Francis Maude, the UK government's major IT suppliers and the empty chair

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Poor IT suppliers to face ban from contracts?

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is due to meet representatives of suppliers today [28 June 2012], including Accenture[,] BT, Capgemini, Capita, HP, IBM, Interserve, Logica, Serco, and Steria. They will be warned that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure new work with the Government ...

The suggestion is that up to now "suppliers with poor performance" haven't found it hard as a result to "secure new work with the government".

Apart from Atos, DMossEsq and Fujitsu, who's missing from that list?

CSC. Computer Sciences Corporation, share price today $23.76 compared with $37.96 a year ago, nearly 40% off, DMossEsq is not licensed to give investment advice and is not giving investment advice.

Last heard in these parts, CSC were picking up a fortune from the UK taxpayer for collecting useless biometrics on UK visa applicants, upgrading the UK passport system expensively and unnecessarily and failing to deploy the UK National Health Service National Programme for IT scheme, NPfIT. That's the good news.

We also heard that they were facing a class action brought by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, they'd been docked $250 million by the US Armed Services Board and they had failed to install their Lorenzo software at Pennine Care NHS Health Trust.

Some of that news is six months old. How are they doing now?

Another hat tip: Mark Ballard, Soldiers nail data for agile offensive on $6bn cock-up:

Supplier Computer Sciences Corporation finished the US Army's 1999 Logistics Modernization Programme [LMP] last year, six years behind schedule [good job the US wasn't fighting any wars at the time]. LMP went on the record as being done on budget after the Army accepted an offer on a $2bn compensation claim it had against the supplier. After seven years of contract arbitration in which CSC filed $861m of counter claims against the Army, CSC settled the matter with a $269m payment last year. The settlement also cleared another $1.2bn of outstanding contract complaints, said the Army spokeswoman.

Six years late and $269 million down the tubes seems a fair summary.

And that's not all, as Mr Ballard tells us in CSC finance director exits as fraud probe hits UK. Their 10-K, filed with the SEC, makes absorbing reading:

On May 2, 2011, the Audit Committee commenced its investigation into certain accounting errors and irregularities, primarily in our Nordic region and in our operations in Australia. This investigation is also reviewing certain aspects of our accounting practices within our Americas Outsourcing operation and certain of our contracts that involve the percentage of completion accounting method, including our contract with the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). As a result of this investigation, we have recorded certain out of period adjustments to our historical financial statements and taken certain remedial measures. The SEC is conducting its own investigation into the foregoing areas as well as certain related disclosure matters ... As noted above, during fiscal 2011, the Company commenced an investigation into accounting irregularities in the Nordic Region. Based upon the Company's investigation, review of the underlying documentation for certain transactions and balances, review of contract documentation and discussions with Nordic personnel, the Company attributes the majority of the $92 million pre-tax adjustments recorded in the Nordic region in fiscal 2011 to accounting irregularities arising from suspected intentional misconduct by certain former employees in our Danish subsidiaries. The Company attributes the $13 million in pre-tax adjustments recorded in the Nordic region in fiscal 2012 to miscellaneous errors and not to any accounting irregularities or intentional misconduct other than a $1 million operating lease adjustment noted in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 which was a refinement of an error previously corrected and reported in fiscal 2011 ... In the course of the Australia investigation initiated in fiscal 2012, accounting errors and irregularities have been identified. As a result, certain personnel in Australia have been reprimanded, suspended, terminated and/or resigned. Based upon the information developed to date, and the Company’s assessment of the same, the Company has identified and recorded during fiscal 2012, $23 million of adjustments reducing income from continuing operations before taxes relating to its operations in Australia. Such adjustments have been categorized as either intentional accounting irregularities (“intentional irregularities”) or other accounting errors (“Other Errors”). Other accounting errors include both unintentional errors and errors for which the categorization is unclear ... Between June 3, 2011, and July 21, 2011, four putative class action complaints were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, entitled City of Roseville Employee's Retirement System v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00610-TSE-IDD), Murphy v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00636-TSE-IDD), Kramer v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00751-TSE-IDD) and Goldman v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-777-TSE-IDD). On August 29, 2011, the four actions were consolidated as In re Computer Sciences Corporation Securities Litigation (No. 1:11-cv-610-TSE-IDD) and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board was appointed lead plaintiff ... On September 13, 2011, a shareholder derivative action entitled Che Wu Hung v. Michael W. Laphen, et al. (CL 20110013376) was filed in Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Virginia, against Michael W. Laphen, Michael J. Mancuso, the members of the Audit Committee and the Company as a nominal defendant asserting claims for breach of fiduciary duty and contribution and indemnification relating to alleged failure by the defendants to disclose accounting and financial irregularities in the MSS segment, primarily in the Nordic region, and the Company's performance under the NHS agreement and alleged failure to maintain effective internal controls ... CSC was informally advised by the Danish Justice Department on February 3, 2012 that the project known as POLSAG, a document and records management modernization program for the Danish police, will be abandoned, which affects CSC's contract with the Justice Department ... In addition to the matters noted above, the Company is currently party to a number of disputes which involve or may involve litigation ...

