Tag Archives: public sector

Outsourcing costs in Cornwall escalate – and no deal signed yet

Posted on 16/10/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

The estimated procurement costs of a mega-outsourcing project in Cornwall have risen sharply, not necessarily under the full control of the county council’s cabinet, and before any deal with BT or CSC is signed.

Meanwhile councillors are due to be told, in confidential briefings, that BT and CSC may claim back their costs so far, and are prepared to legally enforce that claim,  if no outsourcing deal is signed.

Such a legal claim, of potential suppliers suing a potential client, would be highly unusual perhaps unprecedented. 

Is Cornwall’s  cabinet using FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt – to make councillors fearful of not  agreeing a deal with CSC or BT at a full council vote next week?

Papers published by Cornwall County Council show that a mega-outsourcing deal proposed by the authority’s ruling cabinet will be worth between £210m and £800m.

The full  council will vote on whether to proceed with a contract with BT or CSC on 23 October.

Before that vote the cabinet is expected to give confidential briefings to individual councillors. The briefings will focus on the promised benefits of signing a deal,  and the disadvantages of not going ahead.

The cabinet may tell councillors approximately how much money BT and CSC will claim, and if necessary take legal action to recover, if a deal is not signed, according to an interview the council leader Alec Robertson gave to thisiscornwall.co.uk

“The two bidding companies have spent a lot of money over the past couple of years and they will have a legal claim against the council for changing direction,” Robertson is quoted as saying.

“Councillors need to know the consequences. There is a lot of commercial confidentiality, but we wouldn’t be talking about small amounts of money.”

The council’s own budget for the outsourcing project so far has escalated. An independent panel set up as a “critical friend” to scrutinise the council’s plans for outsourcing has learned that the costs to Cornwall’s taxpayers of planning for the scheme were £375,000 in July 2011.

In March this year the “Single Issue Panel” members were told that the costs for the project would need to be increased from £650,000 to £800,000.

“The current estimate of the cost of the procurement process at the time of writing this report is £1.8m,” says the panel in its July 2012 report.

The £1.8m will be met from existing budget, says the cabinet in council documents.

On top of this, potential NHS partners in the deal have their legal costs.

The cabinet says in its written reply to the panel that the increase in costs is due in part to a “significant  increase in external support drawn in to support the procurement”, including specialist legal support and costs for consultancy KPMG, which has advised on the finance and client side support.

There has also been an “extension of scope” due to the proposed inclusion of telehealth/telecare. In addition there have been “project delays”.

Comment:

With the outsourcing-related costs to Cornwall’s taxpayers escalating before any deal with CSC or BT is signed, what will happen after the council is contractually committed to a long-term deal with one of the companies?

One reason there is no clear answer to this question is that so much of the council’s plans are based on assumptions that BT or CSC will commit contractually to providing up to 500 new jobs, saving money and achieving an IT-led transformation of services (while making a profit from the deal and recovering bid costs).

Cornwall’s cabinet seems confident that BT or CSC will enshrine all its promises in a contract free of caveats and ambiguities, and that the sort of legal dispute that has broken out in Somerset over the IBM/Somerset County Council joint venture Southwest One is unlikely to happen in Cornwall.

But isn’t Cornwall repeating Somerset’s mistake of not seeing that, behind the promises, assumptions, hopes and so-called contractual commitments,  the reality of withheld payments for poor service and the subsequent threat of legal action by the supplier is always there.

If Cornwall’s cabinet is already concerned about possible legal action from the bidders to recover their costs,  will the council be more confident about avoiding a legal action once the chosen suppliers’ lawyers have agreed a long and very carefully-worded outsourcing contract – a contract that may be different from the council’s proposed draft contract?

The Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority, under the enlightened David Pitchford, has a guiding principle that sets the coalition apart from previous administrations when it comes to avoiding disasters. That principle is to stop a deeply-flawed project cheaply before much more is spent and at risk of being wasted.  Ian Watmore, when permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, put it well: “Fail early, fail cheaply.”

Will council leader be asked to stand down?

Cornwall outsourcing/partnership debate.

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Posted in BT, Campaign4Change, CSC, IT-related failures, KPMG, legal disputes, local government, Major Projects Authority, managing outsourced services, procurement, project management, public sector

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IBM in dispute with its joint venture partners on £585m contract

Posted on 31/08/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

IBM says it is currently in dispute with the joint venture partners on a number of contractual matters relating to South West One, a joint venture between IBM and three public authorities. IBM owns the joint venture company.

South West One’s annual report says that a mediation was held on 4 and 5 July 2012 between IBM and Somerset County Council, which is the main public authority partner, on a confidential basis.

“No settlement has been reached and accordingly the board [of South West One] will be reviewing which of the remaining options in the contractual procedure should now be pursued,” says SW1’s annual report.

South West One’s report doesn’t give any detail on the “contractual matters” in dispute.

