Tag Archives: Cabinet Office

Did DWP mislead MPs and media over Universal Credit?

Posted on 07/11/2013 | 2 comments

By T0ny Collins

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

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

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

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

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

Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MPs try to be positive

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

Culture of denial

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

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

Shocking absence of control over suppliers

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

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

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

Lack of oversight

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

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

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

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

Blinkered culture remains?

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

Problems hidden

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

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

Shocking absence of financial and other controls

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

Did the DWP do anything well?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will Universal Credit ever work?

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

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

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

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

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

Security versus usability

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

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

DWP response to PAC report

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson told the BBC

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

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

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

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

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

PAC report: Universal Credit: early progress

National Audit Office report: Universal Credit: early progress

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

Tagged Cabinet Office, Efficiency and Reform Group, SME government contracts

MPs dig hard for truth on Universal Credit IT

Posted on 13/09/2013 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

“Just answer the question … please!”

Rarely has any chair of the Public Accounts Committee pleaded so frequently with a permanent secretary not go round the houses when answering questions.

Margaret Hodge’s irritation was obvious on Tuesday [9 September] at a hearing of the Committee into a National Audit Office report on the Universal Credit IT-based programme: Universal Credit: early progress.

Before the Committee was Robert Devereux, the top civil servant at the Department for Work and Pensions. Beside him was UC’s latest project director Howard Shiplee who successfully led and managed construction contracts, budgets and timelines for all permanent and temporary venues for the Olympics. He has a CBE for services to construction.

It’s unclear how much experience Shiplee has had with IT-based projects and dealing with IT suppliers, though given his success as a big projects leader and construction expert, IT leadership experience may be unnecessary.

There were signs from the hearing that Universal Credit project is following the events that have typically preceded IT-related disasters in government, especially in the way facts were interpreted in opposing and irreconcilable ways by the project’s defenders on one side and the “independents” on the other.

The “independents”, whose criticisms of the project have been withering, include a director at the National Audit Office Max Tse who led the NAO’s inquiry into the UC programme, and Dr Norma Wood, who has held several relevant positions in recent months, first as review team leader for a UC review in February, then as Transformation Director for the UC programme “re-set” in May 2013 and then as Interim Director General for the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. She is a consultant, not a civil servant. She appeared before the PAC on Wednesday.

Another “independent” is the auditor and consultancy PWC which reported to the government on financial mismanagement on the UC project. The NAO revealed the existence of the PWC report, which Hodge said was even more damming the NAO’s. [see separate blog post.]

A possible outcome of deeply conflicting views on the success or otherwise of a big and controversial project is that truth remains beyond anyone’s grasp within the life of the project and emerges only within the scheme’s post mortem audit report.

At Tuesday’s PAC hearing, the evidence given by Devereux and Shiplee on one hand, and Wood on the other was at times conflicting.

Wood’s evidence

Wood said that one of the lessons from the Universal Credit programme so far was that it was not conceived as a business transformation but was “very IT driven”. Of the £303m that has been spent on IT so far a sizeable part will need to be written off, beyond the £34m write-off so far.

Conservative MP Richard Bacon asked her how much could eventually be written off on the IT spend. “I think it will be substantial. I could not give you a figure,” she said.

When Bacon asked if it could be more than £140m she replied: “It will be at least that I would think.”

Her answer implied that the DWP will need to write off a large part of the £162m it currently estimates its IT assets are worth, after the £303m IT spend. Hodge said the write-off could be in excess of £200m – but this was later denied by Devereux, who also denied the write-off would be at least £140m.

Wood revealed that the figure for the write-off so far was derived from information given by suppliers, after the DWP asked them to judge how much of their equipment and software would be of use.

Conservative MP Stephen Barclay asked Wood whether suppliers were assessing the usability of their own work.

“Yes they were,” replied Wood.

Barclay: “So they were marking their own homework?”

“Yes they were.”

“Does that not carry a conflict of interest?”

“Yes it does.”

“Does it concern you?”

“It did,” replied Wood. “Therefore in the review we recommended an independent investigation.”

Barclay: “Building on Mr Bacon’s point, it is highly likely that with the initial write-off, if they have been marking their homework, comes a risk that the eventual figure is going to be bigger?”

“That’s true.”

Barclay’s questioning will indicate to some that the DWP and its IT suppliers were so close it could have been difficult for the department’s officials to be objective about what they were being told.

Steady-state solution

Wood spoke of how DWP and the Major Projects Authority had designed a “steady-state solution” which was a simplified version of UC , from which a more comprehensive system could be developed.

Said Wood: “There is a steady-state solution … with business requirements, that was handed over to the SRO [senior responsible owner] on 17 May, so there is a complete design and there is a multidisciplinary team working that design through to the next level.”

She said the steady-state solution is twin-tracked. “There is a piece that designs the interactive activity with the user and with the agents, and there is a part that uses existing systems, such as the payment system and the customer information system, but there are some 32 legacy systems in between, the utility of which we did not know at the time we completed the reset on 17 May.”

The interactive part is managed by a multi-disciplinary team that involves the GDS [Government Digital Service] and used agile, with waterfall for legacy systems.

“So yes, there is a design, and it is a very good design.”

On the use of agile she said the important thing is to apply rigour and discipline as you go through those methodologies. “It is not an issue of methodology; it is an issue of the rigour and discipline that is applied to those approaches.”

Pathfinder

Instead of a national roll-out starting in October, which was the original plan, the DWP is running “pathfinder” projects which accept only simplified claims and use limited IT without full anti-fraud measures.

Wood said: “It [the pathfinder scheme] is not hopeless. As it was currently configured there was a limit to the volume of payments it could handle because of the manual interfaces required – the manual support it required. So there is a very limited number of cases it could handle …”

Bacon asked if she would describe the pathfinder as so substantially de-scoped it was not fit for purpose.

“At the time we did the review [earlier this year] that was our conclusion.”

“ Is it correct that the pathfinder technology platform will not support UC in the future – that it is not scalable?” asked Bacon

“Unless it can handle all the functionality we have just described I fail to see how it can be scalable,” replied Wood.

Lessons

Liberal Democrat MP Ian Swales said: “We have exactly the same names of suppliers failing to deliver on government contracts time after time. Poor specifications, very vague penalties involved, and a sense that they have a vested interest, almost, in failure and we are again sat around this table discussing the same sort of thing. What can be learned?

Wood replied that there are some important lessons. “One is that this is not just a procurement exercise; this is actually a contract management exercise. It is really important that one understands what the business needs to deliver. That is why I stress that this was constituted not as a business transformation programme, but as an IT programme. It is important that the business drives the IT requirements and manages the contracts accordingly.”

Is 2017 feasible?

Wood: “It is feasible to deliver the whole thing by 2017.”

Bacon pointed out that there is no approval for further spending on UC until November 2013 and only then if criteria is met. He asked Wood on what basis approval for more spending would be given. Wood said it will be based on whether the project is affordable, value for money, deliverable within timescales, and has the appropriate management place.

DWP’s evidence

Hodge complained repeatedly that the civil servants before her were not answering questions directly – perhaps a sign of how hard it can be to establish the truth when an IT-based project goes awry.

“I would be really grateful if you would answer the question,” asked Hodge when questioning Devereux about whether Universal Credit had a proper business plan, a strategy.

At another point Devereux said: “Let me try and answer these questions which have been bandied around.”

Hodge: “You do go round the houses. Just answer them directly.”