Bit mean of Mr Maude not to invite CSC along for tea and biscuits with the other suppliers.

Francis Maude, the UK government's major IT suppliers and the empty chair

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Poor IT suppliers to face ban from contracts?

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is due to meet representatives of suppliers today [28 June 2012], including Accenture[,] BT, Capgemini, Capita, HP, IBM, Interserve, Logica, Serco, and Steria. They will be warned that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure new work with the Government ...

The suggestion is that up to now "suppliers with poor performance" haven't found it hard as a result to "secure new work with the government".

Apart from Atos, DMossEsq and Fujitsu, who's missing from that list?

Cabinet Office soon to be Watless

Cabinet Office press release, London 16 May 2012:

Ian Watmore to leave the Civil Service Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, is leaving the Civil Service at the end of June, after a seven year career in the Civil Service, six of them as Permanent Secretary in three different roles, and a long career in the private sector. He is returning to his home in the North West of England to focus on non-executive and spousal roles in charity, sports, academic and church activities ...

Efficiency and reform, Whitehall-style
Less for more
Whitehall – misfeasance in public office
Whitehall – SNAFU
...

Update:
17 May 2012: ‘Aggressive ministers’ blamed after mandarin quits
6 August 2012: Cabinet Office press release – "The new Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, Richard Heaton, takes up his new role today ..."


Updated 17.4.16

Four years later, Watmore to return?


Updated 20.9.16

Yes, Watmore to return, in 10 days time.

Cabinet Office soon to be Watless

Cabinet Office press release, London 16 May 2012:

Ian Watmore to leave the Civil Service Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, is leaving the Civil Service at the end of June, after a seven year career in the Civil Service, six of them as Permanent Secretary in three different roles, and a long career in the private sector. He is returning to his home in the North West of England to focus on non-executive and spousal roles in charity, sports, academic and church activities ...

Efficiency and reform, Whitehall-style
Less for more
Whitehall – misfeasance in public office
Whitehall – SNAFU
...

Update:
17 May 2012: ‘Aggressive ministers’ blamed after mandarin quits
6 August 2012: Cabinet Office press release – "The new Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, Richard Heaton, takes up his new role today ..."


Updated 17.4.16

Four years later, Watmore to return?


Updated 20.9.16

Yes, Watmore to return, in 10 days time.

The behaviour of the Cabinet Office is infantile

The Government Digital Service operate a blog so that we can all see what they're up to.

GDS is part of the Cabinet Office and what they're meant to be up to is making public services more efficient.

On 6 March 2012, one Bob Kamall published a post on the GDS blog called Engaging With The Hard To Reach. It's all about his visit to a charity in Southwark, St Mungo's, which provides care for the homeless.

You can read Mr Kamall's post. But you won't believe it.

The following comment has been submitted in response. Will it be published? Will the Cabinet Office pay any attention?

