Tag Archives: Francis Maude

Has Fujitsu won £700m NHS legal dispute?

Posted on 24/07/2014 | 6 comments

By Tony Collins

The Telegraph reports unconfirmed rumours that Fujitsu has thrown a party at the Savoy to celebrate the successful end of its long-running dispute with the NHS over a failed £896m NPfIT contract.

Government officials are being coy about the settlement which implies that Fujitsu has indeed won its legal dispute with the Department of Health, at a potential cost to taxpayers of hundreds of millions of pounds.

Fujitsu sued the DH for £700m after it was ejected from its NPfIT contract to deliver the Cerner Millennium system to NHS trusts in the south of England.

At one point a former ambassador to Japan was said to have been involved in trying to broker an out-of-court settlement with Fujitsu at UK and global level.

But the final cost of the settlement is much higher than any figure agreed, for the Department of Health paid tens, possibly hundreds of millions of pounds, more than market prices for BT to take over from Fujitsu support for NHS trusts in the south of England. The DH paid BT £546m to take over from Fujitsu which triggered a minor Parliamentary inquiry.

A case that couldn’t go to court?

The FT reported in 2011 that Fujitsu and the Department of Health had been unable to resolve their dispute in arbitration and a court case was “almost inevitable”.

But the FT article did not take account of the fact that major government departments do not take large IT suppliers to an open courtroom. Though there have been many legal disputes between IT suppliers and Whitehall they have only once reached an open courtroom [HP versus National Air Traffic Services] – and the case collapsed hours before a senior civil servant was due to take the witness stand.

Nightmare for taxpayers

Now the Telegraph says:

“Unconfirmed reports circulating in the industry suggest that a long-running dispute over the Japan-based Fujitsu’s claim against the NHS for the cancellation of an £896 million contract has finally been settled – in favour of Fujitsu.”

It adds:

“Both Fujitsu and the Cabinet Office, which took over negotiations on the contract from the Department of Health, are refusing to comment. The case went to arbitration after the two sides failed to reach agreement on Fujitsu’s claim for £700 million compensation. Such a pay-out would be the biggest in the 60-year history of the NHS – and a nightmare for taxpayers.”

The government’s legal costs alone were £31.45m by the end of 2012 in the Fujitsu case.

Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, is likely to be aware that his officials will face Parliamentary criticisms for keeping quiet about the settlement. The Cabinet Office is supposed to be the home of open government.

Earlier this week the National Audit Office reported that Capgemini and Fujitsu are due to collect a combined profit of about £1.2bn from the “Aspire” outsourcing contract with HM Revenue and Customs.

Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the Public Accounts Committee is quoted in the Telegraph as saying the settlement with Fujitsu has implications across the public sector. “It should be plain to anyone that we are witnessing systemic failure in the government’s ability to contract.”

What went wrong?

The Department of Health and Fujitsu signed a deal in January 2004 in good faith, but before either side had a clear idea of how difficult it would be to install arguably over-specified systems in hospitals where staff had little time to meet the demands of new technology.

Both sides later tried to renegotiate the contract but talks failed.

In 2008 Fujitsu Services withdrew from the talks because the terms set down by the health service were unaffordable, a director disclosed to MPs.

Fujitsu’s withdrawal prompted the Department of Health to terminate the company’s contract under the NHS’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

Fujitsu’s direct losses on the contract at that time – which was in part for the supply and installation of the Cerner “Millennium” system – were understood to be about £340m.

At a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee into the NPfIT,  Peter Hutchinson, Fujitsu’s then group director for UK public services, said that his company had been willing to continue with its original NPfIT contract – even when talks over the contract “re-set” had failed.

“We withdrew from the re-set negotiations. We were still perfectly willing and able to deliver to the original contract,” he said.

Asked by committee MP Richard Bacon why Fujitsu had withdrawn Hutchinson said, “We had tried for a very long period of time to re-set the contract to match what everybody agreed was what the NHS really needed in terms of the contractual format.

“In the end the terms the NHS were willing to agree to we could not have afforded. Whilst we have been very committed to this programme and have put a lot of our time, energy and money behind it we have other stakeholders we have to worry about including our shareholders, our pension funds, our pensioners and the staff who work in the company. There was a limit beyond which we could not go.”

The termination of Fujitsu’s contract left the NHS with a “gaping hole,” said the then chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Edward Leigh.

Thank you to campaigner Dave Orr for drawing my attention to the Telegraph article.

Comment 

In an era on open government it is probably not right for officials and ministers at the Cabinet Office and the Department of Heath to be allowed to secretly plunge their hands into public coffers to pay Fujitsu for a massive failure that officialdom is too embarrassed to talk about.

Why did the DH in 2008 end Fujitsu’s contract rather than renegotiate its own unrealistic gold-plated contract specifications? Should those who ended the contract be held accountable today for the settlement?

The answer is nobody is accountable in part because the terms of the dispute aren’t known. Nobody knows each side’s arguments. Nobody even knows for certain who has won and who has lost. Possibly the government has paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to Fujitsu on the quiet, for no benefit to taxpayers.