Later in the hearing:

Hodge: “What you are so good at is giving us a whole load of stuff that is completely irrelevant to what we are trying to get at. Just answer the question.”

And another occasion…

Hodge: “No just answer the question … please.”

And again …

Hodge: “What would be utterly delightful is if you simply answered the questions. Just answer the questions.”

Again …

Hodge: “I just don’t get where this is going. I am honestly trying to be fair to you today. Ask the question again Meg [Meg Hillier MP] and then see if we can get an answer.” [Hillier’s question was about why the DWP has treated Universal Credit as an IT project instead of what it actually is, a business transformation programme which changes the way people work and act rather than introduces new technology. Devereux gave no clear answer.]

An exchange about the UC’s pathfinder projects characterised the relationship between Hodge and Devereux. Critics of the pathfinders say they are pointless because the claimants are atypical, much of the claims process relies on manual work, the technology is largely without any agreed anti-fraud measures, and it cannot yet handle everyday circumstances.

Supporters of the pathfinders, particularly Devereux, say they are a useful step in assessing the behaviour of people when making claims and testing the interfaces between new technology and the DWP’s legacy systems.

Hodge: “You are not answering any of the questions Mr Devereux. I don’t mind a little bit of history and a little bit of what you want to say but answer the questions. Do you think the pilot was fit for purpose – yes or no?”

Devereux: “The pathfinder is testing useful things that we have fixed.”

Hodge: “Was it fit for purpose?”

Devereux: “It has been useful.”

“Was it fit for purpose?”

“What purpose did you have in mind?”

“No – you.”

“Ok well, for my purpose it has worked fine thank you. “

“To do what?”

“To make sure I can construct some brand new software to connect it to a –“

“On which you spent £300m …”

“To connect it to a very complicated legacy estate and then demonstrate all of those things – let me give you one example; we will not get anywhere otherwise. I have sat in front of this Committee and we have talked about the Work Programme. You have grilled me on the—

“Please don’t talk about the Work programme.”

“In that conversation—

“Please talk about the pathfinder…”

And subsequently …

“Can I really plead with you, if you can answer questions without going off on a sideline it would be really really helpful – really really helpful.”

MPs kept uninformed

Stephen Barclay put it to Devereux and Shiplee that the DWP was aware of serious UC problems in July 2013 but the public, media and Parliament were being given the impression all was well. Said Barclay: “In July you realised there were problems. In September [2013] your Department’s press office was telling Computer Weekly:

‘The IT is mostly built. It is on time and within budget.’

Barclay said in July 2013 Shiplee was asked by the chair of work and pensions select committee[Dame Anne Begg]: “So rumours that there is a large chunk of the IT that simply do not work and has been dumped are not true?”

“No,” replied Shiplee.

Barclay told Devereux and Shiplee: “Parliament seems to be getting told two different things.” He referred to the DWP’s “culture of denial”.

IT supplier reassurances

Shiplee said he has spent 12 of the 16 weeks since he started reviewing the UC project in great detail with IT suppliers.

“That is something that hasn’t been done to this level before. I have spent with experts from within DWP and with external experts and we have reviewed in detail what has been produced, what works, where it has got to. There are a number of points to make –

Barclay: “Could you clarify you wrote to the chair of the DWP committee to clarify that answer if you have done further work …”

Shiplee: “I have not concluded the work. I believe that from that work already, it is my view, supported by reports, that there is substantial utility in what has been produced… The use of agile is by itself very iterative and therefore to a certain extent it is potentially high risk.

“I wanted to look at how we could de-risk this, this utilisation of agile, and one of the ways to do that is to look at what we have already spent a great deal of money on, and whether it was usable and would actually serve to de-risk the programme…

“What I have discovered is that the Pathfinder does not represent the amount of development work that has been undertaken by suppliers. It [Pathfinder] has been heavily de-tuned from where they have actually got to.”

Why?

“Mainly around security, said Shiplee. “This is a unique piece of work. It [the DWP] is the only bank anywhere – effectively a bank – in which customers do not put money it. They simply take money out. It is therefore attractive from all sort of fraud point of view and therefore security is very important. The key element of security is personal identification. Nobody has yet found a way to do that effectively and totally online.”

Hodge: “Are you telling us that the technology developed so far is capable of being scaled up for a national roll-out?”

Shiplee: “On the basis of what I have been told and what I have seen so far, I believe it has been demonstrated that the suppliers have got the capability to scale this up. They have, for example, dealt with couples [Pathfinder system deals now only with single people.]

“The suppliers have explained where they have got to. It is very interesting. Some of the challenges we are facing now the suppliers have already faced in the past and have resolved those issues. I am trying to make sure that we use all of this to the best good and we don’t have to relearn every lesson again.”

Replaced project leaders

Devereux told of how he had replaced project leaders who , he suggested, were not solving problems but pushing ahead regardless, and were not good listeners.

“People I put in place here had experience and confidence. The challenge they had was very large and there came a point in my judgment they were no longer on top of it. There were cumulative issues to be resolved.

“When the cumulative bow wave of things that had not been resolved was being called out as not resolvable by just pushing on through, that is the point at which we decided to change, because it was also then that the point the Chair made about a good news culture within the programme was crystallising. Those two things cannot work.

“I need people who will drive things through. Howard is very good at driving things through, but the person that drives things through and does not listen to anyone at all is not going to help me at all.”

Comment

Last week James Naughtie on BBC’s R4 Today programme, R2’s Jeremy Vine, journalists at the BBC World Service and at other news services asked me whether Universal Credit was another government IT disaster. I said in essence that it was a good idea badly executed. The IT project has been dogged by an over-ambitious timetable, poor control and validation of supplier payments and a good news culture that to some extent still exists.

In past government IT disasters such as the NPfIT, C-NOMIS and the Rural Payments Agency’s Single Payment Scheme, ministers were not given bad news until it could be hidden no longer. Senior officials gave ministers only good news because that’s what they wanted to hear.

Deniability

Civil servants, perhaps, wanted to give ministers credible “deniability”. The less ministers knew of serious problems the more credibly they could deny in public the existence of them.

Thank goodness, then, for the scrutiny of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee on Universal Credit. Some important truths have now come to the surface. With the NAO and the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority rightly breathing down its neck, the DWP is doing all it can to put the project back on track. But the DWP is still marred by a good news culture. Even after the NAO and PWC reports the DWP’s press office is still talking of the Universal Credit project as a success.

A DWP spokesperson told the Guardian this week:

“The IT for universal credit is up and running well in the early rollout of the new benefit.”

And Iain Duncan Smith and his senior officials appear to be dismissing the NAO’s report as historic – which it is to some extent – but much of it is also forward-looking.

Duncan Smith, Devereux and Shiplee are all very positive about the future of the project. But would it be better if they were genuinely sceptical, as would be a private sector board that was confronting a big and challenging IT-enabled change project?

Politics and IT don’t go well together and never have. There is every chance Universal Credit will follow what has happened with the last huge benefit computerisation project, Operational Strategy in the 1980s. It eventually worked but in a much more fragmented way than expected. It was several years late, cost several times the original estimate, and did not make the savings predicted. The likely fate of Universal Credit IT?

Learn from failure: the key lesson that Universal Credit should take from agile [Institute for Government]

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, change management, DWP, GDS, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, Universal Credit

Tagged agile, Cabinet Office

Will Universal Credit ever work? – NAO report

Posted on 05/09/2013 | 8 comments

By Tony Collins

Today’s National Audit Office report Universal Credit: early progress is one of most excoriating the NAO has published on a government IT-enabled project or programme.