Mr Kamall In the circumstances, the Riot Act will now be read. You say: We recognise that if we are to succeed in driving channel shift to digital then services and transactions need to be developed with a relentless focus on users. We want to make use of the most innovative and versatile technology to deliver products that match industry leaders while ensuring that no-one is left behind. You mean: We recognise that if we are to focus relentlessly on users then concentrating on driving channel shift to digital is to miss the point. In public services we are the industry leaders and there is no comparison with the Facebooks and Amazons of this world – they can leave people behind, we can’t. Our job cannot be achieved by the use of innovative and versatile technology. That is for children. We are grown up and responsible. People depend on our services and we know it. You say that you want to show how GDS can engage with the hard to reach. There are nine or ten million of them, Bob. All that you actually offer in your post is oiling bicycle chains in the basement of St Mungo's. In 18 months time DWP's Universal Credit goes live. When the public realises that nine or ten million people have been excluded from the universe by default there will be fury in the land. DWP will be blamed. And DWP will blame GDS, pointing to ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's post Identity: One small step for all of Government in which he unwisely pretends to have control over DWP. The Cabinet Office will then look like a branch of St Mungo's in Whitehall, a junior school feeding the main one in Southwark. A junior school housing a roster of unfortunate derelicts incapable of dealing with reality. Derelicts in need of care, expensively provided by taxpayers whose patience has run out. People will re-read Paul Downey's Blurring Boundaries post: I joined GDS because there's nothing cooler than working on something that touches so many peoples lives ... sitting on one part of the floor can feel a little like being in a bouncy castle. There's a nice kitchen that's only missing one essential bit of kit: we could really do with a dishwasher! ... Rather impressively by lunchtime of my first day I'd been given a Cabinet Office Email address (accessible using Google Apps for Business), a laptop (a security hardened 13" MacBook Air) ... Just before heading home we decided to create a commemorative Valentine's Day homepage for GOV.UK. A Kanban card was added to the sprint wall and Ben quickly came up with a design. I sat with James Weiner and Dafydd Vaughan whilst we built, tested and deployed the new ‘heart-shaped wood’ homepage, meaning I witnessed concept to delivery all in the space of half an hour. And through the blur they will see an expensive Eton in SW1 housing the Potemkin equivalent of the privileged children of the aristocracy, but without Eton's success rate, more like the op-ed team of the Guardian, forever insulated from reality, or at least until the money runs out, also in 18 months time: On my first day I hung my satchel on a peg with my name on it. Me and Pete did a potato print of a flower. It was cool. No wonder Universal Credit didn't work, people will say, looking back in 18 months time. And even if the front end had been delivered it couldn't have worked because some hippy teaching assistant in the second form had switched off the Government Gateway, promising to replace it with a cloud, the answer is blowing in the wind, man. And even before that, before October 2013 – which to us old people by the way is just around the corner, like tomorrow – GDS and DWP are promising to have provided 21 million Brits with an electronic identity by the Spring of 2013. That's what it says in the OJEU ITT. What drugs are you dealing in that bouncy castle? After eight years of unstinting political support and an unlimited budget IPS had issued just 4,000 ID cards. And GDS think they can equip 21 million people with working accounts six months after awarding the IdA contract, do they? Including nine or ten million who have never used the web? On which planet? And who is the contract going to be awarded to? Not the chicklets in the Technology Strategy Board incubator. They haven't got the scale. Not the banks. Why would they want their brands destroyed by confessing to any connection with this train crash? Who does that leave? Facebook and Google. Take a look at ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's asinine what-I-did-on-my-holidays post, Thoughts on my recent trip to the West Coast with Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office: Andrew Nash, Google's Director of Identity, ran us through the current issues facing identity.He explained how Google aim to grow and be part of an ecosystem of identify providers, and encouraged the UK Government to play its part in a federated system. The UK ID Assurance team and Google agreed to work more closely to define our strategy – so look out for future announcements. Andrew also took the opportunity to walk the Minister through the Identity ecosystem. There is no trust in Google. Or Facebook. GDS's claims that they can create trust are laughable, like the magician at a children's party who claims to have pulled a white rabbit out of an empty top hat. GDS can't create trust at the throw of a switch. They can't create a market where there is none. They can't create an ecosystem. Do you have any idea what these infantile delusions look like to the grown-ups not yet in St Mungo's? Can you imagine what they make of it in Brazil? Or the US? Or Russia or China? They must look on amazed that a once-adult country has entrusted its public services to a group of imbeciles in a nursery school chanting the word "agile". What does Ian Watmore think he's doing? Why does Francis Maude put up with it? If I don't tell you, someone else will. You're making fools of yourselves. At public expense. There will be tears before teatime, Bob. You're facing disaster and public humiliation, quite properly, unless you guys wake up quickly, come out of your privileged little bubble, sort yourselves out and shape up.