Possible matters under discussion might have included a withholding of money (the councils are expected to pay IBM about £585m over 10 years, from 2007),  contention over KPIs (IBM did not meet all of its key performance indicators and indeed met fewer of Somerset’s KPIs in 2011 than in 2010), changes to the contract which is being re-negotiated, a lack of remedial action over accounting problems in Somerset’s finance department following a major SAP implementation , a shortfall in expected savings, and the council’s extra costs of working around SAP-related problems .

It is known that a contract renegotiation has been underway for some time.

The contract was subjected to review after the Conservatives took control of Somerset County Council from the Liberal Democrats in May 2009.

The review in June 2010 found that some aspects of the contract had been successful but “figures provided do, however, tend to indicate that the anticipated procurement savings are currently falling short of projections”.

On service delivery the review said there had been “major and minor system problems and difficulties in implementation have been experienced which have often involved Somerset County Council staff in additional time and effort in working around these issues”.

It said that a “significant area of difficulty has been in relation to financial and processing components of SAP which have also had a serious effect on others outside Somerset County Council.

“As a result, there appears to have been substantial but unquantified additional direct and indirect costs incurred by the County Council and others in resolving the various difficulties encountered.

“Southwest One has also provided intensive additional resources at its own expense, notably in addressing the issues that arose in relation to the SAP phase one roll out where lessons have clearly been learned and applied to the more successful phase two implementation. More work is, however, still required as a priority in some key areas where concerns remain around the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery and financial systems.”

South West One is dependent on the financial support of IBM to continue trading, says  company’s annual report. It adds that the “difficult political and economic environments in which the company has been operating have not shown any signs of easing”. Somerset has taken back from South West One finance, an HR advisory service, design and print.

“The difficult environment for business, both public and private, will continue to place strains upon opportunities for South West One,” said the annual report.

“There will be specific challenges in the forthcoming year due to the implementation of Universal Credit, the requirements of the Winsor report and changes in regard to the move from Police Authorities to Police Crime Commissioners.”

South West One made a loss in 2011 of £6.8m (a loss of £22.7m in 2010) and has accumulated net liabilities of £43.2m. The company can continue trading, in part because it has the support of IBM UK’s parent:  International Business Machines Corporation based at Armonk New York.

IBM owns 75% of the shares in South West One. Somerset owns 11.75%, Avon and Somerset Police Authority 8.25%, and Taunton Deane Borough Council 5%.

This article owes much to Dave Orr who has campaigned tenaciously for the facts of the South West One deal to be made known.  

Comment

The unsettled dispute suggests that the “partnership” aspect of the contract between IBM and the three public authorities – Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Police Authority –  is at an end. A partnership normally implies a harmonious relationship between the parties.

Is it any surprise that things have come to this?

The South West One contract was signed in 2007, in the early hours, at a weekend, amid great haste and secrecy.  The deal was driven by a senior official at Somerset who wanted to take the council “beyond excellence”. But the joint venture had little support from many of the council staff who were seconded to South West One. Most councillors took little interest in the setting up of South West One.

IBM has found to its cost that signing a major contract with just an inner circle of enthusiasts is not enough to make such a deal work. Though some have changed many of Somerset’s councillors remain. It could be said that they deserve the deal they have got, given that so few of them took any interest in the negotiations in 2007.

Besides, it is unlikely that any joint venture which doesn’t have the support of most staff will work, which makes mutuals a potentially better shared-services option.

IBM struggles with SAP two years on – a shared services warning?

IBM-led model partnership based on SAP makes loss

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, cost reduction, culture, IBM, IT-related failures, legal disputes, local government, managing outsourced services, mutuals, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, Politics, procurement, public-private partnerships, SAP, shared services, Universal Credit

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More agile-thinkers like Roo Reynolds please

Posted on 15/08/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

There’s a useful “keep-it-simple” article on agile software development principles by Roo Reynolds who a product manager at the Government Digital Service.

Reynolds quotes Marissa Mayer, former Google product manager, now Yahoo CEO, who said that there are two types of developer: those who seek perfection and those who seek something working today that they can improve on tomorrow.

“You probably want to work with the second sort of developer as much as possible,” says Reynolds. He quotes Voltaire as saying ‘the best is the enemy of the good’.  From Reynolds’ article:

“We start with a Minimum Viable Product, asking ourselves, what’s the simplest thing that could possibly work? We aim to have a working product, albeit a limited one, within a week or two.

“Having something you can point at and get feedback on as soon as possible is definitely better than attempting to polish something to perfection without anyone being able to tell you whether what you’re making is actually what they need.”

He warns against using made-up data, such as Lorem Ipsum text, because:

– it causes existing assumptions to be reinforced rather than challenged

– it lazily misses an opportunity to iron out any difficulties in getting hold of the real data

He concludes that “nothing beats feedback from real users”.