Is this in the spirit of government of the people, by the people, for the people?

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Posted in BT, BT Health, e-health, excessive secrecy, Fujitsu, Government IT, health records, IT-related failures, legal disputes, NHS, npfit, supplier relationships

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Publish Universal Credit and other project reports, says ex-gov’t CIO

Posted on 21/07/2014 | 7 comments

By Tony Collins

John SuffolkJohn Suffolk, the government’s former chief information officer, says warnings that publishing Universal Credit reports will have a chilling effect are “poppycock”.

His comments were prompted by the Department for Work and Pensions’ appeals against a ruling by the first-tier information tribunal that 4 reports on the Universal Credit programme be published.

The DWP has failed in every legal move it has made to stop the reports being published but is continuing its attempts although costs for taxpayers are increasing.

The DWP and its external lawyers argue that publishing the 4 reports would have a chilling effect by inhibiting the candour and boldness of civil servants who contribute to such reports.

But Suffolk says the claims of a chilling effect are “poppycock”. Suffolk was responding to a Campaign4Change blog “DWP tries again to stop disclosure of Universal Credit reports“.  He says:

“As you know I am a great fan of publishing all of the project reports. I note all of the comments on the “chilling effect” but this is poppycock.

“There is no chilling effect and if there was it would be countered by the extra scrutiny change programmes would receive by increased transparency. We should publish everything on projects and programmes.

“Transparency is a good thing. Government does complex work and more eyes on the problem would be a help not a hindrance, accepting we all need to know ‘who is the cook and who is the food critic’.

Suffolk was government CIO for nearly 5 years between 2006 and 2011 where he helped to steer an annual IT budget of billions of pounds.  He is now Head of Cyber Security/SVP at Huawei Technologies

His comments in full:

“It is such a shame that we have reached this position. Part of the Conservative Party (not the coalition) election thrust was on openness, transparency etc.

“Indeed some work has been done on this such as publishing the finance data, a summary report on major projects, but we appear to have gone backwards on no longer publishing an annual report for ICT spend, no longer publishing benchmark data – a prime driver that can reduce costs. According to the NAO some of what is published in terms of progress, is a little, how can I phrase this suspect.

“The realism is the only time a government can introduce transparency is at the beginning of a political cycle, this should have been executed at the beginning of the coalition as it becomes almost impossible to become transparent at the beginning of a new election cycle.

“A few words about UC. Before I left Government we reviewed the outline of UC as part of Francis Maude’s project control. I have to say the Ministers were excellent.

“They fully understood the policy objectives, fully understood the likely benefits and costs, understood the challenges but rightly deferred to officials on execution – how do we get from A to B.

“The Officials were far less impressive… Since then the ICT Team and Executive at DWP have gone through substantial change, the Civil Service have gone through a period of “transition” or “turmoil”; suppliers have gone through similar experiences and here we are trying to undertake one of the largest changes to the benefits system.

“We should not be surprised if there are a few wrinkles, nor should we be surprised if things move around a bit (what doesn’t – big or small) but what we should be surprised at is that Cabinet Office doesn’t appear to be backing the programme.

“I read with some mild amusement that GDS had taken their toys home and withdrew troops from “supporting” the programme.

“Excuse me, but isn’t this a flagship Programme? Won’t this programme save billions of pounds? Won’t this programme begin to change the something-for-nothing culture to nothing-for- nothing culture (unless there are real health reasons etc)?

“So we should have robbed all of the most talented resources of less priority programmes to support this. We didn’t. We went and sulked in the corner because they wouldn’t accept our ideas – instead we go and play around with websites and mess with tactical online services rather than focussing on the things that matter.

“You could also see this manifested in the major projects report where they singled out UC in a special category. Boys boys your job is to work together not squabble like little children.

“Get the best resources on UC, accept it is complex and dates will move around, take steady small steps and prove the programme and then get your shoulders behind it to make the implementation a success.

“Without doubt the Government have made many substantial improvements but when it comes to getting big changed implemented there is a long way to go.”

Millions of pounds of secret DWP reports

Judge refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Government IT, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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DWP tries again to stop release of Universal Credit reports

Posted on 17/07/2014 | 18 comments

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions has requested another legal hearing in its attempt to stop four ageing reports on the Universal Credit programme being published.

The DWP’s formal application to the Upper Tribunal (below) shows that Whitehall officials and work and pensions  ministers, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud,  are prepared to sink more public money into fighting a judge’s ruling in March 2014 that the DWP publish the four reports

It appears the DWP does not want the reports published on a point of principle: the department does not publish any reports on any of its major IT-based change programmes.

Another reason officials and ministers have for keeping the reports confidential is that they would establish what officials knew of Universal Credit programme’s serious problems in 2012 when departmental press releases were saying the scheme was on time and within budget.

The reports could show, without ambiguity, that the DWP misled Parliament in 2012 and 2013 by saying the UC programme was progressing successfully when officials knew this was not the case.

So far the the DWP’s lawyers have lost every stage of their appeals to stop disclosure of the reports. One judge noted the apparent contradiction between what’s in the hidden reports and optimistic press releases issued by the department about the UC programme.

