344m by 31 October 2014 (Appendix f) – is still limiting the number of claimants.

dwpThis raises the question of whether the DWP’s publicity machine, with IDS at the helm, has such an influence on the media that it is able to successfully propagate its own message in the face of inconvenient facts.

This was BBC Online’s headline in February 2015: Universal Credit roll-out £600m under budget”

The Sunday Times declared that Universal Credit “is working”. The Telegraph also said that UC is working.

The facts 

The DWP’s plan is for 7 million people to claim UC but the latest figures show that the total number of claimants who had made a successful claim up to 14 May 2015 was 74,120.

This is about 1% of those potentially eligible to claim UC – 25 months after the scheme was launched in April 2013.

Has the number of claimants increased substantially since the national roll-out began in February 2015?

Before the start of the national roll-out about 35,000 people had successfully made a UC claim up to 8 January 2015. There had been an average of 2,325 new claims per week at 96 Jobcentre Plus offices.

Three months after the start of the national roll-out about 74,120 people had successfully claimed UC up to 14 May 2015. There were an average of 3,550 new claims per week at 278 Jobcentre Plus offices.

Rapid pace?

The DWP says on its website:

“Since national roll-out the rate of claims has been increasing at a rapid pace”.

But is this the case?

The number of successful UC claimants has more than doubled since the national roll-out began but the number of Jobcentre Plus offices where UC has launched have nearly tripled in the same period, from 96 in January 2015 to 278 by 14 May 2015.

And the total number of successful claimants remains tiny relative to the potential number of claimants although the DWP says it has expanded eligibility to claim UC from single people to couples and families.

According to the National Audit Office in November 2014, the DWP estimated that around 500,000 claimants would receive Universal Credit by mid‑2016. This target will not be hit at the present rate of successful claimant applications.

Comment

IDS welcomes record numbers of UC applications says the Huffington Post headline.  But almost every week there will be record numbers claiming UC.

That is the nature of a national roll-out:  numbers increase – even by small amounts. The number of applications will continually break records while the roll-out continues during 2015 and 2016.

No doubt IDS and the DWP will continue to seek a succession of media articles on the record number of UC applications. Only this week the DWP announced that UC is rolling out to 10 more jobcentres across England, Scotland and Wales.

Will the media always react complaisantly?

If it does it will be a pity – because MPs may stop asking questions about value for money in the context of the tens,  indeed hundreds, of millions being spent on UC technology with the usual major suppliers.

And if the IT and business change challenges continue to limit the number and type of applications, the total numbers of successful claimants at the end of the national roll-out could be embarrassingly tiny relative to the 7 million potential claimants – not that the DWP’s publicity machine will mind.

The machine will find a new way to sail around the facts. That’s what the DWP’s senior officials seem to believe that government PR staff exist to do.

Universal Credit statistics

Iain Duncan Smith welcome record Universal Credit applications – Huffington Post

DWP’s announcement of the national roll-out of UC

65,000 people claiming Universal Credit

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change

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New national e-Referral Service “unavailable until further notice”

Posted on 17/06/2015 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The NHS e-Referral Service which launched nationally on Monday was “unavailable until further notice”, the Health and Social Care Information Centre said at 9.30am today.

“Due to issues experienced overnight the NHS e-Referral Service is unavailable until further notice while essential maintenance is performed. If you have local business continuity processes available, we recommend that you consider invoking them,” says the HSCIC on its website.

“We are working hard to resolve these issues as quickly as possible and to keep disruption to a minimum… We apologise for the disruption caused to some users and thank everyone for their patience.”

Late yesterday afternoon the Health and Social Care Information Centre warned GPs and other users of its e-Referral Service that technical problems were continuing.

The difficulties have aggravated cynicism in the GP community about the ability of centrally-based officials to implement national IT systems.

Is it too soon to question whether e-Referrals is the first IT disaster of the new government? There is also the question of whether GPs have been used as guinea pigs to test for problems with the new system.