Cribsheet:

• The Cabinet Office have failed before with this plan. It was called "transformational government" then. Only the name has changed. There is no reason to believe they can succeed this time.
• As the name suggests, the Government Gateway is the computer system that many adept individuals and organisations in the UK currently use to communicate with the government. Unlike the "open source" code on which GDS's dreams depend, the Gateway actually exists. GDS want to throw it away and replace it with a government cloud, G-Cloud, that will look more like their juvenile heroes' websites – Amazon and eBay and Google and Facebook – replete with an ad server (see p.9) so that we can all book a holiday while submitting our tax returns.
• GDS are acting under the influence of Martha Lane Fox's "digital by default" initiative. All public services are to be delivered over the web and only over the web. They ignore the problems of cyber security. And they ignore the fact that between nine and ten million people in the UK have never used the web and will be excluded by default.
• GDS depend on IdA, a putative identity assurance service somewhere in the currently non-existent G-Cloud, a sort of private sector ID card scheme without the cards. IdA doesn't exist. There is no such thing as IdA. Another hole at the heart of their plans, along with security, and accessibility by their parishioners.
• Any lawyers present might like to consider whether IdA requires primary legislation. There isn't any and there's no time left before the IdA contracts are to be awarded in the Summer of 2012 to fill the hole.
• The problems of large computer systems persist. GDS's modish references to "cloud computing" and "agile" systems development methodologies have not made them go away.
• Anyone with any energy left after getting to grips with the Cabinet Office and DWP could use it up looking at the related Department of Business Innovation and Skills midata project.
• As for the Guardian, on 8 August 2011 they wrote in their own paper: "Andrew Miller, the GMG [Guardian Media Group] chief executive, has warned that the group could run out of cash in three to five years if the business operations did not change, adding that the newspapers would aim to save £25m over the next five years, releasing funds to be reinvested in other activities". The Daily Telegraph's 16 December 2011 article reported the closure of some Guardian supplements, the curtailment of others, several hundred redundancies and a so far unimplemented plan for the Guardian to get out of printing paper altogether.

----------

Updated 22 November 2013:

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken made a speech on 16 October 2013, Redesigning Government, in which he argues, among other things, that you've got to have fun at work. No argument with that.

But what do you call fun?

The clip below, from his speech beginning at 26'17", suggests that it's a pretty infantile idea of fun at GDS and confirms that the infantilism identified in the post above was built in to the human resources management policy right from the start:

How do you motivate adults? The finest minds in digital? This generation? The GDS answer is apparently bunting, stickers, fluffy mascots, animal costumes and cake.


Updated 29.4.15

It's over three years since the post above was published. DMossEsq had forgotten about it. Then it was cited linked to in an ElReg special report yesterday, The Government Digital Service: The Happiest Place on Earth.

It's over 18 months since DMossEsq added the update immediately above, dated 22 November 2013, with its reference to GDS's human resources management policy.

Then lo.

And behold.

ElReg's special report quotes extensively from an external consultancy report on GDS's human resources management policy commissioned to "examine staff morale and high turnover at the Government Digital Service". The special report includes the following and three more pages like it:

The most scathing findings are reserved for the top management, who GDS' own staff say created a “chumocracy”. This would have consequences for morale, contributing to a high turnover of staff.