The reports in question date back to 2011 and 2012. They are:

–  A Project Assessment Review of Universal Credit by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. The Review gave a high-level strategic view of the state of UC, its problems, risks and how well or badly it was being managed.

–  A Risk Register of Universal Credit. It included a description of the risk, the possible impact should it occur, the probability of its occurring, a risk score, a traffic light [Red/Green Amber] status, a summary of the planned response if a risk materialises, and a summary of the risk mitigation.

– An Issues Register for Universal Credit. It contained a short list of problems, the dates when they were identified, the mitigating steps required and the dates for review and resolution.

– A High Level Milestone Schedule for Universal Credit. It is described in the tribunal’s ruling as a “graphic record of progress, measured in milestones, some completed, some missed and others targeted in the future”.

John Slater, who has 25 years experience in IT and programme and project management, requested three of the reports in 2012 under the FOI Act. Separately I requested the Project Assessment Review, also in 2012. The Information Commissioner ruled that the DWP release three of the four reports. He said the Risk Register could stay confidential.

The DWP appealed the ruling and the case came before the first-tier information tribunal earlier this year.  The DWP sent an external legal team to Leicester for the hearing – which the DWP lost.

The tribunal ruled that the DWP publish all four reports. Lawyers for the DWP had claimed that disclosure of the four reports would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to them – the so-called chilling effect.

The DWP’s lawyers sought the first-tier tribunal’s leave to appeal the ruling, describing it as “perverse”. The  lawyers said the tribunal had wholly misunderstood what was meant by a “chilling effect”, how it was manifested and how its existence could be proved.

They claimed that the first-tier tribunal’s misunderstanding of the chilling effect and its perverse decision were “errors of law”. For the first-tier tribunal’s finding to go to appeal to the “upper tribunal”, the DWP would have needed to prove “errors in law” in the findings of the first-tier tribunal.

The judge in that case, David Farrer QC, found that there were no errors in law in his ruling and he refused the DWP leave to appeal. The DWP then asked the upper tribunal to overrule Farrer’s decision – and the DWP lost again.

The judge in the upper tribunal refused permission for the DWP to appeal.

Rather than simply publish the reports – and avoid further legal costs – the DWP has now asked its lawyers to submit another request for an appeal. This time the DWP has asked for an “oral hearing” so that its lawyers can argue for permission to appeal to the upper tribunal in person, rather than on paper.

The upper tribunal has yet to decide on the DWP’s request for an oral hearing.

As long as the DWP sustains its series of appeals it does not have to publish the four reports, although legal costs from the public purse continue to rise.

The DWP’s latest letter to the upper tribunal:

8 July 2014

Dear Sirs

Department For Work And Pensions v ICO

Application to the Upper Tribunal for permission to appeal

We write further to your letter dated 25 June 2014 enclosing Upper Tribunal Judge Wikeley’s refusal of the Secretary of State’s application for permission to appeal and above three appeals.

We apply in accordance with rules 22(4) and (5) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 for the Department for Work and Pensions’ application for permission to appeal against the First-Tier Tribunal’s decision of 19 March 2014 (notified on 24 March 2014) in the above cases to be reconsidered at an oral hearing.

The Department for Work and Pensions contends that each of the three proposed grounds of appeal is arguable in law for the reasons set out in the grounds of appeal accompanying its application for permission to appeal, and applies for reconsideration before a judge at an oral hearing on that basis.

Yours faithfully …

Comment

The DWP is facing Parliamentary and NAO criticism over the poor state of several of its major programmes. So it is odd that its officials have the time, and can spare the public funds, to fight a long campaign to stop four old UC programme reports being published.

It shows that the DWP cares more about how it is perceived by the outside world than it cares for minimising the public money it spends on this FOI case.

It’s likely that publication of the four reports would slightly embarrass the department but that would soon be forgotten.  Once incurred the legal costs cannot be reclaimed.

The DWP’s claims of a “chilling effect” should the reports be disclosed are entirely understandable. No publicly funded body wants be scrutinised. Officials would rather keep all their internal affairs secret.  But that’s not the way it works in a democracy.

Upper Tribunal ruling Universal Credit appeal

My submission to FOI tribunal on universal credit

Judge [first-tier tribunal] refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports – April 2014

 

 

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Posted in DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Government digital Service, Government IT, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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HP’s tacit threat to government not to bid for contracts?

Posted on 03/07/2014 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

HP has written to the Treasury  questioning whether it is worthwhile competing for contracts if the Government is no longer interested in doing business with multinationals, says The Independent.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is encouraging departments to spend more with SMEs and be less reliant on a small number of major IT suppliers. He wants departments to avoid signing long-term contracts which lock-in ministers to one major supplier.

The Independent says:

“In a striking case of Goliath accusing David of bullying, the American giants Microsoft and Hewlett Packard have complained that they are being unfairly picked on by the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

“…the Government’s largest IT supplier Hewlett Packard has written to the Treasury to express its concern at plans by Mr Maude to award more Government contracts to smaller suppliers.