Until the service went down GPs were in any case unable to log in or were experiencing long delays in arranging referrals. Some reverted to sending letters by post – or always did use the post and avoided the NPfIT Choose and Book system which e-Referral is replacing.

Fewer than 60% of GPs used Choose and Book to hospital appointments for patients.

On its website at 17.30 yesterday the HSCIC said:

“PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO COLLEAGUES WHO USE THE NHS e-REFERRAL SERVICE

“The NHS e-Referral Service has been used by patients and professionals today to complete bookings and referrals comparable with the number on a typical Tuesday but we were continuing to see on-going performance and stability issues after yesterday’s fixes.

“We suspend access to the system at lunchtime today to implement another fix and this improved performance and stability in the afternoon.

“We are continuing to monitor the service and will implement further fixes if required. If users notice any further issues they should log them with their local service desk in the usual way…

“We apologise for the disruption caused to some users and thank everyone for their patience.

Update 14.00 17 June

The Health and Social Care Information Centre said the e-Referral Service was still down.

“HSCIC are completing the final stage of testing a number of fixes to the NHS e-Referrals Service. It is hoped that the service will be available again later today. A further update will be issued at 15:00 today.”

Update 18.00 17 June

Said the HSCIC:

“The NHS e-Referrals Service is now available again. We apologise for the disruption caused to users and thank everyone for their patience.

Update 15.00 18 June – ongoing problems

“Yesterday’s outage enabled us to  implement a number of improvements and hopefully this is reflected in your user experience today,” said HSCIC’s website.

“This morning users reported that there were ongoing performance issues so work has now taken place to implement changes to the configuration to the NHS e-Referral Service hardware and we are currently monitoring closely to see if this resolved the issue.”

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, e-health, e-Referral Service, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, NHS, npfit, open source

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Why was NHS e-Referral service launched with 9 pages of known problems?

Posted on 17/06/2015 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

Were GPs guinea pigs for live testing of the new national NHS e-Referral Service?

Between 2004 and 2010 the Department of Health marked as confidential its lists of problems with national NPfIT systems, in particular Choose and Book.

So the Health and Social Care Information Centre deserves praise for publishing a list of problems when it launched the national “e-Referrals” system on Monday. But that list was 9 pages long.

The launch brought unsurprised groans from GPs who are used to new national systems going live with dozens of known problems.

The e-Referral Service, built on agile “techniques” and based on open source technology, went live early on Monday to replace “Choose and Book” for referring GP patients to hospitals and to other parts of the NHS.

Some GPs found they could not log on.

“As expected – cannot refer anything electronically this morning. Surprise surprise,” said one GP in a comment to “Pulse” on its article headlined “Patient referrals being delayed as GPs unable to access e-Referrals system on launch day.”

A GP practice manager said: “Cannot access in south London. HSCIC debacle…GPs pick up the pieces. Changing something that wasn’t broken.”

Another GP said: “I was proud never to have used Choose and Book once. Looks like this is even better!”

Other GPs said they avoided using technology to refer patients.

“Why delay referral? Just send a letter. (Some of us never stopped).”

Another commented: “I still send paper referrals – no messing, you know it has gone, no time wasted.”

Dr Faisal Bhutta, a GP partner in Manchester, said his practice regularly used Choose and Book but on Monday morning he couldn’t log in. “You can’t make a referral,” he said.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has apologised for the disruption. A statement on its website says:

“There are a number of known issues, which are currently being resolved. It is not anticipated that any of these issues will pose a clinical safety risk, cause any detriment to patient care or prevent users from carrying out essential tasks. We have published the list of known issues on our website along with details of how to provide feedback .”

But why did the Centre launch the e-Referral Service with 9 pages of known problems? Was it using GPs as guinea pigs to test the new system?

Comment

The Health and Social Care Information Centre is far more open, less defensive and a better communicator than the Department of Health ever was when its officials were implementing the NPfIT.

But is the HSCIC’s openness a good thing if it’s accompanied by a brazen and arrogant acceptance that IT can be introduced into the NHS without a care whether it works properly or not?