“Testing products with real users is vital. We always start with user needs (generally captured as user stories) and in meeting those needs I’ve learned not to get too comfortable with any implementation until we’ve tried it with a range of real people. Best of all, it’s ok to be wrong. The best way of getting closer to being right is to test real ideas with real people.”

Comment

If these principles had been applied to the NPfIT it might never have been started.  The NPfIT launched with the principle: what’s the most complicated thing that could possibly work?

Too often assumptions were made on the basis of unrepresentative data such as patient records that were up-to-date, accurate and not duplicated. The NPfIT was tested on real users – but then the bad news was all but ignored.

If Reynolds had been advising on the NPfIT, and Tony Blair hadn’t been so gung-ho when he chaired a discussion on NHS IT at a meeting in Downing Street on 18 February 2002, perhaps billions would not have been wasted on the programme.

More like Roo Reynolds in government please.

@rooreynolds

Reynolds’ article, Government Digital Service.

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Posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change management, cost reduction, e-health, Government IT, health records, IT-related failures, npfit, private sector lessons for the public sector, reducing cost strategically

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How CIOs and IT suppliers view GovIT change

Posted on 25/06/2012 | 3 comments

By Tony Collins

CIOs and IT suppliers give their views on Government ICT in an authoritative report published today by the Institute for Government

Inside the wrapper of generally positive words, a report published today on government ICT by the Institute for Government suggests that major change is unlikely to happen, despite the best efforts of  CIOs and the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

The report “System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT strategy”  says progress has been made. But its messages suggest that reforms are unlikely to  amount to more than tweaks.

These are some of the key messages in the report:

If the minister and CIOs cannot direct change who can?

–          “… while the Minister for the Cabinet Office and government CIO are viewed as being responsible for delivering the ICT strategy (for example by the Public Accounts Committee) they currently lack the full authority to direct change.”

Not so agile

–           “While just over half of government departments may be running an agile project, there were concerns that these were often very minor projects running on the fringe of the departments.”

–          “We heard concerns from the supplier community and those inside government that in some areas projects may be being labelled as ‘agile’ without having really changed the way in which they were run.”

–          “CIOs should question whether they are genuinely improving the ways that they are working in areas such as agile, or whether they are just attaching a label to projects to get a tick in the box,” says the Institute for Government.

Savings not real?

–          “There was also an element of challenge to the savings figures provided by government. For example, some from government and the supplier community questioned whether the numbers represented genuine savings or just cuts in the services provided or deferred expenditure. “

–          “Others … cautioned that project scope creep or change requests could reduce actual savings in time. It was pointed out that the NAO [National Audit Office] will scrutinise whether savings have been achieved in future, which was seen as a clear incentive for accuracy – but there were, nonetheless, concerns that pressure to provide large savings figures meant that inadequate attention might be paid to verifying the savings …”

CIOs want faster ICT progress

–          “Among the CIOs we interviewed, there was a clear recognition that government ICT needed to improve.  ‘You expect an Amazon experience from a government department…’ ”

Lack of money good for change

–          “As one ICT lead noted, a lack of money was ‘always helpful’ in driving change as it promoted cross-government solution-sharing and led to more rigour in approving new spend.”

–          “Both ICT leaders and suppliers felt that the ICT moratorium had been a helpful stimulus for increased focus on value for money.”

–          “Though some of the larger suppliers felt bruised by the ‘smash and grab’ of initial interactions with the Coalition government, there was a recognition that the moratorium had been about ‘stopping things which were inappropriate’”.

GDS challenges norms

–          “New ways of working in the new Government Digital Service and the opening up of government through the Transparency agenda were also seen as providing a challenge to existing norms.”

–          The new Government Digital Service (GDS) is providing an example of a new way of doing things, and was pointed to by those inside and outside of government as embodying mould-breaking attitudes, using innovative techniques and … delivering results on very short timescales. Several interviews mentioned being invigorated by the positive approach of the GDS and their focus on delivering services to meet end-user needs.

ICT so poor staff circumvent it

–          “Public servants are increasingly frustrated that the ICT they use in their private lives appears to be far more advanced than the tools available to them at work. Indeed, there are already examples of employees circumventing the ICT that government provides them as they attempt to perform their job more effectively: creating what is known as a system of ‘shadow ICT’ that creates significant challenges for maintaining government security, collaborative working and government knowledge management.”

Joined-up Govt impossible?

–          “The possibility that departmental incentives continue to trump corporate contributions is further suggested by our survey results. Individuals do not yet feel that corporate contributions are valued or rewarded … elements of the [ICT] strategy call for departments to give up an element of autonomy and choice for the ‘greater good’. Several CIOs expressed concerns that by adopting elements of the strategy that were being developed or delivered by another department, they would end up having to accept a service that had been designed  around the needs of a different department.”

–          “Similarly, there were concerns that the host department would be at the top priority in the event of any problems or opportunities to develop services further. This speaks to a strongly department-centric culture. Suppliers noted, for example, that certain parts of government were still happy to ‘pay a premium for their autonomy’.”