“At the same time Microsoft is fighting a rearguard action against the Cabinet Office to protect the million pounds it gets each year from Whitehall by selling popular Office programmes such as Word and Excel.

“Both companies are concerned that they are being singled out by ministers as unpopular and easy targets in their rhetoric about cutting public sector waste…

“Microsoft is attempting to prevent the Government from migrating its own computer systems from those that rely on the multinational to open-source documents that are free to use…

“Both companies look set to be disappointed – at least unless there is a change in Government. Mr Maude is understood to be looking to next year – when a significant number of big IT contracts are up for renewal – to push ahead with the new policy that could significantly denude the profits of IT multinationals.”

A Cabinet Office spokesman said it was unaware of HP’s letter to the Treasury and added: “We value the contribution companies of all sizes make to the UK economy, driving innovation, growth and jobs.”

A spokeswoman for HP told The Independent:  “HP is a proud and long-standing supplier of IT products and services to Her Majesty’s Government and provides vital public services to UK citizens.  We maintain an ongoing dialogue with government about our programme of work.”

A report by the Institute for Government Government Contracting:  Public data, private providers says that HP is the largest supplier to government with earnings in excess of 1.7bn in both 2012 and 2013.

In 2013, 86% (£1.49bn) of HP’s revenue from central government came from a DWP contract to supply infrastructure and systems for DWP and its job centres. “This contract is likely to be the largest single non-defence contract in central government,” says the Institute.

Capgemini, BT and Capita were the next largest suppliers to central government. Capgemini’s work is mainly from HMRC through the “Aspire” contract which is worth about £850m a year.

Departments are more open than they used to be but the Institute found big gaps in the information provided.

These gaps include:

– Contractual transparency –  contracts and contractual terms, including who will bear financial liabilities in the event of failures

– Information about how well contractors perform, allowing a vital assessment of value for money

– Supply chain transparency – information including the proportion of work subcontracted to others, terms of subcontracting (particularly levels of risk transfer), and details on the types of organisation (for example, voluntary and community sector organisations) in the supply chain.

Comment

What concerns Maude and his team is not the existence of major suppliers in central government contracts but the reliance by central departments on long-term contracts that lock-in ministers and lead to costly minor changes.

Nobody wants the major suppliers to stop bidding for contracts. What’s needed is for departments to have the in-house expertise to manage suppliers adroitly, and not to be adroitly managed by their suppliers which seems to be the position at present.

Thank you to openness campaigner Dave Orr for the information he sent me which helped with this article.

The IT giants who fear losing the government’s favour

Opening the door to data transparency

 

 

 

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, Capita, DWP, excessive secrecy, Government IT, HMRC, HP, Institute for Government, managing outsourced services, open source, open standards, openness and transparency, supplier relationships

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Upper Tribunal refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports

Posted on 26/06/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

An upper tribunal judge this week refused consent for the Department of Work and Pensions to appeal a ruling that four reports on the Universal Credit programme be published.

It’s the third successive legal ruling to have gone against the DWP as its lawyers try to stop the reports being released.

The DWP is likely to request further consideration of its appeal. History suggests it will devote the necessary legal time and funding to stop the reports being published.

In March 2014, the first-tier information tribunal rejected the DWP’s claim that disclosure of the four reports would inhibit the candour and boldness of civil servants who contributed to them – the so-called chilling effect.

The DWP sought the first-tier tribunal’s leave to appeal the ruling, describing it as “perverse”. External lawyers for the DWP said the tribunal had wholly misunderstood what is meant by a “chilling effect”, how it is manifested and how its existence can be proved.

They claimed the misunderstanding and the perverse decision were “errors of law”. For the first-tier tribunal’s finding to go to appeal to the “upper tribunal”, the DWP would have needed to prove “errors in law” in the findings of the first-tier tribunal.

The judge in that case, David Farrer QC, found that there were no errors in law in his ruling and he refused the DWP leave to appeal. The DWP then asked the upper tribunal to overrule Farrer’s decision – and now the DWP has lost again.

The upper tribunal’s judge Nicholas Wikeley says in his ruling this week:

“This [chilling effect] is a well known concept, and I can see no support for the argument that the [first-tier] Tribunal misunderstood its meaning.

“The Tribunal was surely saying that whilst it heard Ms Cox’s claim that disclosure would have a chilling effect, neither she nor the Department provided any persuasive evidence to that effect.” [Sarah Cox is a senior DWP executive on the Universal Credit programme.]

“Indeed, the Tribunal noted, as it was entitled to, that Ms Cox did not suggest that frank discussion had been inhibited in any way by a third party’s revelation of the ‘Starting Gate Review’.”

In conclusion the judge says:

“I therefore refuse permission [for the DWP] to appeal to the Upper Tribunal.”

The DWP’s lawyers asked the upper tribunal for a stay, or suspension, of the first-tier tribunal’s ruling that the four reports be published. This the judge granted temporarily.  The lawyers also asked for a private hearing, which the judge did not decide on.

DWP too secretive?