In parts of the NHS, IT works extraordinarily well. Those who design, test, implement and support such systems care deeply about patients. In many hospitals the IT reduces risks and helps to improve the chances of successful outcomes.

But in other parts of the NHS are some technology enthusiasts – at the most senior board level – who seem to believe that all major IT implementations will be flawed and will be improved by user feedback.

The result is that IT that’s inadequately designed, tested and implemented is foisted on doctors and nurses who are expected to get used to “teething” troubles.

This is dangerous thinking and it’s becoming more and more prevalent.

Many poorly-considered implementations of the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system have gone live in hospitals across England with known problems.

In some cases, poor implementations – rather than any faults with the system itself – have affected the care of patients and might have contributed to unnecessary deaths when records needed urgently were not available, or hospitals lost track of urgent appointments.

A CQC report in March 2015 said IT was a possible factor in the death of a patient because NHS staff were unable to access electronically-held information.

In another incident a coroner criticised a patient administration system for being a factor in the death of three year-old Samuel Starr whose appointment for a vital scan got lost in the system.

Within NHS officialdom is a growing cultural acceptance that somehow a poor IT implementation is different to a faulty x-ray machine that delivers too high a dose of radiation.

NHS officials will always brush off IT problems as teething and irrelevant to the care and safety of patients. Just apologise and say no patient has come to any harm.

So little do IT-related problems matter in the NHS that unaccountable officials at the HSCIC have this week felt sufficiently detached from personal accountability to launch a national system knowing there are dozens of problems with the use of it.

Their attitude seems to be: “We can’t know everything wrong with the system until it’s live. So let’s launch the system and fix the problems as GPs give us their feedback.”

This is a little like the NHS having a template letter of regret to send to relatives and families of patients who die unexpectedly in the care of the NHS. Officials simply fill in the appropriate name and address. The NHS can then fix the problems as and when patients die.

It’s surely time that bad practice in NHS IT was eradicated.  Board members need to question more. When necessary directors must challenge the blind positivism of the chief executive.

Some managers can learn much about the culture of care at the hospitals that implement IT successfully.

Patients, nurses and doctors do not exist to tell hospital managers and IT suppliers when electronic records are wrong, incomplete, not available or are somebody else’s record with a similar name.

And GPs do not exist to be guinea pigs for testing and providing feedback on new national systems such as the e-Referral Service.

e-Referral Service “unavailable until further notice”

Hundreds of patients lost in NPfIT systems

Hospital has long-term NPfIT problems

An NPfIT success at Croydon? – Really?

Physicians’ views on electronic patient records

Patient record systems raise some concerns, says report

Electronic health records and safety concerns

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, Choose and Book, Department of Health, e-health, e-Referral Service, Government IT, health, health records, HSCIC, IT successes, IT-related failures, LPfIT, NHS, npfit, open source, open standards, operational issues, procurement, project management

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Is HMRC spending enough for help to replace £10.4bn Aspire contract?

Posted on 04/06/2015 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

Government Computing reports that HM Revenue and Customs is seeking a partner for a two-year contract, worth £5m to £20m, to help the department replace the Aspire deal which expires in 2017.

HMRC is leading the way for central government by seeking to move away from a 13-year monopolistic IT supply contract, Aspire, which is expected to cost £10.4bn up to 2017.

Aspire’s main supplier is Capgemini.  Fujitsu and Accenture are the main subcontractors.

HMRC says it wants its IT services to be designed around taxpayers rather than its own operations. Its plan is to give every UK taxpayer a personalised digital tax account – built on agile principles – that allows interactions in real-time.

This will require major changes in its IT,  new organisational skills and changes to existing jobs.

HMRC’s officials want to comply with the government’s policy of ending large technology contracts in favour of smaller and shorter ones.

Now the department is advertising for a partner to help prepare for the end of the Aspire contract. The partner will need to help bring about a “culture and people transformation”.

The contract will be worth £5m to £20m, the closing date for bids is 6 July, and the contract start date is 1 September.  A “supplier event” will be held next week.