–          “… the vast majority of those we spoke to suggested that departmental interests would almost always ultimately trump cross-government interests in the current government culture and context.”

–          “CIOs felt that they would be rewarded for delivery of departmental priorities – not pan-government work …”

CIO Council frustrations

“CIOs noted that there could be a discrepancy between what got agreed at the old CIO Council meetings and what people actually went away and did. Larger department CIOs also expressed frustration that – despite holding the largest budgets and carrying the largest delivery risks – their voices could easily be outweighed by the multitude of other people round the table.”

“The delivery board model [which has superseded CIO Council] has been recognised by both big and small departments as pragmatically dealing with both sides of this issue. Larger departments now form part of an inner-leadership circle, but with this recognition of their clout comes additional responsibility to own and drive through parts of the strategy… the challenge will now be to ensure that the ICT strategy doesn’t become a ‘large department-only’ affair and that other ICT leads can be effectively engaged.”

Canny suppliers?

–          The majority of ICT leads …stated that they believed the ICT strategy would benefit their department and government as a whole. This confidence was less apparent in the attitudes of suppliers who were, on the whole, more sceptical of government’s ability to drive change, though again generally supportive of the direction of travel.

A toothless ICT Strategy is of little value?

–          “…There was also a lack of clarity on how different elements of the [ICT] strategy would be enforced. As one ICT leader commented … ‘Is this a mandatable strategy or a reference document?’ ”

–          … “there are risks that the strategy could be delivered in a way that still doesn’t transform ICT performance.”

Francis Maude an asset

–          “Government ICT has also been a priority of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude – giving the [change] agenda unprecedented ministerial impetus. He has been a visible face of ICT to many inside and outside of government, from demanding departmental data on ICT to being heavily involved in negotiations with ICT suppliers. Though few of his ministerial colleagues appear as passionate about improving government ICT, the CIOs we interviewed overwhelmingly expressed confidence that they would receive the support they needed to implement the changes in ICT.”

Smaller-budget CIOs out of the loop?

–          “With the CIO Council in hiatus for most of the last year, the CIOs of smaller departments felt out of the loop …”

Most ICT spending is outside SW1

–          “Suppliers and other ICT leaders pointed out, rightly, that the vast majority of ICT expenditure happens outside SW1 – with agencies, local government and organisations like primary care trusts and police forces still determining much of the citizen and workforce experience of ICT.”

SMEs still left out?

–          “Smaller suppliers … were generally encouraged that government was trying to use more contractual vehicles which would be open to them – but noted that it was ‘still extremely difficult to get close to government as an SME’.”

Who knows if use of ICT is improving?

–          “Government still lacks the information it needs to judge whether use of ICT across government is improving.”

System upgrade? The first year of the Government’s ICT Strategy.

Too early to claim success on GovIT – Institute for Government

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Posted in Campaign4Change, capacity building, change, change management, CIO, cost reduction, culture, efficiency savings, governance, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, managing outsourced services, procurement, reducing cost strategically

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Civil service reform plan – real change or a tweak?

Posted on 19/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

The civil service reform plan is to be published this afternoon, at 3.30pm.  The Cabinet Office minister  Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, write about it in today’s Daily Telegraph.

They say that the plan will help deliver a civil service culture that is “pacier, more innovative, less hierarchical and focused on outcomes not process”. They write:

“We also need sharper accountability, in particular from permanent secretaries and those leading major projects, and we need more digital services, better data and management information and for policy and implementation to be linked seamlessly together…”

In the same edition of the Telegraph Andrew Haldenby,  director of the independent think tank Reform, criticises the reform plan which, although not yet published, has been foretold in newspapers including the Financial Times yesterday.

He said the reform plan will “leave the flawed structures of Whitehall in place and do no more than propose some minor variations on a theme”.

We await publication of the paper before we judge it. We hope it will, at least, require the publication of “Gateway” review reports on the progress or otherwise of major IT-enabled projects.

Without timely publication of the Major Projects Authority’s Gateway reports, MPs and the public will continue to learn of failed schemes such as the NPfIT and Firecontrol when it is too late to do much about any rescue; and without contemporaneous publication there will continue to be no accountability for the rigour or otherwise of the reviews, or their outcome.

Civil service reform – meltdown or business as usual? – Institute for Government

Cabinet Office promises unprecedented openness on big, risky projects.

Civil service shake-up – Guardian

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, Cloud Computing, cost avoidance, cost reduction, culture, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, openness and transparency, public sector, public services

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Francis Maude talks open govt – and Whitehall does the opposite

Posted on 12/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

“If people do not know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong.” – Sir Arnold Robinson, Cabinet Secretary in a discussion on open government in Yes Minister.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said all the right things at the Intellect World Class Public Services conference 2012.