John Slater, who has 25 years experience working in IT and programme and project management, requested three of the four reports in question under the FOI Act in 2012. He asked for the UC issues register, high-level milestone schedule and risk register. Also in 2012 I requested a UC project assessment review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

The Information Commissioner ruled that the DWP should publish three of the reports but not the Risks Register.  In March 2014 the first-tier information tribunal ruled that all four reports should be published.

Excluding these four, the DWP has had 19 separate reports on the progress or otherwise of the Universal Credit programme and has not published any of them.

Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud, told the House of Lords, in a debate on Universal Credit this week:

“I hope we are as transparent as we can be.”

What happens now?

Slater says that as the DWP has been refused permission to appeal it will probably ask for an oral hearing before the upper tribunal. This would mean that the DWP would get a second chance to gets its point across directly in front of the Upper Tribunal rather than just on paper, as it has just tried, says Slater. There is no guarantee that the DWP would be granted an oral hearing.

Comment

If all was going well with the DWP’s largest projects its lawyers could argue, with some credibility, that the “safe space” civil servants need to produce reports on the progress or otherwise of major schemes is having a useful effect.

In fact the DWP has, with a small number of notable exceptions such as Pension Credit, presided over a series of major IT-based projects that have failed to meet expectations or business objectives, from  “Camelot” in the 1980s to “Operational Strategy” in the 1990s. Universal Credit is arguably the latest project disaster, to judge from the National Audit Office’s 2013 report on the scheme.

The”safe space” the DWP covets doesn’t  appear to work.  Perhaps it’s a lack of firm challenge, external scrutiny and transparency that are having a chilling effect on the department.

Upper Tribunal ruling Universal Credit appeal

My submission to FOI tribunal on universal credit

Judge [first-tier tribunal] refuses DWP leave to appeal ruling on Universal Credit reports – April 2014

 

 

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, Universal Credit

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How well is new passport IT coping with high demand?

Posted on 13/06/2014 | Leave a comment

By T0ny Collins

In 1989 when the Passport Agency introduced new systems avoidable chaos ensued. A decade later, in 1999, officials introduced a new passport system and avoidable chaos ensued. Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, apologised to the House of Commons.

Last year HM Passport Office introduced, after delays,  a replacement passport system, the Application Management System. It was built with the help of the Passport Office’s main IT supplier CSC under a 10-year £385m contract awarded in 2009.

The Passport Office said at the time the new system was designed “to be easier to use and enable cases to be examined more efficiently”. So how well is the system coping with unusually high demand, given that an objective was to help passport staff deal with applications more efficiently?

The answer is that we don’t know: open government has yet to reach HM Passport Office. It publishes no regular updates on how well it is performing, how many passports it is processing each month or how long it is taking on average to process them. It has published no information on the performance of the Application Management System or how much it has cost.

All we know is that the system was due to be rolled out in 2012 but concerns about how well it would perform after go-live led to the roll-out being delayed a year. In the past 18 months it has been fully rolled out.

Comment

Has there been a repeat of the IT problems that seriously delayed the processing of applications in 1989 and 1999? In both years, passport officials had inadequate contingency arrangements to cope with a surge in demand, according to National Audit Office reports.

Clearly the same thing has happened for a third time: there have been inadequate contingency arrangements to cope with an unexpectedly high surge in demand.

How is it the passport office can repeatedly build up excessive backlogs without telling anyone? One answer is that there is a structural secrecy about internal performance.

Despite attempts by Francis Maude and the Cabinet Office to make departments and agencies more open about their performance, the Passport Office is more secretive than ever.

It appears that even the Home Secretary Theresa May was kept in the dark about the latest backlogs.  She gave reassuring statistics to the House of Commons about passport applications being processed on time – and only days later conceded there were backlogs.

It’s a familiar story: administrative problems in a government agency are denied until the truth can be hidden no longer because of the number of constituents who are contacting their MPs.

David Cameron said this week that up to 30,000 passport applications may be delayed.

One man who contacted the BBC said he had applied for a passport 7 weeks before he was due to travel. The passport office website said he should get a new passport in 3 weeks. When it had not arrived after 6 weeks he called the passport office and was told he’d be called back within 48 hours. He wasn’t, so he called again and was told the same thing. In the end he lost his holiday.

In 1989 the IT-related disaster was avoidable because managers continued a roll-out even though tests at the Glasgow office had shown it was taking longer to process passport applications on computers than clerically. Backlogs built up and deteriorating relations with staff culminated in industrial action

In 1999 electronic scanning of passport applications and added security checks imposed by the new systems caused delays and lowered productivity.  Even so a national roll-out continued. Contingency plans were inadequate, said the National Audit Office.

Does the “new” Application Management System show down processing of applications? We don’t know. The Passport Office is keeping its 2014 statistics to itself.

Decades of observing failures in government administration have taught me that chaos always seems to take officialdom by surprise.

If departments and agencies had to account publicly for their performance on a monthly and not just an annual basis, the public, MPs, ministers and officials themselves, would know when chaos is looming. But openness won’t happen unless the culture of the Passport Office changes.