Iain Duncan Smith, secretary of state for work and pensions, has already responded to the NAO report by implying it is out of date and that the problems are in the past. This is a standard government response to well researched and highly critical NAO reports.

But the authors of the NAO report have pointed to some UC problems that are so fundamental that it may be difficult for any independent observer to credibly regard the project’s problems as historic. Says the NAO:

“The Department [DWP] is unable to continue with its ambitious plans for national roll-out until it has agreed the future service design and IT architecture for Universal Credit.”

So can the UC project ever be a success if, years after its start, there is no agreed design or IT architecture? Says the NAO

“The Department may also decide to scale back the complexity and ambition of its plans.”

Although the DWP has spent more than £300m on UC IT, mostly with the usual large IT suppliers, complex claims cannot yet be handled without manual work and calculations.

In February 2013, the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority reviewed Universal Credit and raised “serious concerns about the programme’s progress”, says the NAO report. “The review team was concerned that the pathfinder [pilot project] could not handle changes in circumstances and complex cases which had to be dealt with manually, and that this meant the pathfinder could not be rolled out to large volumes.”

The Independent says the DWP gave false assurances on the project’s progress. The Daily Mail says the scheme has got off to a “disastrous start”.

The NAO’s main findings:

Is £303m spent on IT value for money?

“At this early stage of the Universal Credit programme the Department has not achieved value for money. The Department has delayed rolling out Universal Credit to claimants, has had weak control of the programme, and has been unable to assess the value of the systems it spent over £300m to develop [up to the end of March 2013].

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

A projected IT overspend of £233m?

The NAO puts the expected cost of implementing Universal Credit to 2023 at £2.4bn. The spend to April 2013 is £425m, including £303m on the IT. The planned IT investment in the current spending review period from the May 2011 business case was £396m, but the December 2012 business case puts the planned IT investment in the current review period at £637m – and increase of £233m, or 60%. The DWP wants to make changes elsewhere in its budgets to accommodate the extra IT spend.

Ministers and DWP spokespeople have said repeatedly that the project is within budget.

Some of the IT spend breakdown

– Core software applications including a payment management component – £188m

– Interface with HMRC real time information – £10m

– Case management module – £6m

– Licences – £31m

– Supplier support – £26m

– Hardware, telephony and changes to old systems – £50m

– Departmental staff costs on the Business and IT Solution team – £29m.

– Staff contractors provided by suppliers to support departmental staff – £26m.

Main IT suppliers – spend to end of 2012/13

– Accenture. Software design, development and testing including: interview system; evidence capture, assessment and verification; and staff contractors – £125m

– IBM. Software design, development and testing including: real time earnings; process orchestration and payment management; and staff contractors – £75m

– HP. Hardware and legacy system software, and staff contractors – £49m

– BT. Telephony. It also supplied specialist advice on agile development methods – £16m

A further £9m was spent on live system support costs provided by HP; bringing total spending with suppliers to £312m, says the NAO.

Is the IT high quality or not?

The NAO report suggests there may be conflicting views between those in DWP who believe the IT is high quality and others who are not so sure.

“The Department believes that the majority of the built IT is high quality, but has not been fully developed and cannot support scaling up the programme as it stands. Some assessments have commented that systems are inflexible or over-elaborate.”

Will the IT support a national roll-out?

The NAO says it’s uncertain that the IT can support full national roll-out of Universal Credit without further work and investment.

“The Department does not yet know to what extent its new IT systems will support national roll-out. Universal Credit pathfinder systems have limited function and do not allow claimants to change details of their circumstances online as originally intended. The Department does not yet have an agreed plan for national roll-out and has been unclear about how far it will build on pathfinder systems or replace them.”

Will timetable and scope have to change further?

“The Department will have to scale back its original delivery ambition and is re-assessing what it must do to roll-out Universal Credit to claimants. The current programme team is developing new plans for Universal Credit. Our experience of major programmes supported by IT suggests that the Department will need to revise the programme’s timing and scope, particularly around online transactions and automation.”

Over-optimism?

“It is unlikely that Universal Credit will be as simple or cheap to administer as originally intended. Delays to roll-out will reduce the expected benefits of reform…”

Rushed?

“ The ambitious timetable created pressure on the Department to act quickly…”

Open to fraud?

“The Department’s current IT system lacks the ability to identify potentially fraudulent claims. Within the controlled pathfinder environment, the Department relies on multiple manual checks on claims and payments. Such checks will not be feasible or adequate once the system is running nationally.

“Without a system in place, the Department will be unable to make the savings it had planned, by reducing overpayments from fraud and error. In December 2012, it estimated these savings to be worth £1.2 billion per year in steady state.”

Separately the NAO states that there have been “unanticipated security problems from putting transactions online”. The DWP may now scale back all that was planned to be online.

In January 2013 the technical director of CESG and other reviewers said that the UC security solution was “over-complex” and could have conflicted with DWP plans to encourage people to claim online.

Delay in national roll-out

“The Department has delayed rolling out Universal Credit nationally. The Department will not introduce Universal Credit for all new out-of-work claims nationally from October 2013 as planned. Instead it will add a further six pathfinder sites from October 2013

“Pause UC immediately”

In early 2013 the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Review Group noted that the Department had not addressed issues with governance, management and programme design despite their having been raised in previous reports. The Authority “recommended that the Universal Credit programme be paused immediately”.

All post-2015 plans under review

The original plans were for UC roll-out to finish by late 2017. All statements by officials and Iain Duncan Smith have confirmed this 2017 deadline. In fact, says the NAO, all milestones beyond the start of 2015 are “currently under review” including:

• National roll-out of all new claims

• Closedown of tax credits new claims

• Roll-out of Pension Credit Plus on Universal Credit platform

• Completion of claimant migration

The NAO says the DWP has considered completing the roll-out beyond 2017.

Complete rethink needed

The Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority reviewed and reported on Universal Credit in February 2013. The Authority’s found that:

“Universal Credit Programme needs a complete rethink of the delivery approach together with streamlining potentially over-elaborate solutions.”

A separate review of the project by Capgemini in January 2013 and a “Reset IT stocktake” in April 2013 concluded that the UC “architecture is of limited extensibility”.

Pathfinders of limited value

“The pathfinder lacks a complete security solution. Claimants cannot make changes in circumstances online. This increases the need for manual work as changes must be made by telephone. The pathfinders also require more staff intervention than planned, because of reduced automation and links between systems.”

100 day planning period

“In May 2013, the Department appointed the current senior responsible owner [Howard Shiplee] to lead the Universal Credit programme. The team is now conducting a ‘100-day planning period’, which will end at the end of September 2013. The Department will then submit a new business case to HM Treasury, and ask for ministerial sign-off for delivery plans in late 2013.”

Secrecy – even internally?

“The reset took place between February and May 2013. The reset team included departmental, Cabinet Office and Government Digital Services staff. The reset team developed an extensive set of materials as part of a ‘blueprint’ covering design and implementation, and 99 detailed recommendations. The reset team shared the blueprint with the Department’s Executive Team who approved it at each stage of its development. The Department shared the blueprint with a small number of people but did not initially share it widely.”

A £34m write-off – so far

“The Department has acknowledged that it needs to write off some of the value of its Universal Credit IT assets. By the end of 2012-13, the Department had spent £303m on its IT systems and created assets which it valued at £196m – a difference of £107m. But the DWP has decided to write-off £34m – 17% – though it may increase the size of the write-off later.