He said that:

– smaller, innovative and efficient suppliers were finding themselves locked out of the supply of services to Government because of what was described by Parliament as a powerful “oligopoly” of large suppliers

– for the first time in Government “we are using agile, iterative processes, open source technology platforms and world-class in-house development teams alongside the best digital innovation the market can offer”

– “We must eliminate failure waste. At the moment, a large proportion of our service delivery costs are incurred through incomplete or failed digital transactions. And these transactions create cross-channel duplication, which burdens the user and costs Government a huge amount in repeated costs. For HMRC alone, they estimate that 35% of calls to its contact centres are avoidable, which would save £75m.”

– “Transparency is a defining passion for this Government …”

Comment:

How much influence does Maude really have? Can he persuade permanent secretaries to effect major change? The evidence so far is that departmental officials and Maude have different ideas on what reform means.

In “Yes Minister” civil servants were proud of a new hospital that was the best run and most hygienic in the country, with no medical staff, 500 administrators and no patients.

Maude may also recall that Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the acclaimed writers of Yes Minister, spoke of the Whitehall law of inverse relevance – “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it”.

Open government? 

Perhaps civil servants are letting Maude get on with talking the talk while they find every way to keep things much as they are. A good example: The Guardian reported yesterday that a key part of the Government’s transparency drive has stalled amid reports of ministry opposition.

The paper’s political editor Patrick Wintour reported that plans to publish regular ‘traffic-light’ progress reports on large, costly and risky IT projects “appear to have been shelved”.

When it comes to IT this could have been the coalition’s most important single reform. It would have given MPs and the public a way of knowing when mega projects such as Universal Credit are failing. Usually we don’t know about a failed IT-related project unless there is a leak to the media, or the National Audit Office finds out and decides, with its limited budget, to do a study.

Sir Bob Kerslake, who is head of the civil service,  had indicated to MP Richard Bacon that “Gateway” review reports on large and risky IT and construction projects may be published in the civil service reform plan which is expected to be released this month.

Gateway reports to go unpublished?

Now it seems that departmental civil servants  have persuaded the Sir Bob not to publish “Gateway” reports. So the secrecy over the progress or otherwise of government mega projects is set to continue.

Yes, civil servants will allow the Cabinet Office to have its way on the publication of data about, say, some government spending. But it’s becoming clear that the civil service will not allow any publication of its reports on the progress or otherwise of major projects. It has been that way since Gateway reviews were introduced in 2001.

Some senior officials – by no means all – say they want a confidential “safe space” to discuss the progress of projects. The reality is that they do not want outsiders – MPs, the media and NAO auditors – meddling in their failing schemes – schemes such as Firecontrol and e-filing at the Ministry of Justice.

Unlike Maude, senior civil servants have what Jay and Lynn call a “flexible approach to open government”. This means in practice that Whitehall will happily release data – but not project reports on which the civil servants themselves can be judged.

Activity is not achievement

Maude’s speeches will give the impression of activity. But activity is the civil service’s substitute for achievement. I quote Jay and Lynn again, in part because their depiction of Whitehall seems to have been taken as serious wisdom by those officials who think Sir Humphrey a character worth living up to.

It’s time Maude and his team got a grip on departments. Until they do, permanent secretaries and their senior officials will regard Maude as trying to get out of situations that don’t need getting out of.

Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects?

The empty hospital – Yes Minister

Government’s transparency drive stalls.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cost avoidance, cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, openness and transparency, oversight, Politics, SME

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HMRC loses an important voice on its board

Posted on 11/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Steve Lamey, who is leaving HM Revenue and Customs as Director General, Benefits and Credits, has worked tirelessly to improve the organisation’s systems and administration; and he has gained a reputation for listening to IT suppliers.

In 2007 he  won a British Software Satisfaction award for his work in promoting collaboration within the business software industry. He joined HMRC in October 2004 as CIO.

He is perceived to be leaving at a time when there are a number of vacancies at the top of HMRC. Accountancylive reported last month there was an “exodus”of senior officials from HMRC, and morale is said to be low.  But a man as influential as Lamey can do only so much.  Anyone who wants to effect major change at  HMRC must move an iceberg with a rowing boat. That said there have been some HMRC IT-related successes.

Was Lamey an unexploded force at HMRC?

But it’s conceivable that Lamey could have achieved more if he had carried on the way he started: by highlighting the need for change.

He unwittingly made a name for himself in 2005 after a speech he gave to a Government IT conference in which he revealed some of the corporate weaknesses of HMRC, an the organisation he had  joined not long before.

He  probably had not expected  his comments to be reported first in Computer Weekly and then on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

At that time Lamey was HMRC’s new CIO. He told delegates of some of his discoveries, namely that:

– At least 31 million wrongly addressed letters were being sent out.

– Nearly half of self-assessment tax forms were being incorrectly processed and had to be done again.

–  he had been struck by the out-of-date computer systems. He told the conference: “If I were an information technology historian I would love it. We need to move on from there.”