For the time being its preoccupation seems to be finding whoever published photos of masses of files of passport applications seemingly awaiting processing.

The taking and publication of the photos seems to be regarded as a greater crime than the backlogs themselves.  To discourage such leaks the Passport Office has sent a threatening letter to staff.

But innocuous leaks are an essential part of the democratic process. They help ministers find out what’s going on in their departments and agencies.  Has government administration really come to this?

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, CSC, excessive secrecy, Government IT, IT and the Business, IT projects, Passport Office

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Has DWP suppressed a “red” rating on Universal Credit project?

Posted on 28/05/2014 | 4 comments

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office’s Major Project Authority gave the Universal Credit programme a “red” rating which IDS and the Department for Work and Pensions campaigned successfully to turn into a neutral “reset” designation, says The Independent.

Universal Credit was “only given a reset rating after furious protests by Iain Duncan Smith and his department,” says the newspaper.

A “reset” rating is unprecedented. All major projects at red will need a reset. That is one of the reasons the Major Projects Authority gives a red rating: to signal to the senior responsible owner that the project needs resetting or cancelling. A “reset” designation is a non-assessment.

The MPA’s official definition of a red rating is:

“Red: Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues on project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”

The suppression of Universal Credit’s red rating may indicate that the project, at the top, is driven by politics – the public and Parliamentary perception of the project being all-important – rather than pragmatics.

It is a project management aphorism that serious problems cannot be tackled until their seriousness is admitted.

Normally the Major Projects Authority will give even newly reconfigured projects traffic light ratings, to indicate its view of the risks of the revised plans.

The Independent calls for the replacement of Iain Duncan Smith as political head of the project.

Comment

The National Audit Office warned last September of the DWP’s fortress mentality and “good news” culture.

The suppression of Universal Credit’s red rating on top of the DWP’s repeated refusals to publish the Universal Credit project assessment report, risk register, issues register and milestone schedule shows that the DWP still avoids telling it like it is. That will make successful delivery of Universal Credit’s complexities impossible.

Well-run IT projects are about problem-solving not problem-denying.

The Independent is right to say that IDS is not the person to be running Universal Credit. He has too much emotional equity to be an objective leader. He sees himself as having too much to lose. The programme needs to be run by an open-minded pragmatist.

In asking the Cabinet Office to agree with a “reset” rating for Universal Credit IDS is acting like a schoolboy who has done something wrong and asks the school not to tell his parents. That’s no way to run something as important as Universal Credit.

IDS and DWP accused of hiding bad news on Universal Credit – The Independent

 

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, openness and transparency, Universal Credit

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DWP – and Cabinet Office – hide new Universal Credit secrets

Posted on 23/05/2014 | 2 comments

By Tony Collins

In 2009 Francis Maude promised, if the Conservatives came to power,  that his party would publish “Gateway” reviews on the progress or otherwise or big IT-based projects.

He was surprised when I told him that civil servants wouldn’t allow it, that they wouldn’t want Parliament and the media knowing how badly their big programmes were being managed. Maude said he couldn’t see a problem in publishing the reports.

When Maude and the Conservatives won power, the Cabinet Office promised in its forward plans to publish Gateway reviews but it never happened.

The Cabinet Office told me its forward plans were “draft” (although they were not marked “draft”) and the commitment to publishing Gateway reviews was no longer included. It didn’t say why.

Still Maude worked privately within government to persuade departmental ministers to at least publish the “traffic light” status of major projects – red, amber or green. Eventually this happened – sort of.

Senior civil servants and their ministers agreed to publish the traffic light status of major projects only if the disclosures were at least six months old by the time they were published.

Maude agreed – and last year the Major Projects Authority published its delayed 2013 annual report. It revealed the out-of-date traffic light status of big projects.

Today the 2014 Major Projects Authority annual report is published. Alongside publication, departments are publishing the traffic light status of major projects – except the Universal Credit programme.

Where the DWP should be publishing the red, amber or green designation of the UC programme the spreadsheet says “reset”.

Therefore the DWP is avoiding not only the publication of Universal Credit reports as part of a 2-year FOI legal battle, it has stopped publishing the traffic light status of the Universal Credit programme.

Secrecy over the state of the UC programme is deepening, which could be said to make a mockery of the Cabinet Office’s attempts to bring about open government.

It seems that the DWP is happy for MPs, journalists and the public to speculate on the state of the Universal Credit programme. But it is determined to deny its critics authoritative information on the state of the programme.

Universal Credit is looking to me rather like a programme disaster of the type seen during Labour’s administration. And the detail is being kept hidden – as it was under Labour.

The DWP argues that UC reports cannot be published because of the “chilling effect” on civil servants who contribute to the reports. In other words they will not be candid in their assessments if they know their comments will be published.

What’s remarkable about this claim is the assumption that the status quo works. The DWP assumes that publication of the UC reports – even if there is a demonstrable chilling effect – will have a bad effect on the UC programme. But how could things be worse than they are? The National Audit Office report “Universal Credit – early progress” showed that the programme was being poorly managed.

The absence of a chilling effect has not served the UC programme well. Will the non-publication of a traffic light status for UC serve the programme well?