“The Department is conducting further impairment reviews of the value of its Universal Credit IT assets before finalising its 2012-13 accounts.” The £34m write-off was based on a “self-assessment which it asked its suppliers to conduct”.

Number of claimants well below planned level

“In its October 2011 business case, the Department expected the Universal Credit caseload to reach 1.1 million by April 2014, but reduced this to 184,000 in the December 2012 business case.”

Planned savings down by nearly £500m

“The cost to government of implementing Universal Credit will be partly offset by administrative savings. In December 2012, the Department estimated that a three-month delay in transferring cases from existing benefits to Universal Credit would reduce savings by £240m in the current spending review period and by £247m after April 2015.”

Anyone know who decided on October 2013 for planned UC roll-out?

“The Department was unable to explain to us why it originally decided to aim for national roll-out from October 2013. It is not clear whether the Department gave decision-makers an evaluation of the relative feasibility, risks and costs of this target date.”

Agile … with a 1,000-strong team?

“In 2010, the Department was unfamiliar with the agile methodology and no government programme of this size had used it. The Department recognised that the agile approach would raise risks for an organisation that was unfamiliar with this approach. In particular, the Department

• was managing a programme which grew to over 1,000 people using an approach that is often used in small collaborative teams;

• had not defined how it would monitor progress or document decisions;

• needed to integrate Universal Credit with existing systems, which use a waterfall approach to managing changes; and

• was working within existing contract, governance and approval structures.

“To tackle concerns about programme management, the Department has repeatedly redefined its approach. The Department changed its approach to ‘Agile 2.0’ in January 2012. Agile 2.0 was an evolution of the former agile approach, designed to try to work better with existing waterfall approaches that the Department uses to make changes to old systems.

“After a review by suppliers raised concerns about the achievability of the October 2013 roll-out the Department then adopted a ‘phased approach’ and created separate lead director roles for the pathfinder (phase 1), October roll-out (phase 2) and subsequent migration (phase 3).

“The Cabinet Office does not consider that the Department has at any point prior to the reset appropriately adopted an agile approach to managing the Universal Credit programme.”

Anyone know how UC is meant to work?

“The source of many problems has been the absence of a detailed view of how Universal Credit is meant to work. The Department has struggled to set out how the detailed design of systems and processes fit together and relate to the objectives of Universal Credit.

“This is despite this issue having been raised repeatedly in 2012 by internal audit, the Major Projects Authority and a supplier-led review. This lack of clarity creates problems tracking progress, and increases the risk that systems will not be fit for purpose or that proposed solutions are more elaborate or expensive than they need to be…

“The Department was warned repeatedly about the lack of a detailed ‘blueprint’, ‘architecture’ or ‘target operating model’ for Universal Credit. Over the course of 2011 and the first half of 2012, the Department made some progress but did not address these concerns as expected.

“By mid-2012, this meant that the Department could not agree what security it needed to protect claimant transactions and was unclear about how Universal Credit would integrate with other programmes. These concerns culminated, in October 2012, in the Cabinet Office rejecting the Department’s proposed IT hardware and networks.

“ Given the tight timetable, unfamiliar programme management approach and lack of a detailed operating model, it was critical that the Department should have good progress information and effective controls. In practice the Department did not have any adequate measures of progress.”

High turnover among IT leaders?

“Including the reset and the current director general for Universal Credit, the programme has had five different senior responsible owners since mid-2012.

“The Department has also had high turnover in important roles other than the senior responsible owner. The Department has had five Universal Credit programme directors since 2010.”

The NAO said that the director of Universal Credit IT was “removed from the programme in late 2012 and the Department has replaced the role with several roles with IT responsibilities”. During and since the ‘reset’ the Government Digital Service has helped to redesign the systems and processes supporting transformation.

Good news culture and a fortress mentality

“The culture within the programme has also been a problem…Both the Major Projects Authority and a supplier-led review in mid-2012 identified problems with staff culture; including a ‘fortress mentality’ within the programme. The latter also reported there was a culture of ‘good news’ reporting that limited open discussion of risks and stifled challenge.”

“Inadequate control of suppliers”

The Department had to manage multiple suppliers. Three main suppliers – Accenture, IBM and HP – developed components for Universal Credit. The Department commissioned IBM to act as an Applications Development Integrator from January 2012, providing some oversight and overall management of IT development, but creating risks of supplier self-management.

The NAO found that there were inappropriate contractual mechanisms; charges were on the basis of time and materials, leaving the majority of risks with the Department. The NAO said there were “inadequate controls over what would be supplied, when and at what cost because deliverables were not always defined before contracts were signed.”

There was “over-reliance on performance information that was provided by suppliers without Department validation”. And weak contractual relationships with suppliers meant that the DWP “did not enforce all the key terms and conditions of its standard contract management framework, inhibiting its ability to hold suppliers to account”

Said the NAO:

“Various reviews have criticised how the Department has managed suppliers. In June 2012, CESG reported the lack of an agreed, clearly defined and documented scope with each supplier setting out what they should provide. This hampered the Department’s ability to hold suppliers to account and caused confusion about the interactions between systems developed by different ones. In February 2013, the Major Projects Authority reported there was no evidence of the Department actively managing its supplier contracts and recommended that the Department needed to urgently get a grip of its supplier management.”

Suppliers paid without proper checks

“The Department has exercised poor financial control over the Universal Credit programme. The Department commissioned an external review in early 2013 of financial management in Universal Credit. The review found several weaknesses including poor information about the basis for supplier invoices, payments being made without adequate checks and inadequate governance and oversight over who approved spending. The review team checked a sample of invoices against the timesheets of suppliers and found no evidence of inappropriate charging, although timesheet information is not complete and cannot be linked to specific activity…”

The NAO went on to emphasise that there was “insufficient review of contractor performance before making payments. “On average six project leads were given three days to check 1,500 individual timesheets, with payments only stopped if a challenge was raised.”

The NAO added that inadequate internal challenge of purchase decisions meant that ministers had “insufficient information to assess the value for money of contracts before approving them”.

50 people on the UC programme board

“The programme board acts as the programme’s main oversight and decision-making body… The programme board has been too large and inconsistent to act as an effective, accountable group. Over the course of 2012, the programme board had 50 different people attending as core members…

“The board did not have adequate performance information to challenge the programme’s progress. In particular, while the board had access to activity measures for IT system development, it could not track the actual value of this activity against spending.

“In the absence of such measures of progress, the board relied on external reviews to assess progress. Such external reviews were not sufficiently frequent for the board to use them as a substitute for timely, adequate management information.”

Programme board disbanded

“… during the reset [Feb-May 2013], [the DWP] suspended the programme board entirely.

Failure to act on recommendations

“From mid-2012, it became increasingly clear that the Department was failing to address recommendations from assurance reviews… the key areas of concern raised by the Major Projects Authority in February 2013 had appeared in previous reports.

“From mid-2012, the underlying concerns about how Universal Credit would work meant that the Department could not address recommendations from assurance reviews; it failed to fully implement two-thirds of the recommendations made by internal audit and the Major Projects Authority in 2012. Without adequate, timely management information, the Department relied on periodic external assurance reports to assess progress.”

Ceasing work for national roll-out

“By late 2012, the Department had largely stopped developing systems for national roll-out and concentrated its efforts on preparing short-term solutions for the pathfinder…”

Slippery Parliamentary answers

The NAO lists almost imperceptible changes in the language of Parliamentary answers on Universal Credit.