– his  “biggest, biggest, biggest challenge” was correcting “poor quality data”.

Later a Daily Telegraph article, quoted me as saying “Mr Lamey’s frank assessment of the state of the tax department’s processes and systems is a rare and fresh approach for a senior government official.”

But was Lamey muzzled?

After that article it seems that Lamey was effectively muzzled, at least from making disclosures in public about HMRC’s flaws. Board papers at the time indicated that senior civil servants at HMRC would, in future, have to clear their public speeches in advance. Lamey did not make a similar speech in public again, not to my knowledge at least.

Richard Bacon MP, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, spoke at the time of the apparent attempts by HMRC to silence Lamey.

“It was refreshing to have a senior IT specialist, who is familiar with the business issues, and who is prepared to identify clearly what the scale of the problems is. Unless you’ve got that degree of frankness and candour, I don’t think you’re really going to solve the underlying problems. The alternative is to be in denial, to suggest that the problems don’t exist. It is plain that they do.”

The then Shadow Treasury minister Baroness Noakes, who was formerly a partner at KPMG, said she was concerned that it was already hard for parliament to discover how well HMRC was managing its business.

She said HMRC was “apparently silencing people from telling the truth”. She added “Speaking the truth [in the public sector] in the way you do in the private sector may well not be as acceptable.”

Would Lamey have been even more influential if he had continued – in public – to point to the weaknesses HMRC needed to tackle?

So defensive is HMRC that it considered a positive PR campaign to highlight its strengths after the loss of two CDs which contained the details of 25 million people.

Can an organisation that intuitively discounts and suppresses the negatives while trumpeting the positives ever properly reform itself? Probably not. If you cannot accept you have problems you cannot resolve them. We wonder how HMRC is getting on with its part of the Universal Credit project … its officials say all is well.

Attempts to constrain HMRC directors.

Front page Telegraph article with references to Steve Lamey’s speech

HMRC honcho poached.

Time for truth on Universal Credit

Hungry re-seller bags Steve Lamey.

Whistleblower punished?

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Posted in excessive secrecy, Government IT, HMRC, managing change, openness and transparency, Politics, private sector lessons for the public sector, Real-Time Information, Universal Credit

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The US approach to increasing innovation in government

Posted on 06/06/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

I liked a recent blog written in the US by a ‘federal coach’ – I guess they could only get away with that title in the US!- about US government efforts to increase innovation in departments.

The piece makes the point that the White House recently launched an innovation scheme grandly titled the Presidential Innovation Fellows program that will bring in 15 ‘innovators’ from outside government to provide expertise on five technology projects.  

According to the article, within 24 hours of the announcement, more than 600 people had applied to go to Washington for at least six months to work with federal employees on projects aimed at making government more effective and more accountable.

The projects, which will be led by Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Government Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel, include creating an electronic payment system for government transactions involving foreign aid and U.S. operations overseas; and streamlining an online system for citizens in need of federal services.

It sounds impressive. The “Presidential Innovation Fellows program is based in part on the Entrepreneurs-in-Residence  programme that allows agencies to recruit world-class, private-sector innovators for limited periods of time and pair them with public-sector innovators to solve big problems.”

For the US, its scheme of government and the strength of its technology sector, it will probably work. Could such a programme work here? What would be the equivalent of a Presidential Innovation Fellows programme? And how many offers of help would it achieve within 24 hours of its launch?

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, government, Government IT, innovation

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Whitehall to relent on secrecy over mega projects – after 10-year campaign?

Posted on 29/05/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Cabinet Office may be about to change its decade-old policy of not publishing reports on  the progress or otherwise of its large, costly and risky IT-based projects.

A change of policy from secrecy to openness would give MPs and the public warning of when a major project is in trouble and needs rescuing or cancelling.

Parliament last to know

For more than a decade campaigners have sought to persuade successive governments to publish “Gateway” reviews, which are short independent audits on the state of big projects.  The secrecy has meant that Parliament is usually the last to know when new national schemes go wrong. IT-related failures have hit many public services including those related to tax, benefits, immigration, passports, the fire service, prisons, schools examinations, student loans, the police and health services.

Now Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, has hinted to campaigning Conservative MP Richard Bacon that the Cabinet Office may change its policy and publish the “red, amber, green” status of large projects as they are routinely assessed.

Kerslake was replying to Bacon at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee meeting on transparency. Bacon pointed out at the hearing that the Public Accounts Committee had, years ago, called for Gateway reviews to be published.

Not learning from mistakes

“Something I have always been puzzled by is why government does not learn from its mistakes particularly but not only in the area of IT where things go wrong again and again, again and again,” said Bacon. “I have come to the conclusion government does not learn from its mistakes because it does not have a learning curve. If you don’t have a learning curve you are not going to learn.”

He cited the example of how Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, had, at Bacon’s request, arranged for an “Opening Gate” report on Universal Credit to be published in the House of Commons library.