Far from being the happiest place on earth, GDS bears an uncanny resemblance to the island in Lord of the Flies, if the external consultants are to be believed. The Northcote-Trevelyan principles which have governed Whitehall for 161 years now seem to have been ignored when GDS was established and in its operation thereafter.

The consultancy in question is The Art of Work and they have a spectacular client list. There's no reason not to believe their report and there has been no rebuttal from GDS.

GDS are meant to tell the rest of Whitehall how to organise their IT. There are suggestions that they should in future also have the right to tell local government how to do its IT job. GDS's instructions may henceforth carry a little less weight.

The attractions for respectable organisations to risk their brand by becoming associated with GDS's GOV.UK Verify (RIP) may similarly be reduced.


Update 30.4.15

A number of people are doing their best to be fair, in light of the criticism GDS are currently facing, particularly this report on staff unrest. Quite right too, of course.

GDS can't respond themselves. They are currently in purdah. True. But they haven't responded to criticism in the three or four years of their existence. Nothing new there. And that's one of the observations of the report, an institutional inability to imagine that GDS is ever wrong.

GDS is constrained by civil service pay scales. True. But many people work for less. And perhaps part of the need for GDS to "transform government" arises from the fact that the rest of the civil service is also constrained by civil service pay scales.

Purdah, the dangers of groupthink and the problems of a limited budget affect the whole civil service. GDS are being accused of something special:

Last year, the UK's Cabinet Office asked an external management consultancy to examine staff morale and high turnover at the Government Digital Service. After interviewing more than 100 civil servants, its scathing confidential analysis described an organisation beset by low morale and run by a “cabal” management of old friends, who bypassed talent in favour of recruiting former associates – while Whitehall viewed GDS as “smug” and “arrogant”.

No-one is going to try to defend GDS if they really are operating an unmeritocratic old boys' network. Not even the esteemed editor of Computer Weekly, Bryan Glick, who yesterday published If not GDS, then what?, where he is clearly playing devil's advocate.

Mr Glick quotes extensively from a paper written by Alan Mather in 2003 predicting that the attempt to transform government will always meet an aggressive response. True.

Many people will know, from his Tweeting if nothing else, that Mr Mather is an exceptionally pleasant person. Others will know how modest he is and how very effective he was in making the Government Gateway a reality.

The Gateway has provided a way for individuals and companies to transact with the government on-line for the best part of 15 years now. It continues to operate despite being starved of resources. Its replacement, promised by GDS, is nowhere to be seen.

No-one could imagine Mr Mather operating a cabal of old friends, mushroom-managing the rest of the staff and strutting around the world sneering at his Whitehall peers. The special merit of Mr Glick's article is that he provides an answer. There is an alternative:

Q. If not GDS, then what?
A. Alan Mather.

The behaviour of the Cabinet Office is infantile

The Government Digital Service operate a blog so that we can all see what they're up to.

GDS is part of the Cabinet Office and what they're meant to be up to is making public services more efficient.

On 6 March 2012, one Bob Kamall published a post on the GDS blog called Engaging With The Hard To Reach. It's all about his visit to a charity in Southwark, St Mungo's, which provides care for the homeless.

You can read Mr Kamall's post. But you won't believe it.

Less for more

First Katie worked for James and Ian. Then Ian left and so did Katie. When James left as well, Katie stopped working for Ian and went to work for James. Then James left and Sarah took over. There was no room for Katie so she went back to working for Ian. Until Christine left and now Katie finds herself working for David. Or is it the other way around? Will Ian's will prevail? Just how much are we paying CSC? And for what? How did the Daily Mail get themselves suckered? And where does Andrew come into it?

All of that and more – including Sir Anthony Blunt – in the latest edition of the long-running programme, Whitehall in control ...

Like a lot of people in Whitehall, Katie Davis used to be a partner at Accenture.

She left in 2005 to join the Cabinet Office, home also to Ian Watmore at the time. Mr Watmore, of course, is a former managing director of Accenture.