In 2011 the DWP said in a Parliamentary answer that “all new applications” for out-of-work financial help would be treated as a UC claim; and in November 2012 the DWP said in a Parliamentary reply that in October 2013 it would start to migrate claimants from the old system to the new. But by June 2013 the DWP’s line had changed. By then it was saying in a Parliamentary reply that Universal Credit will “progressively roll-out” from October 2013 with all those who are entitled to UC claiming the new benefit by 2017. In fact all new applications for out-of-work help are not being treated as a UC claim. The NAO says that new claimants in the pathfinder must be “single, without children, newly claiming a benefit, fit for work, not claiming disability benefits, not have caring responsibilities, not be homeless or in temporary accommodation, and have a valid bank account and National Insurance number”.

Will UC ever work?

“ …it is still entirely feasible that it [UC] goes on to achieve considerable benefits for society. But to do so the Department will need to learn from its early mistakes.

“As it revises its plans the Department must show it can: exercise effective control of the programme; develop sufficient in-house capability to commission and manage IT development; set clear and realistic expectations about the timescale and scope of Universal Credit; and, address wider issues about how it manages risks in major programmes.”

Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, says of the NAO report:

“The Department for Work and Pensions has made such a mess of setting up Universal Credit that the Major Projects Authority had to step in to rescue the programme.

“DWP seems to have embarked on this crucial project, expected to cost the taxpayer some £2.4bn, with little idea as to how it was actually going to work.

“Confusion and poor management at the highest levels have already resulted in delays and at least £34m wasted on developing IT. If the Department doesn’t get its act together, we could be on course for yet another catastrophic government IT failure.

“This damning indictment from the NAO gives me no confidence that we will see the £38 billion of predicted benefits between 2010-11 and 2022-23. Vulnerable benefit claimants need a secure system they can rely on.”

NAO report – Universal Credit: early progress

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Posted in Accenture, Agile, BT, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, excessive secrecy, Government digital Service, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, Oracle, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

Tagged agile, Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, government IT

Universal Credit – good for its IT suppliers?

Posted on 11/07/2013 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tagged agile, Cabinet Office, Efficiency and Reform Group, Francis Maude, public sector

Whitehall to lose its best troubleshooter

Posted on 05/07/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

David Pitchford, who is arguably the civil service’s most able troubleshooter, is to quit the civil service in September and return to his native Australia for undisclosed family reasons. The FT broke the story yesterday.

Pitchford is Executive Director at the understaffed Major Projects Authority. It aims to work in partnership with permanent secretaries and senior civil servants to improve the success rate of major departmental IT and other large projects.

In practice some senior civil servants in central departments resent the intrusion of the Cabinet Office. They do not like having to present their big schemes to the Major Projects Authority, particularly as it has David Cameron’s mandate to stop or re-scope failing projects.

Fighting intransigence?

One unanswered question about Pitchford’s quitting is: has his morale been beaten down by departmental intransigence and even ill-will? Has the system defeated Pitchford and the taxpayer – the same system that confronted other Cabinet Office reformers John Suffolk, Chris Chant and Andy Tait?

It is possible that Pitchford feels his work is done now that the Major Projects Authority has finally, and after some departmental resistance, produced its first annual report.

The report’s key feature is its “traffic light” status on the projects it is keeping an eye on. In a foreword to the report, Pitchford wrote:

“April 2013 marks two years of the Major Projects Authority… For the first time, the country’s biggest and most high-risk projects are scrutinised so problems are exposed before they spiral out of control. Over two-thirds of major projects are predicted to deliver their promises on time and on budget, more than double the historic success rate. However, the MPA has studied carefully what goes on in every department, and we have uncovered some weaknesses which we are continuing to address.

“The MPA was established following a landmark report by the National Audit Office in 2010, which recommended a wholesale shift in the administration of major projects. It works closely with individual departments’ project teams and Permanent Secretaries to monitor and improve the management of major projects…the MPA’s Government Major Projects Portfolio has improved the rate of successful project delivery from under 30% to over 70%.

“Our success has been achieved by focusing intensively on the three core elements of successful project management: improving leadership; improving the operating environment; and looking closely at the past lessons.”

Pitchford is a much-valued executive in part because he can see why projects are failing and is straight-talking. He joined the Cabinet Office in November 2009 and in 2010 told a conference what he had discovered so far about the reasons for the failure of UK government projects:

– Political pressure

– No business case

– No agreed budget

– 80% of projects launched before 1,2 & 3 have been resolved

– Sole solution approach (options not considered)

– Lack of Commercial capability – (contract / administration)

– No plan

– No timescale

– No defined benefits

Since then Pitchford has been a little more guarded now about what he says in public. Campaign4Change said in February 2013 that the longer he stays in the innately secretive civil service the more guarded he seems to become but he is still one the best assets the Cabinet Office has. His main advantage is his independence from government departments.

Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, said he would “much miss David’s sharp wit and impressive leadership”.

Is Pitchford’s departure a sign that the non-reformers in Whitehall departments are winning the battle against major change?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change management, cost reduction, G-Cloud, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector

Tagged Cabinet Office, Efficiency and Reform Group, Francis Maude, government IT

When Whitehall shuns statutory scrutiny

Posted on 25/06/2013 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

In some ways central departments are deeply accountable.

They provide volumes of statistics and reports to the centre of government (Cabinet Office and Treasury) – as far as their limited management information systems will let them – and senior officers will sometimes answer questions from MPs on Parliamentary committees. Their permanent secretaries will meet colleagues in other departments every week.

At the same time, on things that really matter, some central departments – and councils – can be infinitely unaccountable.

A report by the National Audit Office – which it says was researched and written unusually quickly, partly in response to parliamentary concern – gives a glimpse of how unaccountable central departments (and councils) can be.

When they don’t want to provide information they simply don’t – and nothing it seems can be done to force disclosure.

Power to ignore

With explicit and written approval from David Cameron the Cabinet Office has the power to mandate change in central departments. But senior officials can, if they wish, when faced with central requests for information, ignore, reject, deliberately misunderstand, confuse or minimise answers, or delay until the request no longer need be answered.

This ability of central departments to evade democratic and even statutory scrutiny surfaces in the NAO report Confidentiality clauses and special severance payments.

The report is into the gagging of public servants when they receive payments for ending their employments early. Rightly, the media’s coverage of the report focuses on the NAO’s concerns over gagging clauses that stop officials becoming whistleblowers. The FT said on Friday (21 June 2013)

“More than a thousand civil servants have signed gagging clauses that could stop them speaking out about problems, a system the [NAO] condemned as “unacceptable”.

What the national media apparently did not notice was that the NAO was unable to obtain all the information it had requested of departments.

“Despite the NAO’s statutory access rights, it received only 60 per cent of the compromise agreements requested from departments,” says the NAO.

The NAO has statutory rights of access to information held by departments. Indeed its Comptroller and Auditor General Amyas Morse certifies the accounts of all government departments and many other public sector bodies. The NAO says he has “statutory authority to examine and report to Parliament on whether departments and the bodies they fund have used their resources efficiently, effectively, and with economy”.

Avoiding NAO scrutiny

But some departments have not complied with the NAO’s requests, and one, the Department of Culture, Media & Sport, formally requested not to be involved in the NAO’s investigation.

Says the NAO report

“Unfortunately, some departments did not respond promptly to our requests, and were delayed by their legal teams’ questioning of our access rights.