But is £5m to £20m enough for HMRC to spend on help to replace a £10.4bn contract?

This is the HMRC advert:

“HMRC/CDIO [Chief Digital Information Officer, Mark Dearnley] needs an injection of strategic-level experience and capacity to support people and culture transformation.
“The successful Partner must have experience of managing large post-merger work force integrations, and the significant people and cultural issues that arise. HMRC will require the supplier to provide strategic input to the planning of this activity and for support for senior line managers in delivering it.
“HMRC/CDIO needs an injection of strategic level experience and capacity to help manage the exit from a large scale outsourced arrangement that has been in place for 20+ years.
“HMRC is dependent on its IT services to collect £505bn in tax and to administer £43bn in benefits each year. The successful supplier must have proven experience of working in a multi-supplier environment, working with internal and external legal teams and suppliers and must have a proven track record of understanding large IT business operations.
“HMRC/CDIO needs an injection of strategic level experience and capacity to help HMRC Process Re-engineer and ‘Lean’ its IT operation. HMRC/CDIO requires a Programme Management Office (PMO) to undertake the management aspects of the programme.
“It is envisaged that the Lead Transformation Partner will provide leadership of the PMO and work alongside HMRC employees. The leadership must have significant experience of working in large, dynamic, multi-faceted programmes working in organisations that are of national/international scale and importance including major transformation…”

Replacing Aspire with smaller short-term contracts will require a transfer of more than 2,000 Capgemini staff to possibly a variety of SMEs or other companies, as well as big changes in HMRC’s ageing technologies.

It would be much easier for HMRC’s executives to replace Aspire with another long-term costly contract with a major supplier but officials are committed to fundamental change.

The need for change was set out by the National Audit Office in a report “Managing and replacing the Aspire contract”  in 2014. The NAO found that Capgemini has, in general,  kept the tax systems running fairly well and successfully delivered a plethora of projects. But at a cost.

The NAO report said Aspire was “holding back innovation” in HMRC’s business operations”.

Aspire had made it difficult for HMRC to “get direction or control of its ICT; there was little flexibility to get things done with the right supplier quickly or make greater use of cross-government shared infrastructure and services”. And exclusivity clauses “prevented competition and stifled new ideas”.

Capgemini and Fujitsu made a combined profit of £1.2bn, more than double the £500m envisaged in the original business plan. Profit margins averaged 16 per cent to March 2014, also higher than the original 2004 plan.

HMRC was “overly dependent on the technical capability of the Aspire suppliers”. The NAO also found that HMRC competed only 14 contracts outside Aspire, worth £22m, or 3 per cent of Aspire’s cost.

Although generally pleased with Capgemini,  HMRC raised with Capgemini, during a contract renegotiation, several claimed contract breaches for the supplier’s performance and overall responsiveness.

When benchmarking the price of Aspire services and projects on several occasions, HMRC has found that it has often “paid above-market rates”.

HMRC did not consider that its Fujitsu-run data centres were value for money.

Comment

HMRC deserves credit for seeking to replace Aspire with smaller, short-term contracts. But is it possible that HMRC is spending far too little on help with making the switch?

HMRC doesn’t have a reputation for caution when it comes to IT-related spending.  The total cost of Aspire is expected to rise to £10.4bn by 2017 from an original expected spend of £4.1bn. [The £10.4bn includes an extra £2.3bn for a 3-year contract extension.]

Therefore a spend of £5m to £20m for help to replace Aspire seems ridiculously low given the risks of getting it wrong, the complexities, the number of staff changes involved, the changes in IT architecture, and the legal, commercial and technical capabilities required.

The risks are worth taking, for HMRC to regain full control over ICT and performance of its operations.

If all goes wrong with the replacement of Aspire, costs will continue to spiral. The Aspire contract lets both parties extend it by agreement for up to eight years. HMRC says it does not intend to extend Aspire further. But an overrun could force HMRC to negotiate an extension.

As the NAO has said, an extension would not be value for money, since there would continue to be no competitive pressure.