In 2007 she moved to the Identity & Passport Service (IPS), where she was appointed Executive Director of Strategy. After three years of her strategy, IPS imploded. They left their offices at Globe House and retreated to the Home Office mother ship in Marsham St. The Chief Executive, James Hall, previously a managing partner of Accenture, retired and was replaced by Sarah Rapson, never worked for Accenture, ex-American Express, MBA from the London Business School.

Five directors of the IPS board were cleared out at the same time and so it came to pass that Katie found herself back in the Cabinet Office with the title Executive Director, Operational Excellence, working for Ian Watmore's Efficiency & Reform Group (ERG, previously OGC). The quiet life of operational excellence there beckoned but was soon rudely interrupted when Christine left.

Christine Connelly was the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Health. She was for years the most articulate and impassioned supporter of NPfIT, the NHS's £11 billion+ National Programme for IT. In June 2011, she resigned.

There had been a few problems.

By this stage in the career of NPfIT, there were only two contractors left. Accenture had pulled out with losses of over $450 million. Fujitsu also had pulled out, and are still thinking of suing HMG for £700 million. Leaving only BT and CSC.

CSC – Computer Sciences Corporation – are an American software house. They took over Accenture's NPfIT contracts. As part of the deal, they inherited iSoft, the software house that developed Lorenzo, the package on which NPfIT depends.

iSoft got into financial problems. The market took a dim view of their habit of booking profits based on nothing more than vague promises that someone might at some stage in the future possibly buy a copy of Lorenzo or not. CSC had to take them over to keep them afloat.

Lorenzo continued to perform badly, causing CSC to miss certain important milestones in their delivery plan for NPfIT. What with that, and a minor misunderstanding in the US with the Armed Services Board which cost them $250 million, their shareholders were getting edgy and CSC asked Christine Connelly to sign a contract guaranteeing them £3 billion. They also offered a discount. How about we take 25% off the price, CSC asked, but only deliver 50% of the services?

Less for more. An attractive proposition as anyone would agree.

At least, Christine Connelly thought it was attractive and she was minded to sign. Not so fast, said Richard Bacon MP, a hero. Not so fast, said Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MBE MP, a hero. Not so fast, said, Ian Watmore, Chief Operating Officer of ERG, whose motto, devised by Lord Brown of Madingley, Chairman of ERG and previously Chairman of BP and the Gulf of Mexico, is "more for less".

Even David Cameron asked Ms Connelly to stay her hand. For months, it looked as though, with the support of her boss, Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS, she was going to tell the lot of them to take a running jump. A power which, it may come as a surprise to those who believe we live in a polity where politicians control Whitehall, she had. Then she was gone.

Had Ian Watmore at last managed to assert his authority over the Department of Health? Who knows. But one way and another, Christine Connelly was replaced by Katie Davis.

That was back in June. On 22 September 2011, the Daily Mail carried this front page headline:

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

Their heart was in the right place but the story was false. The Department of Health agree that NPfIT has a few problems (mutt) but according to Sir David Nicholson, to paraphrase, we all owe our very existence to the genius of NPfIT (jeff), which will go on. And on. Until we've spent all the money we're entitled to. And then we may need some more. Firm up on that one later.

This is Sir Gus O'Donnell's Whitehall. He has been head of the home civil service since 2005. He leaves at the end of the year. We shall miss his deft organisational powers. Public administration in the UK may never be the same again. With any luck. GOD retires from top job – to be replaced by a new trinity, as they say in yesterday's Times newspaper.

Talking of which, when the Times look at NPfIT, they say:

The history of the NHS computer system is one of criminal incompetence and irresponsibility

Whereas when Sir David looks at it, he says:

We spent about 20% of that resource [the £11.4bn projected total spend on the NPfIT] on the acute sector. The other 80% is providing services that literally mean life and death to patients today, and have done for the last period. So the Spine, and all those things, provides really, really important services for our patients. If you are going to talk about the totality of the [NPfIT] system … you have to accept that 80% of that programme has been delivered.