The NAO adds

“The Department for Culture, Media & Sport requested not to be involved in this piece of work, a position which could not be resolved until after our fieldwork window had closed.

“We found it challenging to gain a complete picture of the use of confidentiality clauses as, by their nature, they are not openly discussed. Our work was also hampered by incomplete records, and access to data as outlined above.

“It took several attempts to identify the appropriate individuals within departments responsible for compromise agreements and the associated payments. We experienced delays in receiving data, and what departments provided was frequently incomplete or in a format that was difficult to collate and analyse.”

So what can the NAO do now it has been snubbed or, to put it in Whitehall-speak, has encountered departmental non-compliance with statutory access requests?

Little or nothing. The NAO has no power to punish. Through MPs on the Public Accounts Committee it can admonish. That is all.

Says the NAO:

“Given the innovative nature of this work, some initial difficulties were anticipated. We will continue to work with departments, the Treasury and Cabinet Office to explore ways in which we can obtain the evidence on a timelier basis. It is important that departments are able to respond more quickly to these investigations in the future.”

Councils too can evade democratic accountability. The NAO has no access rights to local authorities but councils are, in theory, subject to the Freedom of Information Act. In practice they can all but ignore the FOI legislation if they wish.

In March 2010, the Audit Commission published a report on severance payments to council chief executives. The study found that:

• agreed severance packages for 37 council chief executives totalled £9.5 million, 40 per cent of which were in pension benefits;

• three in every ten outgoing council chief executives received a pay-off;

• the average cost to councils of each severance package was almost double the annual basic salary, but in four cases was more than triple; and

• 79 per cent of mutually-agreed severance payments had a confidentiality clause.

But the NAO found that, in a recent survey of councils by a member of the public under the FoI Act, 52 councils refused to disclose information on their use of compromise agreements.

The good news

The NAO says: “Some organisations have chosen to be transparent about severance packages, such as NHS National Services Scotland, who agreed to the disclosure of a director’s remuneration package, despite a confidentiality agreement being in place, following consultation with legal advisers.”

Comment:

How is Francis Maude to reform central government, particularly IT, if officials in central departments can apparently do what they wish?

The NAO found cases of payments that were higher than contractual entitlement, where there was the apparent reward for failure, and no attempt to seek Treasury’s approval. Is all this lawful?

On top of this there are departmental officials who avoided the NAO’s statutory requests for information.

If they can circumvent the law they can probably resist any central demands for change. Resistance seems to be regarded within departments as honourable.

One irony is that bureaucrats in Russia probably have little choice but to respond to central demands – whereas officials in Whitehall departments don’t have to.

Radical reform to change Whitehall’s outdated and costly ways is unlikely to happen while senior officers in departments run the system and have the final say.

NAO report “Confidentiality clauses and special severance payments“

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cost reduction, Freedom of Information, governance, government, Government IT, local democracy, local government, managing change, oversight, Politics, private sector lessons for the public sector, public sector

Tagged Cabinet Office, Efficiency and Reform Group, Francis Maude, government IT

Did officials exaggerate death of the NPfIT?

Posted on 14/06/2013 | Leave a comment

By T0ny Collins

In 2011 the Department of Health made a major announcement that implied the NHS IT programme, the NPfIT, was dead when it wasn’t.

The DH’s press release 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”.

It said the Authority had concluded that the NPfIT was “not fit to provide the modern IT services that the NHS needs…” The National media took the press release to mean that the NPfIT was dead.

What the announcement didn’t mention was that at least £1.1bn had still to be spent, largely with CSC, provided that the company successfully completed all the work set out in its revised contracts, and that the projected end-of-life of some centrally-chosen NHS IT systems was 2024.

Some will say: who cares if the DH issues a press release that is misleading. Others may say that in a democracy one should be able to trust institutions of state. If the DH issues an official notice that has the effect of manipulating public perceptions – gives a false impression – can citizens trust the Department’s other official notices?

The press release in question did not say the NPfIT was closing but gave that impression. The announcement distanced the government and the Department of Health from an IT scheme, perhaps the world’s largest non-military IT programme, that was failing. This was the press release:

The government today announced an acceleration of the dismantling of the National Programme for IT.

“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…”

The press release was given added weight by those quoted in it. They included the Department of Health, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS.

But the truth about the press release emerged this week at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee.

Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, began a hearing on the NPfIT on Wednesday by asking Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief, a canny question.

Hodge: “There was a big announcement back in 2011 that you were closing the NPfIT programme.”

“Yes,” replied Sir David.

“That’s not true,” said Hodge. “It was a PR exercise to say you closed it.”

Nicholson: “It certainly was not a PR exercise.”

Hodge: “What changed?”

Nicholson: “The governance arrangements changed. So there are separate senior responsible officers for each of the individual programmes [within the NPfIT].”

Hodge: “With the greatest respect, changing governance arrangements is not closing the programme.. .I think the impression you were trying to give was that you were closing the programme. All you were doing was shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic. You were shifting the way you were running it but you were keeping all that expenditure running… The impression given to the public was that you were going to get out of some of these contracts.”

On the basis of the press release the Daily Mail published a front page lead story with this headline:

£12bn NHS computer system is scrapped… and it’s all YOUR money that Labour poured down the drain

On the day of the press release the Daily Telegraph reported that the £11.4bn NHS IT programme was “to be abandoned”. Similar reports appeared in the trade press.

But this week’s Public Accounts Committee heard that the NPfIT is very much alive:

– the estimated worth of CSC’s contracts under the NPfIT has risen from £3.1bn to £3.8bn at today’s prices.

– officials expected to pay CSC a further £1.1bn on top of the £1.1bn it has already received, and this payment may include up to £600m for Lorenzo deployments at only 22 trusts. Hodge said: “You are going to spend another half a billion with this rotten company providing a hopeless system” – to which the DH argues that CSC has delivered thousands of (non-Lorenzo) working systems to the NHS which trusts and community health services rely on.

– About £500m of the £1.1bn still set aside for CSC will go on GP systems supplied by CSC’s subcontractor TPP Systmone.

– Further spending on the NPfIT may come as a result of Fujitsu’s legal action against the DH after it left the NPfIT in 2008, which leaves the taxpayer with a potential pay-out of £700m or more. The outcome of a formal arbitration is expected in about six months. The closing arguments are due at the end of this month.

– £31.5m has so far been spent on the DH’s legal costs in the Fujitsu case, mostly with the .law firm DLA Piper.

– DH has agreed a compensation payment to CSC of £100m. In return CSC has released the Department of Health from a contractual commitment for 160 NHS trusts to take the Lorenzo system. The DH has made a further payment to CSC of £10m in recognition of changes to its software which had been requested by the NHS but not formally agreed with CSC.

Comment

It appears there has been no deliberate deception and no deliberate manipulation of public perceptions of the NPfIT. But the fact remains that the DH made a major announcement in 2011 which gave the impression the NPfIT was dead when this was not true.

When a BBC Radio 4 journalist called me this week and we spoke briefly about the NPfIT he said: “I thought it was dead”.

Perhaps the mindset of officials was that the NPfIT was dead because everyone except the suppliers wanted it to be. But because local service provider contracts had to stay in place – the suppliers being much better equipped than the DH to handle any disputes over early termination – large payments to CSC and BT had to continue.