It may be that more rigorous Parliamentary scrutiny – by well informed MPs – is essential for the UC programme’s welfare.

But for that to happen IDS and the DWP’s ministers and senior civil servants will need to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the door marked “open government”. Will it ever happen? I doubt it.

PS: It appears that the Cabinet Office and its Major Projects Authority have agreed with departments that the MPA’s Annual Report will be published today – a Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend . Is this to reduce the chances it will be noticed by the trade press and national media?  

Update:

Shortly after publishing the blog post above a DWP press officer gave me the following statement:

“Universal Credit is on track. The reset is not new but refers to the shift in the delivery plan and change in management back in early 2013.

“The reality is that Universal Credit is already making work pay as we roll it out in a careful and controlled way.

“It’s already operating in 10 areas and will start expanding to the rest of the North West in June. Jobseekers in other areas are already benefiting from some of its positive impacts through help from a work coach, more digital facilities in jobcentres, and a written agreement setting out what they will do to find work.”

The DWP says the “reset” rating reflects the fact that the Secretary of State decided to reset the programme in 2013, with a clear plan developed since then to deliver the programme.

Now this reset has taken place, future Major Projects Authority reports will give a traffic light status, says the DWP.

 

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Posted in Campaign4Change, DWP, excessive secrecy, FOI, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, Universal Credit

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G4S is off the naughty step

Posted on 11/04/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The BBC says that G4S is again being considered for government business after being barred from bidding for new contracts in a row about overcharging.

In 2012 the Cabinet Office issued a notice to all departments, agencies and other public organisations saying that they should take into account a bidder’s past performance when considering a new contract.

The notice said that officials should satisfy themselves:

– that the principal contracts of those who would provide the goods and/or services have been satisfactorily performed in accordance with their terms

– where there is evidence that this has not occurred in any case, that the reasons for any such failure will not recur if that bidder were to be awarded the relevant contract.

If the Departmental Body remains unsatisfied that the principal contracts of those who would provide the goods and/or services have been satisfactorily performed, it should “exclude that bidder on the grounds that it has failed to meet the minimum standards of reliability set”, said the notice.

It appears that G4S was excluded from bidding on these grounds.

But the company agreed to repay £109m after an audit found it charged too much for providing electronic prisoner tags. The Serious Fraud Office is examining G4S and Serco over the contracts.

The firm has not bid for any government work since the Ministry of Justice started an investigation a year ago into its supply of electronic monitoring tags for prisoners in England and Wales since 2005.

After an audit by accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, it emerged that G4S – which insisted it had asked for the review itself – and Serco had overcharged the government by “tens of millions of pounds”.

Now the Cabinet Office has nothing but good to say about G4S. The CO’s statement says that the payments made by G4S to reimburse the taxpayer are a “positive step”.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude says:

“Following the material concerns that emerged last year, relating to overcharging on Ministry of Justice electronic monitoring contracts, G4S has engaged constructively with the government…

“Throughout, the government has engaged closely with G4S to understand their plans for corporate renewal. These discussions have been constructive; and following scrutiny by officials, review by the Oversight Group and reports from our independent advisors (Grant Thornton), the government has now accepted that the corporate renewal plan represents the right direction of travel to meet our expectations as a customer.

“This does not affect any consideration by the Serious Fraud Office, which acts independently of government, in relation to the material concerns previously identified. However, we are reassured that G4S is committed to act swiftly should any new information emerge from ongoing investigations.

“The changes G4S has already made and its commitment to go further over coming months are positive steps that the government welcomes. However, corporate renewal is an ongoing process and the government places a strong emphasis on their full and timely implementation of the agreed corporate renewal plan.

“The Crown Representative together with Grant Thornton will continue to monitor progress as their plan is implemented, reporting to government on a regular basis. I hope this will enable our confidence to grow.”

Comment:

A company has to do something very serious to be excluded from bidding – and it may be thought that G4S has come off the naughty step too quickly. On the other hand the notice on barring poor suppliers from bidding has a requirement that bidders provide a list of their main customers in the previous three years.  Certificates of satisfaction should be obtained from the customers. If necessary suppliers should obtain the certificates.

This is a useful incentive to suppliers to keep their customers happy.  But will departments implement what would be, in essence, a blacklist?

Thank you to openness campaigner Dave Orr for alerting me to G4S developments.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, EU procurement, Government IT, managing outsourced services, outsourcing, supplier relationships

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Another DWP leader quits – is Universal Credit IT really working?

Posted on 12/03/2014 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

As the head of the Universal Credit programme, Howard Shiplee, returns to work after being off sick with bronchitis, news emerges that the DWP is to lose its IT head Andy Nelson whose responsibilities include Universal Credit.

The highly regarded Nelson is to leave this summer after little more than a year as the DWP’s CIO.

The DWP’s press office – which for more than a year had a brief to tell journalists that Universal Credit was on time and to budget – is saying that Nelson’s brief was the whole of the DWP’s IT. The implication is that Nelson had little to do with Universal Credit.