Sir Anthony Blunt was the world expert on Poussin. Standing in front of an obvious fake once, he declared it to be authentic. Why? Perhaps Sir David Nicholson could tell us.

The quotation immediately above is due to Tony Collins, the award-winning investigative journalist, one of the few people on the planet who know what's going on NPfIT-wise, and a hero. Andrew Lansley? Admittedly Secretary of State for Health but, when it comes right down to it, just a politician. Not sure. Katie Davis?  At least she's sort of a mandarin and a former Executive Director of Operational Excellence, but even so – not sure.

The sun never sets on Sir David's empire. Now a group of American investors are suing CSC in a class action. They clearly don't think Lorenzo is kosher either, any more than Richard Bacon, Margaret Hodge et al. Somehow, mysteriously, the shareholders have got hold of internal CSC reports going back to May 2008 saying that Lorenzo could never meet the NHS's requirements and that the package is on a "death march".

Not the sort of march you want a health service to be on. But then what has any of this £11 billion of public money got to do with health?

Less for more

First Katie worked for James and Ian. Then Ian left and so did Katie. When James left as well, Katie stopped working for Ian and went to work for James. Then James left and Sarah took over. There was no room for Katie so she went back to working for Ian. Until Christine left and now Katie finds herself working for David. Or is it the other way around? Will Ian's will prevail? Just how much are we paying CSC? And for what? How did the Daily Mail get themselves suckered? And where does Andrew come into it?

All of that and more – including Sir Anthony Blunt – in the latest edition of the long-running programme, Whitehall in control ...

Efficiency and reform, Whitehall-style

Take a look at this CV:

Managing Director (age 42) of the UK arm of a global management consultancy – Chief Information Officer of the UK government – Head of Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit – Permanent Secretary at the Department of Innovation Universities and Skills – Chief Executive of the Football Association – Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office – Chief Operating Officer (age 52) of the Efficiency & Reform Group – and it’s not over yet.

Enviable. By any lights, that is a successful career.

Or is it?

In 2000, Ian Watmore was the Managing Director of Accenture UK. Take a step back. Before having a Managing Director, Accenture UK used to have a Managing Partner, James Hall.

Now take a step forwards. When Tony Blair and Whitehall decided in 2002 that the National Health Service should be computerised from end to end, a new project was born, NPfIT, the National Programme for IT.

NPfIT looks like costing over £11 billion+ of public money. Watmore and Hall negotiated contracts which would have seen Accenture running the NHS in two of the five regions into which NPfIT divides England and Wales. The course was set for Accenture to earn billions.

Their cause was further favoured when, in 2004, Ian Watmore left to become the UK government’s Chief Information Officer. As far as Accenture is concerned, there’s nothing so useful as having your alumni occupying influential positions in the government machine.

And in 2006, more of the same. James Hall left Accenture to become Chief Executive of the Identity & Passport Service, placing him at the head of the Home Office’s £6 billion National Identity Scheme, the cocktail of ID cards, ePassports and biometric visas/residence permits so beloved of Tony Blair and Whitehall.

In the event, how much of the projected £17 billion+ harvest did Accenture reap?

None. The National Identity Scheme expired worthless in 2010. And earlier, in 2006, we had already learnt that Accenture’s NHS losses grow as NPfIT delays mount:

Accenture, the leading management and technology consulting firm, announced a provision for a further $450 million of losses against its contract to deploy IT systems on behalf of the English NHS.

Leaving his previous employers with a bill for $450 million+ makes something of a dent in Ian Watmore's CV. But let's draw a line in the sand and move on to his next employers, the Cabinet Office.

In 2005, Sir Gus O’Donnell became Cabinet Secretary. He wasn’t asked to lead on national security. That job was given to Sir David Omand. Sir Gus was asked by Tony Blair to concentrate instead on delivering “joined up government”.