It’s a little like the political row over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It’s unlikely Blair lied over the existence of WMD. He probably convinced himself they existed. In a similar act of self-delusion officials appear to have convinced themselves the NPfIT was dead although it wasn’t.

But if we cannot believe a major DH announcement one starts to ask whether any of the department’s major announcements can be believed.

Uncoloured information on the NPfIT has always been hard to come by. So credit is due to the Public Accounts Committee and particularly its MP Richard Bacon for finding out so much about the NPfIT. All credit to Margaret Hodge for picking up on Bacon’s concerns. Were it not for the committee, with indispensable support from the National Audit Office, the DH would have been a sieve allowing only bits of information it wanted to release to pass through.

The fall-out from the NPfIT will continue for years. We still don’t know, for example, what all the trusts with BT and CSC systems will do when the NPfIT contracts expire in the next three years. The hope is for transparency – and not of the sort characterised by the DH’s announcement in 2011 of the NPfIT’s dismantling.

This post also appears on ComputerworldUK

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, CSC, governance, health, health records, IT-related failures, legal disputes, Major Projects Authority, NHS, npfit, project management

Tagged Cabinet Office, CSC, Francis Maude, NHS, npfit

Francis Maude boasts of £10bn savings but …

Posted on 03/06/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

This morning Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude held a press conference with his senior officials to announce that civil servants have radically changed the way they work to save £10bn in 2012/13.

The savings are nearly £2bn higher than originally planned and, according to the Cabinet Office, have been “reviewed and verified” by independent auditors.

With a little journalistic licence Maude says: “…we are on the way to managing our finances like the best-run FTSE100 businesses.”

The breakdown of the £10bn savings:

Procurement £3.8bn

Centralisation of procurement for common goods and services £1.0bn

Centrally renegotiating large government contracts £0.8bn

Limiting expenditure on marketing and advertising, consultants and temporary agency staff £1.9bn

Transformation savings £1.1bn

IT spend controls and moving government services and transactions onto digital platforms £0.5bn

Optimising the government’s property portfolio £0.6bn

Project savings £1.7bn

Reviewing performance of major government projects £1.2bn

Taking waste out of the construction process £0.4bn

Workforce savings £3.4bn

Reducing the size of the Civil Service £2.2bn

Increasing contributions to public sector pensions £1.1bn

Comment

It’s good news and the figures don’t seem plucked out of thin air which sometimes happens when central government announces savings.

The big question is whether the savings are sustainable. Maude has inspired the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group to be motivated and hard-working. But bringing about long-term change in Whitehall – as opposed to restricting consultancy contracts and cutting annual costs of supplier contracts by reducing what’s delivered – is like peddling uphill. How long can you do it without losing motivation and energy? It’s not just parts of the civil service that are resistant to the savings agenda – it is also some IT suppliers, according to Government Computing.

It’s likely that only profound changes in central government operations and working practices will outlast the next general election. At the moment the civil service is like a rubber band that has been stretched a little. It wants to return to its standard shape, which the next government may allow it to do.

The National Audit Office said in its report in April 2012 on the Efficiency and Reform Group in 2011/12:

“Savings to date have differing degrees of sustainability.”

The NAO also said this:

“It is not fully clear how ERG intends to make the reforms necessary to secure enough savings over the rest of the spending review. ERG has yet to translate its ambition for saving £20 billion by 2014-15 into more detailed plans.

“ERG has made progress in developing strategies across its wide range of responsibilities, and is focusing on core activities likely to produce savings. However, until recently ERG’s focus has mainly been on the savings themselves, with less emphasis on delivery of the longer-term changes and improvement in efficiency necessary to make them sustainable.”

And this:

“Departments have still tended to lack a clear strategic vision of what they are to do, what they are not, and the most cost-effective way of delivering it. Much of departments’ 2014-15 savings are likely to come from further reductions in staff. Sustainability of these savings will depend on developing skills and working in new ways while maintaining staff motivation and engagement.”

But the NAO was generally positive about the ERG’s contribution to savings.

“ERG’s actions to date, particularly its spending controls, have helped departments deliver substantial spending reductions.”

We hope the Cabinet Office’s diligent efforts continue – sustainably.

Efficiency and Reform 2012/13 savings. Summary report.

Some suppliers still resistant to change? – Government Computing.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, Cloud, Cloud Computing, consultants, cost reduction, culture, G-Cloud, Government IT, Green IT, IT projects, Major Projects Authority, managing change, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, reducing cost strategically

Tagged Cabinet Office, Efficiency and Reform Group, Francis Maude, government IT, public sector, SME government contracts

Is Major Projects annual report truly ground-breaking?

Posted on 29/05/2013 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, describes as “nothing short of groundbreaking” a report of the Major Projects Authority which gives the RAG (Rred/Amber/Green) status of more than 100 major projects.

That the report came out late on Friday afternoon as most journalists were preparing to go home, some of them for the whole bank holiday weekend, suggests that the document was a negotiated compromise: it would be published but in such a way as to get minimal publicity.

Indeed the report is a series of compromises. It has the RAG status of projects but not the original text that puts the status into context.

Another compromise: senior civil servants in departments have persuaded Maude to publish the RAG decisions when they are at least six months old.

This enables departmental officials to argue their case in the “narrative” section of the MPA annual report that a red or amber/red decision is out-of-date and that there has been significant improvement since. This is exactly the DWP’s justification for the amber/red status on Universal Credit.

The DWP says in the MPA report: “This rating [amber/red] dates back to September 2012, more than seven months ago. Since then, significant progress has been made in the delivery of Universal Credit. The Pathfinder was successfully launched and we are on course both to expand the Pathfinder in July 2013 and start the progressive national roll-out of Universal Credit in October.”

That the Pathfinder was launched successfully might have nothing to do with Universal Credit’s amber/red status which could be because of uncertainties over how the IT will perform at scale, given the complexities and interdependencies. The MPA report says nothing about the uncertainties and risks of Universal Credit.

More compromises in the MPA annual report: the Cabinet Office appears to have allowed departments to hide their cost increases on projects such as HMRC’s Real-time Information [RTI] in the vague phrase “Total budgeted whole life costs (including non-government costs).”

The Cabinet Office has also allowed departments to write their own story to accompany the RAG status. So when HMRC writes its story on RTI it says that “costs have increased” but not by how much or why. We know from evidence that HMRC gave to the Public Accounts Committee that RTI costs have risen by “tens of millions of pounds”. There is nothing to indicate this in the MPA annual report.

Another compromise in the MPA annual report: there are no figures to compare the original forecast costs of a project with the projected costs now. There are only the 2012/13 figures compared with whole-life projected costs (including non-government projected spend).

And the MPA report is not comprehensive. It came out on the same day the BBC announced that it was scrapping its Digital Media Initiative which cost the public £98m. The MPA report does not mention the BBC.

The report is more helpful on the G-Cloud initiative, showing how cheap it is – about £500,000. But there is little information on the NHS National Programme for IT [NPfIT] or the Summary Care Record scheme.

Yet the MPA annual report is ground-breaking. Since Peter Gershon, the then head of the Office of Government Commerce, introduced Gateway reviews of risky IT projects about 12 years ago with RAG decisions, they have remained unpublished, with few exceptions. The Cabinet Office is now publishing the RAG status of major departmental projects for the first time. Maude says

“A tradition of Whitehall secrecy is being overturned. And while previous Governments buried problems under the carpet, we are striving to be more open. By their very nature these works are high risk and innovative.