But, said Bacon, when an IT journalist applied to the Department for Work and Pensions, under the FOI Act, for the release of all Gateway reports on Universal Credit, the DWP would not publish any of them  – and even refused an FOI request to release the report Watmore had arranged to be placed in the House of Commons library, which Bacon obtained.  “So there is still a culture of intuitive, instinctive secrecy,”  Bacon said. Kerslake replied:

“Yes, actually we are looking at this specific issue as part of the Civil Service Reform Plan….I cannot say exactly what will be in the plan because we have not finalised it yet, but it is due in June and my expectation is that I am very sympathetic to publication of the RAG [red, amber, green] ratings.”

Bacon pointed out that the Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates had said Gateway reviews would be published.  But the commitment was removed for no apparent reason. When the Cabinet Office was asked why,  it said the Structural Reform Plans were only ever “drafts”.

Bacon asked Kerslake if the Government now plans to publish the Gateway reports.  “The Cabinet Office Structural Reform Plan Monthly Implementation Updates originally said Gateway reviews would be published  and then it somehow got downgraded into a draft; and from what’s publicly available at the moment the position of the government is not to publish Gateway reviews.  You sound as if you’re saying that’s going to change. Is that right?” asked Bacon.

“Watch this space,” replied Kerslake. “I am sympathetic. I generally broadly welcome, in principle, the idea of publishing information but there are lots of risks …”

Peter Gershon introduced Gateway reviews when he was Chief Executive of the Office of Government Commerce, which is now part of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group. The reviews are carried out at key decision times in a project and are sometimes repeated:

  • Gateway Review 0 – Strategic assessment
  • Gateway Review 1 – Business justification
  • Gateway Review 2 – Procurement strategy
  • Gateway Review 3 – Investment decision
  • Gateway Review 4 – Readiness for service
  • Gateway Review 5 – Benefits realisation

Are Gateway reviews a success?

Gateway reviews are now supplemented by regular assurance audits carried out for the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. None of the reports is published.

Gateway reviews have not stopped costly failures such as Firecontrol or the NPfIT.  One permanent secretary told an MP that the reviews in his department were considered unimportant by senior responsible owners, for whom the reports are written. This may be because SROs often have charge of many projects; and even their SRO responsibilities are often in addition to their main jobs.

But Gershon had high hopes of Gateway reviews when they were introduced in February 2001. This is evident from the number of times he referred to Gateway reviews at one hearing of the Public Accounts Committee in December 2001.

 “… as the Gateway review process cuts in, which I have referred to on a number of occasions when I have appeared at this Committee …”

“… Through things like the Gateway process we are helping to sharpen the focus on the whole life aspects of these and other forms of complex projects in public sector procurement…”

“ …First, we have the introduction of the Gateway review process…”

“ … The Gateway process is a demonstrable example of how we have introduced a technique to support that whole life approach…”

“… If you look at the guidelines around the Gateway review process that is one of the things that is tested by these independent reviews …”

“… we recognised that that was a problem some time ago, which is why in the Gateway review one of the things that is explicitly tested is things like the skills and capabilities of the team at the design and build stage and that the skills and capabilities of the team at the procurement stage …”

“… in this area with the Gateway review process, from when we first launched it last February, we have been helping the department take a whole life approach to these forms of complex projects …”

“… Part of the Gateway Review process is to get a much sharper insight on to where we see good things happening where we can encourage other clients to replicate them…”

“… Now, with the Gateway Review process, my experience has been because of where we have deliberately focused the attention on the early life of projects where there is the greater scope for management to take corrective action, the accounting officers are paying a lot of attention to the recommendations that are emerging because, much to my surprise, most of them do not seem to like coming here defending what has gone wrong in the past. They seem to welcome the recommendations that we are providing to them to help try to get projects on to much stronger foundations in the future…”

“… With the Gateway Review, my experience has been that the Accounting Officers respond to the recommendations very positively…”

“…Gateway Reviews explicitly test how the department is planning in the pre-contract phase to secure ongoing value for money in the post-contract phase…”

“… Take, firstly, the Gateway Review process. That is testing various points in the life cycle of the project, from the very earliest stage…”

“… I would certainly expect in Gateway Reviews that the review team would be testing what methods were in place to facilitate the ongoing management of the contract…”

“… I think it is encouraging that Sir Ian Byatt thought the Gateway Review process had sufficient value to recommend it in his own review…”

And so forth.

Comment:

We applaud Richard Bacon MP for his persistent call for Gateway reports to be published.

Gateway reviews have defeated expectations that they would stop failures; and the National Audit Office tells us that central departments don’t even request Gateway reviews on some big and risky projects although they are supposed to be mandatory.