But Nelson’s brief specifically included Universal Credit. At the weekend IDS told the BBC’s Sunday Politics that the IT for Universal Credit is working. If that were so, wouldn’t Nelson want to be associated with such a high-profile success?

The FT, in an article in February on Shiplee’s sick leave, pointed out that Terry Moran, the civil servant in charge of universal credit at its inception, retired from the department last year after an extended period of sick leave.

Hilary Reynolds, a department civil servant who was appointed programme director in November 2012, moved to another role four months later. She in turn had taken over from Malcolm Whitehouse, who had stepped down from the programme around the same time as Moran.

Departures of top DWP people may be one of the few outward signs of the true state of UC IT until the next government reviews the programme and perhaps announces the results.

Open?

On the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme on 9 March 2014 IDS suggested he is being entirely open about the Universal Credit programme – he invited the media and come and see where it is being rolled out. But the DWP keeps hidden its internal reports on the actual state of the programme.  The Information Tribunal is currently weighing up whether the DWP should be ordered to publish one of its internal reports on the Universal Credit project.

IDS on BBC’s Sunday Politics

Below is a partial transcript of IDS’s interview with presenter Andrew Neil on the Universal Credit project. IDS refers incorrectly to write-offs of £28bn on IT programmes by the last government,  and he gives some seemingly contradictory answers.  If the government needs a spokesman to argue that day is night and night is day, IDS is probably the man.

Andrew Neil (presenter) Why has so much been written off on UC although it has barely been introduced?

IDS: “It’s a £2bn project and in the private sector IT programmes write off 30%-40% regularly because that’s the nature. The point I want to make here is that UC is already rolling out. The IT is working. We are improving as we go along. You keep your eye on the bits that don’t work and you make sure they don’t create a problem for the programme.

“The £40m that was written off was to do with security IT. I took the decision over a year and half ago. That is the standard write down – the amortisation of costs over a period. The existing legacy systems were written down in cost terms years ago in the accounts but they continue to work right now.

“We are doing pathfinders and learning a lot about it but I am not going this again like the last government did which is big bang launches and then you have problems like they had with the health IT and it crashes. You do it phase by phase, you learn what you have to do and you make the changes, then you continue to get the rest of it out.

“The key point is that it is rolling out and I invite anybody from the media etc to come and look at where it is being rolled out …”

Neil: You say it [Universal Credit] is being rolled out but nobody notices. You were predicting that one million people would be on universal credit by April and now it’s March and there are only 3,200 are on it.

IDS: “I am not bandying figures around but it is 6,000 and rising. I changed the way we were rolling out over a year ago. Under the advice I brought in from outside – he said: you are better off Pathfinding this out, making sure you learn the lessons, roll it out slower and you gain momentum later on.

“On the timetables for the roll-out we are pretty clear. It is going to rollout in the timescales originally set [completion by October 2017] but the scale of that rollout … so what we are going to do is roll it out in the North West,  recognise how it works properly, and then you roll it out region by region.

“There are lot of variations and variables in this process but if you do it that way you won’t end up with the kind of debacle the last government had in the health service and many others where they wrote off something in the order of £28 billion pounds of IT programmes. We won’t be doing that. There is £38bn of net benefits so it is worth getting it right.”

Neil: When will UC be universal – when will it cover the whole country?

IDS: “By 2016 everybody who is claiming a benefit will be claiming universal credit.

Neil: But not everybody will be getting it by then.

IDS: “Because there are some who are on sickness benefits and they will take longer to bring on because it is a little more problematic, and a bit more difficult because many of them have no work expectations. For those who are on tax credits and job seekers allowance they will be making claims on universal credit and many are already doing that now. There are over already 200,000 people around the country who are on parts of universal credit now.”

Neil: When will everybody be on UC?

IDS: “We said they would be on UC by 2018.”

Are you on track for that?

“Yes we are. 2016 is when everybody claiming this benefit will be on. Then you have to bring on those who have been on a long time on other benefits. UC is a big and important reform. It is not an IT reform. IT is only the automation. The important point is that it will be a massive cultural change.   The change is dramatic. You can get a jobseeker to take a small part-time job immediately while they are looking for work. That improves their likelihood of getting longer work and it means flexibility for business.”

Comment

The DWP says it needs a “safe space” to discuss the progress of its projects without the glare of publicity. That’s one reason it refuses to publish any of the reviews it has commissioned on UC. But the hiding of these reports, which have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, means that IDS can go on TV and say almost whatever he likes about progress on the Universal Credit project, without fear of authoritative contradiction.

Why does the Cabinet Office allow the DWP and other departments to keep secret their internal reports on the progress or otherwise of their IT-based projects and programmes? Probably because the Cabinet Office’s minister Francis Maude doesn’t want to be too intrusive.

So we’ll be left guessing on the state of big IT-enabled programmes until the scheme’s defects are too great to be hidden or the NAO publishes a report. Will the former that be the fate of Universal Credit IT?

Andy Nelson quits as DWP CIO

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Posted in Accenture, Campaign4Change, Capgemini, change management, DWP, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Government IT, HP, IBM, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, operational issues, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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