“They often break new ground and dwarf anything the private sector does in both scale and complexity. They will not always run to plan. Public scrutiny, however uncomfortable, will bring about improvement. Ending the lamentable record of failure to deliver these projects is our priority.”

Comment

The MPA annual report is a breath of fresh air.

Nearly every sentence, nearly every figure, represents compromise. The report reveals that the Universal Credit project was last year given an amber/red status – but it doesn’t say why. Yet the report has the DWP’s defence of the amber/red decision. So the MPA report has the departmental defences of the RAG decisions, without the prosecution evidence. That’s a civil service parody of openness and accountability: Sir Humphrey is allowed to defend himself in public without the case against him being heard.

But it’s still useful to know that Universal Credit is at amber/red. It implies well into the project’s life that the uncertainties and risks are great. A major project at amber/red at this stage, a few months before go-live, is unlikely to turn green in the short term, if ever.

Congratulations

The Cabinet Office deserves congratulations for winning the fight for publication of the RAG status of each major project. Lord Browne, the government’s lead non-executive director and a member of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform group, has said that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being frittered away because of “worryingly poor” management of government projects.

“Nobody ever stops or intervenes in a poor project soon enough. The temptation is always to ignore or underreport warning signs,” he says.

The management of some large projects – usually not the smaller ones – is so questionable that departments ignore advice to have one senior responsible owner per major project, says the MPA.

The MPA annual report will not stop the disasters. Its information is so limited that it will not even enable the public – armchair auditors – to hold departments to account. Senior civil servants have seen to that.

But the report’s publication is an important development: and it provides evidence of the struggle within Whitehall against openness. Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, have had to fight to persuade departmental officials to allow the RAG status of projects to be published. The Guardian’s political editor Patrick Wintour says of the MPA annual report

“Publication led to fierce infighting in Whitehall as government departments disputed the listings and fought to prevent publication.”

Large-scale change

If Maude and Kerslake struggled to get this limited distance, and there is still so much left to reform, will large-scale change ever happen?

Maude and his officials have as comprehensive mandate for change from David Cameron as they could hope for. Yet still the Cabinet Office still seems to have little influence on departments. When it comes to the big decisions, Sir Humphrey and his senior officials hold onto real power. That’s largely because the departments are responsible to Parliament for their financial decisions – not the Cabinet Office.

Maude and his team have won an important battle in publishing the MPA annual report. But the war to bring about major change is still in its very early stages; and there’s a general election in 2015 that could halt Maude’s reform plans altogether.

The Major Projects Authority Annual Report.

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Posted in capacity building, change, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, HMRC, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, private sector lessons for the public sector, procurement, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

Tagged Cabinet Office, David Cameron, Efficiency and Reform Group, Francis Maude, G-Cloud, government IT, npfit, public sector

Report on status of big Gov’t projects to be published at last

Posted on 09/05/2013 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The Telegraph reports that the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority is about to publish its first annual report – and it will reveal the status of schemes that include Universal Credit, says the article.

The Cabinet Office said in 2011 that the MPA’s annual report would be published by the end of December that year. In 2012 Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, told the Public Accounts Committee’s Conservative MP Richard Bacon that the MPA’s annual report would be published in June 2012.

But senior departmental civil servants have objected repeatedly to the red-amber-green “traffic light” status of projects being published, which contradicts the wishes of Kerslake and Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister.

One reason for the delay in publishing the MPA annual report is that Maude and Kerslake have been weighing objections to the reporting of the red-amber-green status against the need for departmental cooperation to implement civil service reforms.

From the Telegraph article it appears that Maude has persuaded (or forced) departmental heads to accept the publication of the traffic light status on big and risky projects. The Major Projects Authority reviews IT and other projects costing more than £50m.

The Telegraph says the MPA annual report will reveal Government troubleshooters’ concerns about multi-billion pound projects like the Universal Credit.

The article says the MPA annual report will show that about a third of projects it has reviewed are late or over budget. Says the Telegraph: “Government sources said that the MPA will show that management of big projects has improved significantly since 2010, when two-thirds of programmes were in trouble.

“But the report, expected later this month, will confirm that Whitehall ‘still has a long way to go’ to improve its handling of major projects, a source said.”

The article adds that publication of the annual report “follows a lengthy internal struggle between ministers and civil servants about the disclosure of problems with big Government schemes”.

Some ministers, says the article, are privately concerned that civil servants are bad at managing big, expensive projects but repeatedly cover up their failings and refuse to tell ministers about problems. Disclosing “candid” assessments about big projects will improve management, ministers believe.

The Telegraph says that a “new publication scheme that will start later this month” will publicly rate each project at red, amber, or green.

Each central department will be told to publish details of its major projects every six months, including the red-amber-green ratings and the data behind them, says the article.

The Telegraph quotes as a coalition source as saying: “Releasing a candid report about Whitehall’s major projects is a big and brave step for Government…”

Management of big projects better but still generally poor?

Lord Browne, a lead non-executive in the Cabinet Office and the man appointed to recruit business leaders to Whitehall departmental boards, has criticised the management of major projects as “worryingly poor”.

He said that insufficient attention was given to identifying risks in the planning stage, and that there had been a “consistent failure” to appoint leaders with the right skills and experience.

Browne said the creation of the Major Projects Authority (MPA) in the Cabinet Office in 2011 had improved their delivery, but “nobody ever intervenes in a poor project soon enough” and that warning signs were often ignored or under-reported.

He called for an “ongoing and rigorous review process with real teeth” which would monitor measures of progress and call “time out” on failing projects, allowing them either to be fixed or stopped.

Browne said the government could learn from the private sector, where projects are scrutinised to a “very high standard” before work begins. In line with this, he suggested that the MPA should have a strengthened “stage-gate approval process” to ensure that projects achieve objectives.

He said that projects should not be allowed to begin until a team with the right skills – including a leader who had previously delivered a large, complex project – had been identified.

He also suggested that the MPA nominate leaders and veto unsuitable candidates. He said that expensive projects should “never be seen as a personal development opportunity”.

He advocated using pay, benefits and bonuses to give team members incentives to work on the project “until appropriate milestones are reached”. This, Browne said, had been key to the success of major projects delivered by the private sector.

Departments still sceptical of Maude’s reforms?

Meanwhile the FT has reported that Maude’s attempts to inject commercial acumen into Whitehall by putting leading business figures on departmental boards is failing to live up to its billing, with some departments rarely consulting their external non-executive directors.

The FT says that the Treasury department’s supervisory board met only once in the year to April 2012, according to a report by Insight Public Affairs, a consultancy. The energy department’s board met twice, compared to 15 meetings in the transport department, reflecting the inconsistent involvement of non-executive directors.

John Lehal, managing director of Insight Public Affairs, said the ad hoc manner in which departments held board meetings reflected the need for greater accountability – as underlined by the Treasury’s failure to engage its non-executives.

Comment

At long last the Major Projects Authority, under the straight-talking Australian David Pitchford, will publish its annual report; and it may contain more detail on major projects than has been published by any government.

As departments fear public embarrassment more than any other sanction, publication of the traffic light status of projects – with the underlying detail – should genuinely discourage the starting of ill-considered projects.

Although the MPA annual report is much delayed Maude has succeeded in getting agreement for it to be published. Provided it contains enough detail to allow the status of projects to be judged by armchair auditors, it should begin to make a real difference.

Telegraph article

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Posted in change management, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, project management, public sector, public services, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

Tagged Cabinet Office, Efficiency and Reform Group, Francis Maude, government IT

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