The result was a November 2005 Cabinet Office paper, Transformational Government Enabled by Technology, written in the unmistakable language of the management consultant:

To lead the transformation of groups of services to customers, especially for those which cut across organisational boundaries, the Government will appoint Customer Group Directors, each reporting to one Minister responsible for that customer group. Key responsibilities of a Customer Group Director will be to sponsor customer insight and research into the needs of that customer group; to lead the design of services including overall channel planning, joining-up of presentation and delivery, branding and communication, and service improvements; to track and communicate performance against customer related targets; and to represent the interests of their customers as necessary in existing inter-departmental governance and in the governance of this strategy.

In English, Transformational Government meant sacking all the frontline public servants and replacing them with computers. It meant issuing everyone in the UK with an electronic ID. And it meant that all the big departments of state would share their data. That way, the Whitehall computers could deliver the right benefits to the right people (or “customers”).

There are any number of reasons why Transformational Government could never work. One of them is that the big departments of state have no intention of sharing their data. Ian Watmore could call all the meetings he liked at which the Home Office was meant to lie down with DWP and HMRC and the Department for Children Schools and Families and the Department of Health but, as the BBC’s File on 4 told us, they simply didn’t turn up. The writ of the Cabinet Office does not run wide.

Nothing ever came of Transformational Government. But once again Ian Watmore had moved on before his employers found out, becoming in January 2006 Head of Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit. There are no known deliveries made there by Mr Watmore and no known innovations introduced as a result of his subsequent tenure at the Department of Innovation Universities and Skills.

There followed an embarrassing nine months or so as Chief Executive of the Football Association. After which, Human Resources at Whitehall found Ian Watmore's CV once again on their desk. What transferable skills of his could they possibly find attractive?

A good question. Whatever the answer was, Ian Watmore was reinstalled, this time as Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office. Among others, he now enjoys the title of “the Government’s Chief Operating Officer”.

And all those failed projects? Zombies, all.

They’re all climbing out of their graves now, sightless and rotting, lurching around Whitehall and threatening to devour public money by the billion. The transformation or reform of Whitehall is to be based on a lot of schemes that have already failed. That, supposedly, is the way to improve efficiency.

NPfIT limps on. Giant data centres are to be built at which all departmental data will be shared. There is to be a Civil Registration Act and everyone will be bar coded through a resurrected Identity Assurance service. Access to public services will be “digital by default”. Frontline public servants will go, to be replaced by G-Cloud – the Government Cloud – i.e. the web.

What does Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Minister, know of the difficulties of ensuring security over the web? Or David Cameron – what does he know? Or for that matter, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

It doesn’t matter. Whitehall wants a G-Cloud and Ian Watmore is the man to deliver it – just look at his CV.

And we the public will pay for it. In every sense.

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Updated 16.4.16

The generally excellent Charles Moore has an article in today's Telegraph newspaper, Beware the incestuous, unaccountable empire-building of civil servants.

It's a curate's egg.

One of the less impressive passages reads as follows:

Now that Sir David [Normington] is retiring, his job is being split again. The leading candidate to replace him as First Civil Service Commissioner is Ian Watmore. And guess what Mr Watmore did until, rather against his will, he left in 2012? He was a civil servant – permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office. And guess who wants him to be the First Commissioner? Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary. Mr Watmore left because the then Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude, was not satisfied that he was doing the job he asked of him. It is a fair bet that a returning Mr Watmore would be able to exact the subtle, carefully meditated revenge against elected people at which mandarins excel.

Mr Moore seems to assume that Ian Watmore is a life-long civil servant. He isn't. Please see above. He came into the civil service from a very senior job in the private sector. And that bit about Ian Watmore exacting "the subtle, carefully meditated revenge against elected people at which mandarins excel" just doesn't ring true – you'd lose your bet.

Efficiency and reform, Whitehall-style

Take a look at this CV:

Managing Director (age 42) of the UK arm of a global management consultancy – Chief Information Officer of the UK government – Head of Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit – Permanent Secretary at the Department of Innovation Universities and Skills – Chief Executive of the Football Association – Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office – Chief Operating Officer (age 52) of the Efficiency & Reform Group – and it’s not over yet.

Enviable. By any lights, that is a successful career.

Or is it?