Campaign4Change has never before accused a government department of allocating too little for IT-related change. There’s always a first time.

Government Computing article

 

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, consultants, Fujitsu, Government IT, HMRC, Legacy ICT, Major Projects Authority, National Audit Office, Politics, procurement, project management, public services, supplier relationships

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DWP gives out “selective” information on welfare reform even to its auditors

Posted on 28/05/2015 | 5 comments

By Tony Collins

If the National Audit Office cannot obtain reliable and comprehensive information from the DWP, who can?

The NAO is the department’s auditor. Its head Amyas Morse signs off (or rather qualifies) the DWP’s accounts. His staff also produce regular “value for money” reports on the DWP’s projects and performance.

But an NAO report published today on welfare reform gives more than a hint of the problems its auditors face when trying to verify the information the DWP gives them.

The report “Welfare reform – lessons learned“ says the DWP failed twice to answer the NAO’s questions. Then, when the NAO gave the department its draft report, the DWP provided some information – which the NAO describes as “selective”. It is worth quoting the NAO’s comment in full:

“We have relied largely on our past audit reports to understand the implementation of welfare reform. Past work provides a sufficiently strong and comparable evidence base to identify different approaches and what works well and less well.

“We requested audit evidence from the Department for Work & Pensions (the Department) in August and November 2014.

“This would have allowed us to validate or comment on the Department’s performance more broadly and how they have subsequently addressed issues identified in previous reports. However, the Department failed to send the evidence despite requests.

“Following receipt of a draft report in April 2015, the Department provided some evidence on how it has tried to address issues identified in previous reports and how other welfare reforms have considered these themes.

“In the Department’s view it has made progress across programmes since the time of our initial reports. This includes addressing concerns about programme management on Universal Credit and reducing the time taken to process Personal Independence Payment claims.

“Given the selective nature of the evidence provided and the limited time to review a wide range of programmes, we were unable to audit the evidence or consider the additional information in detail…”

Separately, the DWP is in a protracted legal case to prevent the publication under FOI of four old – 2012 – reports on the Universal Credit programme.  A one-day hearing will be held in London on 15 July 2015.

Comment

The DWP is astonishingly thin-skinned. Its officials are probably not hiding anything – they just don’t want anybody knowing how well, or how badly, they are managing projects and programmes such as Universal Credit.

Since Universal Credit went live press officers have been allowed to give out only selective information on Universal Credit. It has  been difficult to establish from them that the programme has had 6 programme directors and 6 senior responsible owners since 2010.

The NAO’s latest report says the DWP needs to “recognise openly” when it has not met expectations. It needs greater internal challenge, says the NAO.

But the DWP seems unable to change its culture of defensiveness and the selective release of information to Parliament, the public and even its own auditors.

Why is it spending so much public money on trying to stop the release of the four UC reports?

Better than anyone else the late Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham has summed up the need for openness:

“… Modern democratic government means government of the people by the people for the people. But there can be no government by the people if they are ignorant of the issues to be resolved, the arguments for and against different solutions and the facts underlying those arguments.

“The business of government is not an activity about which only those professionally engaged are entitled to receive information and express opinions.

“It is, or should be, a participatory process. But there can be no assurance that government is carried out for the people unless the facts are made known, the issues publicly ventilated.

“Sometimes, inevitably, those involved in the conduct of government, as in any other walk of life, are guilty of error, incompetence, misbehaviour, dereliction of duty, even dishonesty and malpractice.

“Those concerned may very strongly wish that the facts relating to such matters are not made public. Publicity may reflect discredit on them or their predecessors. It may embarrass the authorities. It may impede the process of administration. Experience however shows, in this country and elsewhere, that publicity is a powerful disinfectant.

“Where abuses are exposed, they can be remedied. Even where abuses have already been remedied, the public may be entitled to know that they occurred.” R v Shayler(2002) UKHL 11, (2003)1 AC 247.

Thank you to John Slater for providing Lord Bingham’s quote.

Welfare reform – lessons learned

DWP wastes money on another Universal Credit FOI appeal

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government IT, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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