But Gateway and other project assurance reports could prove invaluable if they are published. In the public domain the reports would enable Parliament and Francis Maude’s “armchair auditors” to hold officials and SROs to account for projects that are in danger of failing. That would be an incentive for officialdom to fail early and fail cheaply; and Gateway reviewers may take greater care to be neutral in their findings – not too lenient, or too harsh – on the basis that the reports would be open to public scrutiny. SROs would also have to take the review reports seriously – not just put them in a draw because nobody knows about them anyway.

We welcome Kerslake’s comments but hope that he and his colleagues plan to publish more than the RAG (Red/Amber/Green) status of projects. Otherwise they will be missing an opportunity.  Gateway reports and other assurance reviews are expensive. Reviewers can earn up to £1,000 a day. This money  could be well spent if the reviews are to be published; but it will add to public waste if the reports are kept secret and continue to be deemed pointless or unimportant by departments.

It is ironic, incidentally, that the Ministry of Justice, which introduced the FOI Act, gives advice to departments to keep the RAG status of Gateway reviews confidential. In its advice on Gateway reviews and the FOI, the MoJ tells departments that the “working assumption” is that the substance of the Gateway reports should be kept confidential until at least two years have elapsed.

It’s time for a culture change. Maybe the Civil Service Reform Plan next month will be worth reading.

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Posted in change management, cost reduction, culture, excessive secrecy, Freedom of Information, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT-related failures, Major Projects Authority, managing change, NHS, npfit, openness and transparency, oversight, Politics, project management, public sector, public services, Universal Credit

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Is DWP stance on Universal Credit reports mocking FOI?

Posted on 27/04/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

The Department for Work and Pensions, which has remained as secretive over the progress or otherwise of its IT-based projects as before the 2005 Freedom of Information Act, has, as expected, rejected our FOI request for reports on the state of the Universal Credit project.

We have appealed and the DWP has, as is customary, delayed its response. It appears that the Department works on the principle that the longer it delays FOI responses the more out of date will be its reports when the Information Commissioner eventually rules they must be published.

In its reply to us, the DWP gave reasons for hiding a report it has already put in the public domain: a “Starting Gate Review” of Universal Credit.

Hiding reports under its jumper

The review was carried out in February 2011. That the DWP is keeping under its jumper a public report suggests that its responses to the FOI Act owe more to instinct than proper consideration.

The DWP also refused to publish, under the FOI Act, a Universal Credit “Project Assessment Review in November 2011” by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority.

These are the reasons Ethna Harnett, Universal Credit Division, DWP,  gave for refusing our FOI request for Universal Credit project progress reports:

– “Further reviews, by the Major Project Authority and by the National Audit Office are planned.”

– “Elements of the information you requested is being withheld as it falls under the exemption in Section 36 (2) (b) and (c) of the Freedom of Information Act. This exemption requires the public interest for and against disclosure to be balanced.”

– “The information you have requested includes details of a sensitive nature whose publication would prejudice effective conduct of public affairs. There is a strong public interest in the Department maintaining an efficient and effective risk management and assurance process and in ensuring that this process is not undermined by premature disclosure particularly where risks are not yet fully mitigated.”

– “There is also a strong public interest in the Department being able to carry out and use frank assessments, including unrestrained and candid contributions from business areas. ”

– “The assurance reports produced by the Major Project Authority are not shared beyond the Senior Responsible Owner and interested parties within Government.”

– “DWP Ministers have, however, committed to update Parliament on the Universal Credit programme through written ministerial statements. These statements are available on the Parliamentary website – www.parliament.uk.”

– “The Major Projects Authority will publish information on the progress of the Government’s high-risk and high-value projects, referred to collectively as the government major projects portfolio, alongside the first annual report at the end of this financial year.”

Comment:

The DWP has never met any of our FOI requests and has, in every case, delayed its responses to our requests for internal appeals. The result of the appeals is always the same – the upholding of the original decision. We are in awe of the DWP’s ability to detach its IT operations from the FOI Act.

The DWP considers it is acting in the public interest: that assessments of its IT-based projects such as Universal Credit would not be candid if they were put in the public domain.

But if the DWP had got this right and that its assurance reports would be less effective if published, we’d expect to see successes with major DWP IT-based projects. We don’t see the evidence.

Indeed the signs are that Universal Credit, the DWP’s biggest project, is in trouble; and after 20 years the Department is still having trouble combining its various benefit systems.

The National Audit Office has qualified the DWP’s accounts every year for the last 23 years, largely because of the level of official error and fraud.

Is this a department that is getting IT right?  There is no evidence it is; and some evidence suggests it isn’t.

The DWP needs to change. It needs to see openness as an opportunity not a threat. Openness would show that officials are prepared to be measured publicly against the findings of their assessment reports. That needs self-confidence.

On the other hand secrecy permits an uneasy introspection, allows weaknesses to take hold, and gives officials comfort in not changing.

Somerset Maugham put it well in his excellent book Of human Bondage. He said: “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”

Time for truth on Universal Credit

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Universal Credit latest

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

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